New from Storm - !Q Tour Sapphire - New from Roto Grip - WICKED GREMLIN™

 

COVERSTOCK: R2S™Pearl Reactive 

WEIGHT BLOCK: C³™ Centripetal Control Core 

FACTORY FINISH: Power Edge™ 

COLOR: Sapphire 

FLARE POTENTIAL: Medium - Low 

FRAGRANCE: Blueberry 

The Storm !Q Tour Sapphire is here to deliver that same legendary feel and reaction that bowlers loved from the !Q Tour Ruby! The original !Q Tour line earned its reputation through the proven performance of the R2S coverstock, and the Sapphire proudly continues that legacy. R2S remains unmatched when it comes to generating friction on dry lane conditions, while the Power Edge finish adds just the right amount of traction in the oil to create a smooth, blended motion through the backend. At the heart of the !Q Tour Sapphire lies the iconic C³ Centripetal Control Core—Storm’s gold standard for benchmark reaction. For over a decade, this core has defined the perfect balance between power and control, giving bowlers the confidence to stay one step ahead on both league and tournament conditions. In #15, the RG is 2.49. Differential is .029.

PRODUCT DETAILS: COVERSTOCK: G-R1™ Solid Reactive 

WEIGHT BLOCK: Rondure™ MaxD Core 

FACTORY FINISH: 2000-grit Abralon® 

COLOR: Citrine/Red/Purple 

FLARE POTENTIAL: High 

CONDITION: Medium/Heavy Oil 

WICKED GREMLIN™ FEATURES & BENEFITS: 

CORE TECHNOLOGY: At the heart of it all is the same Rondure™ MaxD Core that propelled the original GREMLIN™ into superstar status thanks to its "maxed out" densities. 

COVER TECHNOLOGY: The G-R1™ Solid Reactive (GRIP-Response) coverstock delivers a high-friction, "grippy" footprint without the over-aggressive bite of its predecessor. Engineered as a refined, nano-free alternative to V-R1, this material provides a predictable mid-lane read and a smoother transition through the backend. It is the ideal choice for bowlers seeking heavy-oil traction with a more controlled, continuous motion. 

PERFORMANCE SYNOPSIS: This superb blend of core and cover delivers more traction in the midlane while still providing a responsive, down-lane reaction that sets it apart from other nano-free solids. It will handle those Medium/Heavy conditions wickedly. It’s the perfect ball for fresh house shots and transitioning tournament conditions, and a great alternative when your aggressive asymmetrics start hooking too soon. In #15 pounds, RG is 2.50, Differential .058, PSA .10

            

Private Equity–Backed Firm Bowlero Is Ruining Bowling By Amos Barshad

 It’s a Tuesday night in Hazlet, New Jersey, and at the far end of a packed bowling alley, the money is moving. A crew of bowlers — some of the best amateurs in the state — are calm, stone-faced, and smashing pins. They slip bootees on their feet to keep their soles dry. They squeeze grip sacks to keep their palms dry. No one’s really drinking; they take bowling too seriously to be drunk. After bowling a frame, they go over to a table to pick a card from a deck laid out, in cryptic fashion, along a growing array of loose bills.

I have no idea what’s happening in this game other than it’s going well for a guy known as Big Mike. Pocketing a fat stash of cash, he tells me, in his perfect Philly accent, “Bowlers like gambling.”

An imposingly tall forty-something man with gray hair cut military-neat, Mike Weinert hosts Sweep the Rack, a podcast for “hard-core bowlers.” On his podcast and in person, his knowledge of and devotion to bowling is entrancing. He waves dismissively at the other side of the bowling center, where people are bowling on “house” patterns, meaning lanes laid out with oil patterns designed to help you bowl strikes. Big Mike and his friends are bowling on more difficult “sport” patterns, meaning the kind of layouts the pros use.

“It’s Masters Sunday,” he says, using a golf metaphor. “That’s this shit right here.”

