For those who thought that President Trump could keep his promise to reduce prices on “Day One,” achieving that goal was far easier said than done. Why? The monopoly/monopsony power in a growing number of markets. Much to my astonishment, even bowling isn’t immune!
The Increasing Concentration of Market Power Into the Hands of a Few
Schwenk, Katya, “Lawsuit Accuses Bowling Giant Of Nationwide Monopoly Scheme,” The Lever (May 6, 2026).[1]
A collection of avid bowlers across the country has filed a class-action lawsuit against private equity-backed bowling giant Bowlero, accusing the company of a “multi-year anti-competitive scheme to consolidate bowling centers,” which has led to skyrocketing bowling prices, deteriorating lanes, and “the veritable destruction of the decades-old pastime of bowling in America,” according to court documents reviewed by The Lever.
In 2024, The Lever exposed the wide-ranging impacts of the Bowlero takeover, which bowlers say has led to a decline in quality at many beloved local bowling haunts.[2]
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday in Washington state federal court, charges Bowlero with violating federal antitrust law and state consumer protection laws as it bought up hundreds of bowling alleys around the country in its “quest to become the ‘Starbucks’ of bowling.”
Along with damages, the suit asks the court to unwind Bowlero’s acquisitions of bowling centers and the Professional Bowling Association, the premier organization for bowling as a sport, and block further consolidation.
Bowlero, which has been rebranding as Lucky Strike Entertainment, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Bowlero’s expansion was bankrolled by private equity, the opaque industry known for stripping its investments for parts. The suit claims the company saw the country’s long history of independent bowling alleys as a “fragmented market ripe for roll-up.”
According to the lawsuit, Bowlero’s empire has grown from six locations in 2012 to nearly 350 today, amounting to roughly 35 percent of U.S. bowling revenue. In some markets, the company reportedly now controls 95 percent of all bowling lanes. The company went public in 2021.
By that point, Bowlero had also acquired the Professional Bowling Association, which includes thousands of members and hosts professional tournaments watched by millions of viewers every year. The lawsuit claims Bowlero CEO Thomas Shannon saw the association “as an infomercial,” allowing the company to flood televised games with logos and ads.
And as it consolidated the market, Bowlero executives allegedly planned to “use our scale to drive procurement synergies,” securing preferential deals with suppliers like Sysco Foods, QubicaAMF bowling balls, and Kegel lane maintenance not available to its competitors.
The complaint further alleges that once Bowlero acquired bowling centers, it employed algorithmic dynamic pricing and other strategies to drive up costs for consumers and wring more profit from local alleys. According to the suit, Bowlero slashed weekday hours and aimed to use dynamic pricing “to fill the centers on the weekends at the highest price we can,” in the alleged words of President Lee Ekster. One bowler allegedly spent $284 for two hours of bowling at a Bowlero location in Seattle.
See the attached PDF for the rest of this lengthy article which also discusses market concentration in agriculture, the grocery industry, meat processing; rental housing; and railroads.
What this brief documents well is the market side of concentration. What it leaves mostly implicit is the legislative side, and that's where the story gets more specific than "monopolies bad." The checkoff program detail is the sharpest example in the whole document: money collected from farmers, spent lobbying against the interests of the farmers who were required to pay it. That is not a market failure. It is a representation failure, and it happened because the people funding the lobbying had no visible record of what was being done with their money or which officials let it continue.
The bill outcomes tell the same story from a different angle. HF 2149 sat in a Minnesota House committee through an entire session without a floor vote. The Fair Seeds for Farmers Act sits introduced, not yet moving. Whether either bill deserved to pass is a fair question people can disagree on. Whether the people bound by seed patents and grocery pricing can see where their own representatives stood on the attempt is a separate question, and right now the answer is mostly no. A hundred years ago the Packers and Stockyards Act came out of a body that acted. The gap this time isn't a missing law. It's a missing record of who moved it and who didn't.
Healthcare is another industry where condlsolidation has led to worse outcomes, such aa closing hospitals in smaller, less profitable markets.