Hollywood Bowl reveals new Covid-era ‘identifiable balls’ as firm reports profits crunch

Hollywood Bowl revealed it is launching more identifiable bowling balls in latest efforts to make lanes Covid secure on Monday as the firm reported a £26.4 million pandemic profits crash.

The UK's largest ten-pin bowling operator, which currently has around 40% of its estate still closed under Tier 3 restrictions, reported a £1.2 million pre-tax profit in the year to September 30 2020, down from £27.6 million in the same period the previous year.

Only around 10% of Hollywood Bowl revenues - from food and soft drinks - are eligible for the VAT cut offered by Government during the pandemic.

Chief executive Steve Burns told the Standard that the closure-dominated second half “is pretty meaningless in terms of numbers”.

He said: “We think we’ve had a good year considering all the challenges we’ve had to deal with.

“We have still managed to deliver a profit after tax for the year of £1.4 million and adjusted EBITDA of £14 million, opened four new centres during the course of the last financial year, three of which we opened during the midst of the pandemic, and we finished the year with a very strong cash position of £20.8 million, with net debt of just £8.7 million.”

He added: “One of the big issues we faced at the beginning was the non-sharing of equipment. Ball return is for two lanes… so we had to make it really, really easy to ensure that customers could identify which ball was theirs, so that there was no sharing of equipment between separate family bubbles.

“We tried three or four different measures - putting stickers, marking the balls - but actually found that the kids particularly just found that a bit more challenging. So we bought a whole new set of balls for every centre. They are bowling balls that look like footballs so they are super easy to see which is yours, and should reduce the tension on the lane between people saying ‘you are using my ball’.”

The group, which floated in 2016, has 64 centres across the UK.