Within minutes, Big Mike and the crew move to a less joyful subject: Bowlero, the biggest bowling company in the world. Fueled by millions from private equity groups like Apollo Global Management and Atairos, Bowlero has grown rapidly. Formed in 2014, it now has more than 350 centers, including the one we’re in tonight. As the company has expanded, it has amassed massive debts, all while successfully enriching its founder and CEO.

It’s also become the target of a federal investigation into alleged ageist and racist hiring practices, with claims emerging of “beauty contest” job interviews and threats of corporate espionage and retaliation.

For the most part, Bowlero doesn’t build its own centers. Instead, it purchases existing ones and makes them over in the Bowlero style: dim lights, loud music, expensive cocktails. At Bowleros, bowling isn’t bowling. It’s “upscale entertainment.”

But for serious bowlers, the lived experience of Bowlero’s rise has come with a marked deterioration in conditions. Someone in Big Mike’s crew warns that lane 26 tonight is sticky right where you step up to bowl: “The approach! The actual approach!”

Someone else says it’s no surprise: “They spend a couple million dollars putting in screens but can’t clean the place.”

The bowlers say prices have gone up. They say the pinsetters keep breaking down, and since there are no mechanics on site, “then you’re just fucked.” They say all the bowling centers within reasonable driving distance are also owned by Bowlero, so “you’re just gonna have to put up with how they do things.

“In the interest of short-term profit, a corporation goes about methodically worsening a beloved national pastime.”

It all feels thoroughly American: in the interest of short-term profit, a corporation goes about methodically worsening a beloved national pastime. Do you sometimes ask yourself, why does it feel like everything is getting worse? Bowlero provides one possible answer: because somewhere, someone’s making money off the decline.

In its initial acquisition wave, Bowlero bought up prominent centers in large population areas from New York to Los Angeles. As it continues to expand, it has promised to hoover up centers everywhere else in the country. There are roughly 3,500 independent bowling centers left in America. For Bowlero, that’s 3,500 potential acquisition targets.

“This industry,” Bowlero executive Brett Parker has said, “is fragmented and ripe for roll-ups.”

“A lot of guys are worried that in five years, seven years, you’re only gonna have a Bowlero,” Big Mike says. “And when that happens, what happens?”

How to Make Money Without Actually Making Money

With nearly seventy million people hitting the lanes at least once a year, bowling is the largest participation sport in the United States. It’s also a sport with proud regionally specific traditions and a constellation of time-tested centers that for decades have been run by independent operators treating the spaces like their homes. These are people who love bowling, and who aren’t hell-bent on maximizing profits. Many bowling centers cater to seniors by opening hours before the after-work rush, sometimes as early as 9 a.m.

Bowlero isn’t interested in maintaining the culture of bowling. What Bowlero wants to do is become the Starbucks of bowling.

In 2021, Bowlero listed itself as a public company on the New York Stock Exchange. Over the next few years, as the country reopened following the pandemic and people became eager to get out, Bowlero’s business boomed. From 2021 to 2023, the company’s annual revenue went from a few hundred million to over a billion. That amounts to roughly a quarter of the industry’s total revenue.

As demand spiked, Bowlero regularly and significantly raised prices on bowling and concessions. Some Bowlero centers even saw Uber-like surge pricing. At one Northern California Bowlero, according to the Wall Street Journal, that meant a few hours of bowling cost you more than $400. As a local told the Journal, “This strikes me as outrageous for a pedestrian family activity.”

“Bowlero isn’t interested in maintaining the culture of bowling. What Bowlero wants to do is become the Starbucks of bowling.”

Online forums are full of similar grumblings from bowlers about Bowlero’s price increases. In a 2022 earnings call, the company boasted, “We’re raising price on everything.”

In the fall of 2023, financial journalist Herb Greenberg issued a “Red Flag Alert” to the readers of his newsletter, urging them not to buy Bowlero stock. Greenberg usually knows what he’s talking about: his past reporting has led to Securities and Exchange Commission investigations and convictions for securities fraud.

