Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Bowling event bringing thousands to LV opens doors at Cashman

Bowling

Leila Navidi

Competing at Cashman: Walter Ray Williams Jr. practices at the Cashman Center for the 2009 U.S. Bowling Congress Masters tournament on Feb. 9.

Cashman Center, the Las Vegas Convention and Visitors Authority’s “other” meetings and trade show venue, is officially on a roll.

The 154-day U.S. Bowling Congress Open Championships began with its “Bowlfest” opening ceremonies last week, giving the city its first taste of what promises to be one of the largest — and longest — gatherings of visitors in Las Vegas history. Competition begins Feb. 21.

Bowlfest included introductions of Masters finalists; a trick-shot demonstration; entertainment by the Strip’s newest headliner, ventriloquist and impressionist Terry Fator; and a media tournament. Fator, the “America’s Got Talent” winner who signed a multimillion-dollar deal to perform at the Mirage, spent about 20 minutes entertaining the crowd before heading for his debut at that hotel.

An estimated 150,000 people, including more than 85,000 bowlers, will come through Las Vegas for the Open Championships, which will be conducted daily from 7 a.m. to 2 a.m. through July 24.

With 17,200 teams participating, the event will be the second largest in the 106-year history of the tournament. Only an event in Reno at the opening of the 78-lane National Bowling Stadium in 1995 had more participants with 17,285 teams.

The 85,000 bowlers and estimated 65,000 friends, families and supporters who visit Las Vegas will represent an estimated $75 million to $100 million boost to the local economy, said Matt Cannizzaro, media relations manager for the Bowling Congress. Cannizzaro said most teams and their boosters spend an average 3 1/2 days.

The event will call attention to the city in the form of publicity and national television. The Masters finals were televised Feb. 15 on ESPN.

Cashman Center, normally a venue for small community-oriented trade shows and meetings, has been transformed into a 60-lane bowling center with a high ceiling and a state-of-the-art video scoreboard.

The venue took 45 days to create with enough raw materials to build five three-bedroom homes. When the event ends in the summer, most of the materials will go to charitable organizations to be recycled.

“They really did a tremendous job of putting this together,” said Carolyn Dorin-Ballard, a spokeswoman for the Bowling Congress and a professional bowler who participated in the media tournament with teams from the Las Vegas Sun, the Las Vegas Review-Journal, KLAS Channel 8, the convention authority and Las Vegas Events.

The scoreboard is one of the dominant features of the center with never-before-used technology. The new scoreboard will be similar to big screens in sports venues and arenas nationwide and uses technology that can stream video with 4.4 trillion colors. It’s considered the largest mobile scoreboard of its kind, and the setup will include a 12-by-9-foot high-definition video display screen over the center’s fabled Center Aisle, where bowlers are introduced (with music) as they take their positions for matches.

It’s the first significant scoreboard modification for bowling since 1979 and the Bowling Congress says it’s the biggest change for the sport since synthetic lanes were introduced in 1980.

The Bowling Congress stages its championship tourney at the downtown Reno stadium every third year. This year’s Las Vegas event will easily surpass the non-Reno record of 13,222 teams that participated in Baton Rouge, La., in 2005.

Bowlers will be competing for $7 million in prize money. Cannizzaro said because of the different divisions, 46 percent of the participants get some prize money for their efforts.

The Fort Worth, Texas-based Bowling Congress staged its open championship tournament at Cashman Center in 1986 and at the time, it was a record-setting event. At that tournament, 10,019 teams participated, the first time that 10,000 was surpassed.

Following the Open Championships, Cashman will play host to the World Tenpin Bowling Association World Women’s Championships from July 25 to Aug. 3.

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