Bowling Had 10 Million League Players. One USBC Decision Erased Them in A DECADE.

Bowling Had 10 Million League Players. One USBC Decision Erased Them in A DECADE. The United States Bowling Congress reported one million ninety thousand sanctioned members in the twenty twenty-two to twenty twenty-three season. At the sport's peak, in the nineteen seventy-eight to nineteen seventy-nine season, the American Bowling Congress alone carried four point eight million members. The Women's International Bowling Congress carried four point two million. Combined sanctioned league membership across both governing bodies reached nine point eight million Americans that year. The USBC inherited that base at its founding in two thousand five with more than four million members. Eighteen years later, it had lost eighty-nine percent of them. The institution formed explicitly to consolidate and stabilize the sanctioned game presided over its near-total collapse.