In Greenberg’s analysis, Bowlero greatly benefited from the effects of the pandemic, meaning its market advantage was artificial. Since then, Greenberg has reported, sales have slowed and margins have shrunk. Bowlero boasts that it is “one of the world’s premier operators of location-based entertainment.” But in a world that has reopened in full, a Bowlero center is just another “location.”

In its effort to expand its empire, Bowlero is spending freely on new centers. At some point a roll-up has to stop “rolling up,” Greenberg says, and actually become a sustainable moneymaking business. But as long as Bowlero can keep expanding and projecting great future success, its stock can keep rising. And one of Bowlero’s major stockholders is Tom Shannon, its own CEO.

Shannon is a business owner, not a bowler. He got his start in the ’90s, originally under the name Bowlmor, with one bowling center in New York City. It was there that he developed his big idea, the one that would become the Bowlero template: a bowling center as a glitzy all-in entertainment palace, where anything from cocktails to video games can draw your attention away from the lanes. In a 2011 interview with Bloomberg, just a few years before Bowlero began its aggressive expansion push, Shannon made an infamous and illuminating comment. “I don’t think anyone takes bowling seriously,” he said. “Why would you?”

Katherine Spurlock, a Louisiana-based research analyst and former short seller, shares Greenberg’s Bowlero skepticism. She has watched as Bowlero has continued to amass debt and then use incoming revenue to pay dividends and buy back shares.

“If the company pays dividends, Shannon and other insiders will get paid accordingly,” Spurlock says. “If the company’s shares rise because it repurchases its shares, then Shannon and other insiders are likewise rewarded.”

And if the company continues to use revenue not to invest in the business but to reward shareholders, Spurlock asks, “Who likely benefits the most?” The answer, again, is Shannon.

Bowlero’s executives may believe it will one day expand itself into a hugely profitable quasi monopoly. But for Shannon, it doesn’t matter if Bowlero soars or crashes. Either way, he gets paid.

Bowlero stock has been dramatically boosted by investment personality Jim Cramer, who has gushed over the company — “You can’t go wrong with Bowlero!” — and has repeatedly conducted fawning interviews with Shannon on his popular CNBC show Mad Money.

Thanks in part to Cramer’s endorsement, there are fleets of amateur investors for whom Bowlero seems like an obvious buy. But there are “natural sellers among the insiders” at Bowlero, Greenberg warns. That means there are people who know the ins and outs of the company, own lots of its stock, and would be more than happy to sell.

“Shannon made an infamous and illuminating comment. ‘I don’t think anyone takes bowling seriously,’ he said. ‘Why would you?’”

And if those insiders unload their stocks when they’re peaking, the value of the stock plummets. The insiders profit; the everyday investors lose out.

“This,” Greenberg says, “is a dangerous stock.”

Bowlero did not respond to multiple requests for comment. But Greenberg’s warning goes to the heart of the Bowlero story so far. Is the company actually a healthy and growing entity? Or is it just very successful at presenting itself as one? And if it’s the latter, how does this all end?

When the coworking giant WeWork crashed, a bunch of office space was left vulnerable. If Bowlero goes down, what’s at risk are the very centers where bowlers come together.

What About the Bowling?

Brett Parker, Bowlero’s chief financial officer, once said that Shannon’s “vision” for Bowlero was taking “the very traditional, warm-beer, cold-food, smelly-bathroom, scary-person-on-the-lane-next-to-you bowling center” and turning it into “something more.”

The independent bowling journalist Jeff Richgels disagrees. As a longtime newspaperman at various Wisconsin publications as well as a high-level bowler — he’s a member of multiple local Halls of Fame — Richgels is uniquely positioned to cover Bowlero.

“Their business is selling overpriced food and drinks,” he tells me, with dismay. “They treat bowlers like shit.”

