Brunswick Bowling & Billiards

Brunswick Bowling & Billiards is the business segment of Brunswick Corporation that historically encompassed the following three divisions:

Brunswick announced in July 2014 its intention to leave the bowling business by the end of 2014. As part of the announcement, the company disclosed that it had agreed to sell the bowling center business, which brought in $187 million in revenue in the prior year, to its much larger competitor Bowlmor AMF for $270 million. It also disclosed that it had retained Lazard to find a buyer for its bowling equipment and products business. The company said it was making these changes to focus on its “core” Marine and Fitness businesses, which provided 92% of company net revenues in 2013. The sale of the bowling center division to Bowlmor AMF was completed in September 2014.

Brunswick completed its exit from the bowling business in May 2015 with the sale of the bowling equipment and products division to BlueArc Capital Management, a private investment firm based in Atlanta, GA. BlueArc completed the acquisition with investments from Gladstone Investment Corporation, a publicly traded business development company in McLean, Va., and Capitala Finance Corp., a business development company in Charlotte, N.C.

The billiards division was established in 1845 and is Brunswick Corporation's heritage business. Brunswick Billiards designs and/or markets billiards tables, table tennis tables, air powered table hockey games, and other gaming tables, as well as billiard balls, cues, game room furniture, and related accessories, under the Brunswick and Contender brands. Consumer billiards equipment is predominantly sold in the United States and distributed primarily through dealers.

John Brunswick built his first billiards table in 1845 at his woodworking shop in Cincinnati, Ohio, for a successful Chicago meatpacker. The popularity of billiards grew quickly, and by the late 1860s, the U.S. billiards market was dominated by Brunswick’s firm and two others. In 1873 Brunswick merged with one of his competitors, Julius Balke’s Cincinnati-based Great Western Billiard Manufactory, to form J.M. Brunswick & Balke Company. In 1884, the company merged with the other competitor, New York-based Phelan & Collender, to form the Brunswick-Balke-Collender Company. (The company name was changed to Brunswick Corporation in 1960.) The company grew quickly and added new product lines to its business in the 1880s. Brunswick began selling functional and decorative wooden backs for bars. Prohibition prompted a drastic change in the products offered by the company. And while the Depression was a difficult period for Brunswick, World War II brought a great deal of new business. The company's billiard products were popular in the United Service Organizations (USO) centers.

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