On his site 11thFrame.com, he’s compiled allegations that centers are full of “food debris, dirt, salt, gum, and overall garbage”; that bathrooms go days without being cleaned; that store managers laugh off or dismiss complaints. Richgels quoted one former manager for a Bowlero center in the Milwaukee area alleging that when Bowlero took over the location, “They IMMEDIATELY made us cancel all janitorial contracts.”

As shortsighted as that sounds, such negligence appears elemental to Bowlero’s business model. In a 2023 research report, a Wall Street analyst for the investment bank Stifel Financial wrote that Bowlero can “easily cut 30 percent of [expenses] while running a typical bowling center on a skeleton crew of a handful of staff . . . and minimal required maintenance.”

Bowlero has also purchased the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA), the sport’s top league. As Richgels has covered, since Bowlero’s takeover the PBA’s website has failed to keep up its stats and records. “Records, archives, Hall of Fame are everything for fans,” he’s written. “You’re telling the world this isn’t a professional sport worthy of being taken seriously.”

When Bowlero first took over the PBA in 2019, Big Mike and his cohost, Brooklyn Rob, played the audio of Shannon’s “Who would take bowling seriously” comment. Then the two fell into stunned silence. It was as if they’d just announced the death of a beloved local dignitary. Finally, Rob spoke, struggling to articulate his panic: “Mike . . . how do you . . . I mean . . . he owns . . . he owns the PBA.”

In one of Cramer’s friendly CNBC interviews with Shannon, the CEO coolly stated that the PBA takeover was a mercenary move to drive more business to Bowlero centers: “What it really is, is an infomercial.”

Bowlero has also purchased some of the “most well-known competitive bowling centers in the country,” Big Mike says. That includes the former Carolier Lanes in North Brunswick, New Jersey.

For years, Carolier has hosted major tournaments and all-time greats. This is where, in 2012, a Hall of Famer bowler named Pete Weber won the PBA’s US Open, flailed in joy, then pointed two thumbs at his chest and shouted “Who do you think you are? I am!” A bewildering moment of pure joy, it’s become an iconic phrase for bowling as well as the internet at large.

“That happened there!” Big Mike says. “To competitive bowlers, this place was the mecca.”

After Bowlero took over Carolier, they renamed it Bowlero North Brunswick and gave it an eyebrow-raising makeover by installing 16-foot screens, a Kung Fu Panda Dojo Mojo video game, and, for some reason, a “sexy and cool” 1969 Mustang in the lobby.

While reporting this piece, I found that people in the bowling industry were largely reluctant to talk about Bowlero. Emails and texts went unanswered. Folks who initially agreed to talk would change their minds or suddenly stop responding.

Robby Spigner, a former PBA bowler who now owns and operates his own centers, agreed to an interview but, once on the phone, declined to comment about Bowlero in any way, saying only, “It’s a great and wonderful industry and everyone plays a role in making it great and wonderful.” I started getting the feeling that people were scared.

“I found that people in the bowling industry were largely reluctant to talk about Bowlero. Emails and texts went unanswered."

One exception was Robin Goldberg, the owner-operator of Dream Lanes in Madison, Wisconsin. Bowlero has acquired several centers throughout Wisconsin, but they’ve yet to reach Madison. Goldberg knows Dream Lanes may yet become a target for Bowlero, but he hopes to never sell to the company. Doing so, he said, would mean that “my brand, that I spent a lifetime working on, would get flushed down the toilet.”

Goldberg’s father opened Dream Lanes in 1957, the year Goldberg was born. He started working there as a twelve-year-old — cleaning, taking out the trash, stocking the bar. Some customers have been with him ever since, displaying remarkable longevity.

“What’s their secret?” I ask.

“Bowling multiple times a week,” he shoots back.

Goldberg is proud of being an independent operator, of being on-site, of wholly devoting himself to this culture.

“I’ve always felt like nobody cares like an owner cares,” he says. “If there’s a problem, I’m in the building. I’m not gonna have to go back to my corporate office.”

In Wisconsin, long winters make bowling a particularly needed communal pastime. “This is where people celebrate,” he says. “This is where people mourn.”

Why Is Bowlero in the Gutter With the Feds?

In the summer of 2023, Shannon was back for one of his regular Mad Money appearances. Cramer asked him about an investigation from the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, a federal agency created by the 1964 Civil Rights Act to fight workplace discrimination. More than seventy former Bowlero employees had filed complaints with the agency alleging that under Shannon’s control, Bowlero had utilized flagrantly illegal hiring practices.

Shannon brushed it all off. “These allegations are frankly absurd,” he said. “They don’t pass the sniff test. They don’t pass any common sense.”

In fact, at the time of that Cramer interview, federal regulators had already determined that the allegations were credible. A few months before, Bowlero had stated in its own quarterly corporate disclosure form that federal regulators had taken the charges so seriously they had conducted their own “administrative investigation,” determined “probable cause,” and found that the abusive hiring practices likely dated back a decade.

Complainants in the investigation allege that Shannon himself held video interviews through Skype to physically assess candidates.

“It was a two-minute quick look of a physical appearance,” one former Bowlero HR manager told the New York Post. They were “beauty contests.”

Shannon also allegedly pushed out employees he deemed old or unattractive. In one two-year span, nearly three hundred managers were fired. One affidavit submitted to investigators alleges that one employee was let go “shortly after being stricken with a medical condition that caused his face to become disfigured.” Other employees were allegedly “managed out,” meaning they were pushed into quitting through constant criticism and workplace harassment.

“Shannon allegedly pushed out employees he deemed old or unattractive."

Former Bowlero employees also told investigators that Shannon made “racially motivated” comments and that the company had a policy banning customers wearing Timberland boots and backward ball caps, which one employee said was a tacit attempt “to deter African American males” from coming to Bowlero centers. Additionally, the complainants say that Shannon was discriminatory against pregnant employees.

“It was well known within the company that motherhood is the end of your career at the company if you work for Shannon,” one affidavit states. “Pregnancy was totally against Shannon’s practices of having attractive, sexually appealing persons at the forefront of his company, regardless of merit and competence.”

Tom Tanase, the former chief information officer at Bowlero, recently joined the hiring discrimination case. Tanase now says that Bowlero is retaliating against him for doing so by suing him for allegedly hacking into Shannon’s email account. In one conversation with Bowlero executive Brett Parker, which Tanase taped, Parker presses Tanase to stop cooperating with Daniel Dowe, an attorney working on behalf of former Bowlero employees involved in the hiring discrimination case.

According to the transcript of the call, Parker told Tanase, “You tell us everything you know about Dowe” and “there can be a number” — apparently a reference to a payout. “Be our friend in this matter and you will get paid,” said Parker. But if Tanase failed to cooperate, Parker warned him, “You’re going to be trying to explain” your actions “to the FBI.”

Tanase was not available for comment. Posting recently on LinkedIn about Shannon and the federal investigation, Tanase wrote, “Some people are blinded by ego.”

Dowe, the attorney representing former Bowlero employees, told me that federal investigators attempted conciliation with Bowlero in hopes of settling the case. (The reported settlement number was $60 million.) But nothing came of the process.

“They’ve exhausted all administrative remedies,” Dowe says, “so now a lawsuit in federal court is imminent against the company and its directors.”

As for the executive who allegedly threatened Tanase, Dowe added, “I believe Brett Parker needs to consider hiring his own lawyer.”

Big Mike says the hiring discrimination investigation is dismaying but not surprising.

“The bowling community is small,” he says. “I personally know people who were let go for age reasons, appearance reasons. The community definitely took notice of that.”

The Place for Purists

Howell Township, just a few hours west of midtown Manhattan, is a bucolic, horsy part of central New Jersey. But tucked amid the stables and sprawling wood-shaded farms is another kind of classic Americana: Howell Lanes, a strip-mall bowling center.

Parker Bohn III grew up in Howell Lanes. In the ’70s, he worked here for a friendly owner who let him bowl morning, day, and night. Bohn went on to become one of the greatest professional bowlers of all time. Framed photos of Bohn, with his once-trademark mustache, dot the place; in the bar, a massive mural shows Bohn emerging out of inky darkness to fire a ball down a lane. Now sixty, with a polo shirt tucked into blue jeans, Bohn still carries himself with the obvious swagger of a champion athlete.

We sit in front of five lanes, walled off from the rest of Howell Lanes, packed with specialty tech designed to help bowlers get better — like Specto, the “world’s most advanced ball-tracking system.” It’s a bowling center within a bowling center. This is Bohn’s domain. Bohn points to a lanky teenager in a Pacers hoodie engaged in an intense practice session.

“This kid’s dreaming of becoming a professional,” he says. Ahead of an upcoming tournament, he’s in here, using the tech, getting lessons, grinding.

At a lot of “corporate centers,” Bohn explains, “it’s ‘give me your credit card, we’ll let you know how much you owe at the end.’ You’re just a number. How many bowling proprietors are going to look at an individual and go, ‘They could be the next one.’”

Bohn still bowls on the PBA — which, thanks to financial investment from Bowlero, he says is “on the upward swing.” But as far as Bowlero’s centers, Bohn says, “They are in it for the entertainment business.”

“The tragedy of Bowlero is that they’re the biggest and most important company in bowling and they care nothing about the sport.”

I tell him that a lot of the hard-core bowlers have told me they feel they’re running out of places to bowl seriously, that Bowlero is swallowing it all up. As Richgels, the indie bowling reporter, told me, “The tragedy of Bowlero is that they’re the biggest and most important company in bowling and they care nothing about the sport.”

Bohn nods his head in solidarity.

Bowlers “want to work on their craft,” he says. “They feel they don’t have that venue to work.” Bohn says he’s not competing with Bowlero. But it’s evident he sees bowling in a very different way.

Before I leave, I ask Bohn about the ring on his right hand. It is a massive unit, a serious lump of glitz. It turns out the PBA gives you a ring for the first three hundred, or perfect game, you bowl, then adds a diamond for each 300 after that. At twenty-eight diamonds, Bohn’s ring is long since filled. Since then, Bohn has gone on to bowl about a hundred additional perfect games. No one in history has bowled more perfect games in official PBA competitions than Bohn.

I ask him to take me back through the decades, through the cigarette smoke. He happily obliges.

“You never forget your first one,” he says. “It came at a place that’s no longer there. Fantasy Lanes. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey. Route 17. As soon as I did it, the owner came down and asked me if I wanted anything. I said, ‘A chair and a cup of water.’ I was shaking. My legs were out from under me. I couldn’t believe I just accomplished what I did.”

I’m buzzing just imagining it. I’m in the presence of a purist who has exhausted himself for decades perfecting his game and has experienced the highest highs this sport offers. It makes me realize there are people who love this sport more than anything else in the world.

All these years later, all these three hundreds banged, he doesn’t have the nerves anymore, Bohn says — but he still has the hunger.

“I get excited for the fan in the back,” he says. “Every time I have a ball in my hand, and I’ve got the front nine in a row, I want to finish it for everybody else that’s watching. They want to see you do it. You got a chance to put on a show.”

This article appeared in: jacobin.com . The author is Amos Barshad.

New Balls from Utah, Rocket A.I. and Monsoon

 

STORM ROCKET™ A.I.

THUNDER LINE

 Street Date: 5/1

Weight Block: Booster™ A.I. Core

Coverstock: A1S™ Pearl Reactive

Finish: Power Edge™

The Rocket A.I. continues the aggressive expansion of the Thunder line by adding a release that creates later ball motion to dominate medium-dry conditions. Powering this release is the Booster A.I. Core, which retains the same inner weight block shape used in previous Rocket models. The outer core, however, has been enhanced with A.I. Technology. This dynamic addition not only increases carry percentage on off-hits, but also lowers the RG and raises the differential, allowing the Rocket A.I. to better match up with today’s lane patterns. To further support performance on today’s more demanding oil conditions, the Rocket A.I. is wrapped in the Storm A1S Pearl Reactive coverstock which is engineered for exceptional tackiness. Jason Belmonte says, “This core/cover combo delivers a quick response on the backend when you need to create larger angles and still have your ball continue through the pins.”

STORM MONSOON™

HOT LINE

Street Date: 5/1

Weight Block: Atmos™ A.I. Core

                   

Coverstock: Reactor™ Solid Reactive

Finish: 2000-grit Abralon®

The Typhoon marked a successful revival of the iconic Storm Hot line. While it excelled on drier conditions, it quickly became clear it needed a stronger partner to tackle heavier oil. Enter the Monsoon — built to handle more volume with confidence. Featuring a Reactor Solid coverstock finished at 2000-grit Abralon, the Monsoon creates a wider footprint on the lane, delivering more traction on medium oil conditions. Inside, the Atmos A.I. Core strikes the ideal balance of length and torque at the breakpoint, while our A.I. outer core technology unlocks a unique RG/Diff combination rarely seen in a core of this shape. Add in up to a 5% higher strike percentage on off-pocket hits, and you’ve got the perfect companion piece for conquering a wide range of medium oil patterns.

Storm's New Product: The New Power Glove - Throttle

 

The Power Glove Throttle is engineered for no-thumb and two-handed bowlers who want maximum control without restricting wrist motion. Many two-handed and no-thumb bowlers struggle with grip—especially when throwing urethane or balls with fresh surface—where oil remains on the cover and creates a slick feel.

Featuring interchangeable palm pads—including a high-tack flat pad and thicker foam options—the Throttle allows bowlers to fine-tune feel and traction to match any condition or style. The tacky palm delivers a confident grip without feeling overly sticky, preserving a clean and consistent release.  Details provided by Storm Bowling.

Are You Rev Dominant or Speed Dominant?

New From 900 Global - The Vengeance™

900 Global Vengeance™

800 Series

MY Information Date: 1/9 (That's today in case you're not keeping track.)

MY Street Date: 1/30

 

MY Coverstock: RB 91™ Solid Reactive
MY Core: Blast™ A.I. Core

Yes, it’s new. Yes, it’s strong.
This core and cover pairing exists for one reason: heavy oil that thinks it’s in charge. 

Spoiler Alert: It’s not. 

 

The single-density shape gives you a clear, confident midlane read, then saves energy for the back end...because overreacting isn’t the move.

Go To Storm/900 Global website for a chance to win a free ball

Next Ball Up from Storm the New NeXt Factor™

 

The NeXt Factor™ brings one of Storm’s most iconic ball lines into the modern era. First introduced in 2002, the X-Factor quickly became synonymous with explosive backend motion and the unmistakable skid-flip reaction that defined an entire generation of Storm performance. Now, more than twenty years later, the Storm  Innovation Team—led by CTO Hank Boomershine—has reimagined that legacy for today’s game.

This new iteration blends Storm’s high-tech heritage with the advancements 

bowlers expect from their strongest modern releases. Clean through the front, dynamic at the breakpoint, and relentless through the pins, the Next Factor™ is 

built for when you’re ready to open up your angles and let your ball do the 

talking. It’s a revival with purpose—honoring the past while pushing performance into the future.

Fragrance: Dark Berry

Release Date: 12/19/25

Color: Midnight

NeXt Factor™

Premier Line

Information Date: 12/1

Street Date: 12/19

 

Key Features:

• Weight Block: RAD-TQ™ 
• Coverstock: R3S™ Pearl Reactive 
• The Next Factor is a pearl asymmetric option that's designed for medium oil conditions.
• The ball is finished with Power Edge™. 
• Like the X-Factor, the Next Factor uses a unique combination of a high RG, high differential, and a relatively conservative PSA strength.
• Much like the Hy-Road, the Next Factor features no outer core, just a thick shell and a weight block. 
• If you're looking for a ball with a strong backend reaction, this is for you.