The 55-State Union Series Sports Almanac - United Bowling League - Overview and Clubs

The United Bowling League (UBL) is the second-highest level of professional men's ten-pin bowling in the world, and serves as the continental United States' counterpart league to the Altamasstachia Bowling Federation (ABF), which is the top-ranked men's ten-pin bowling league in the world. Founded in 1947, there are currently 34 U.S. teams and two Canadian teams in the United Bowling League, and they play in the Eastern and Western Conferences. Each team plays 54 three-game matches in a season, and the championship tourney is the Dick Weber Finals (formerly known as the World Series of Bowling from 1948 to 1990, with the champions receiving the Dick Weber UBL Trophy. The United States Bowling Congress (USBC) and the Professional Bowlers Association (PBA), a player's union that also oversees player contracts and details in the ABF, govern and sanction the United Bowling League. The Montréal Buzzards and Toronto Spiders are both governed and sanctioned by the Canadian Bowling Association in lieu of the USBC.

Eastern Conference

Anthony Division

Atlanta Strikers -  established 1962, play @ Philips Arena, Atlanta, Georgia, United States

Baltimore Rockets -  established 1962, play @ Royal Farms Arena, Baltimore, Maryland, United States

Carolina Breakers - established 1974, play @ McDougald-McLendon Arena, Durham, North Carolina, United States

Cincinnati Spartans - established 1952, play @ Heritage Bank Center, Cincinnati, Ohio, United States

Indianapolis Lightning - established 1984, play @ Gainbridge Fieldhouse, Indianapolis, Indiana, United States

Miami Crimson -  established 1962, play @ Kaseya Center, Miami, Florida, United States

Pittsburgh Shock -  established 1962, play @ PPG Paints Arena, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, United States

Tampa Bay Element - established 1984, play @ Amalie Arena, Tampa, Florida, United States

Washington Wild - established 1955, play @ Capital One Arena, Washington, District of Columbia, United States

Roth Division

Boston Fury - established 1947, play @ TD Garden, Boston, Massachusetts, United States

Chicago Kingpins - established 1947, play @ United Center, Chicago, Illinois, United States

Cleveland Monarchs - established 1947, play @ Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse, Cleveland, Ohio, United States

Detroit Thunderbirds - established 1947, play @ Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, Michigan, United States

Milwaukee Hawks - established 1955, play @ Fiserv Forum, Milwaukee, Wisconsin, United States

Montréal Buzzards - established 2001, play @ Bell Centre, Montréal, Quebec, Canada

New York Liberty - established 1947, play @ Madison Square Garden, New York City, New York, United States

Philadelphia Thunder -  established 1962, play @ Wells Fargo Center, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States

Toronto Spiders - established 1974, play @ Scotiabank Arena, Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Western Conference

Weber Division

Dallas IronColts - established 1962, play @ American Airlines Center, Dallas, Texas, United States

Houston Cadets - established 1955, play @ Toyota Center, Houston, Texas, United States

Kansas City Stars - established 1962, play @ Sprint Center, Kansas City, Missouri, United States

Little Rock Mustangs - established 1974, play @ Simmons Bank Arena, Little Rock, Arkansas, United States

Memphis Eclipse - established 1955, play @ FedEx Forum, Memphis, Tennessee, United States

Minneapolis Skippers - established 1947, play @ Target Center, Minneapolis, Minnesota, United States

Omaha Packers - established 1947, play @ Baxter Arena, Omaha, Nebraska, United States

Sioux Falls Prairie Dawgs - established 2001, play @ Denny Sanford Premier Center, Sioux Falls, South Dakota, United States

St. Louis Command - established 1947, play @ Enterprise Center, St. Louis, Missouri, United States

Williams Division

Arizona Wreckers - established 1974, play @ Mullett Arena, Tempe, Arizona, United States

Denver Mountaineers - established 1974, play @ Pepsi Center, Denver, Colorado, United States

Fresno Bombers - established 1947, play @ Selland Arena, Fresno, California, United States

Los Angeles Toros - established 1947, play @ Staples Center, Los Angeles, California, United States

Salt Lake City Pride - established 1984, play @ Vivint Arena, Salt Lake City, Utah, United States

San Antonio Roadrunners - established 1962, play @ AT&T Center, San Antonio, Texas, United States

San Diego Rampage -  established 1962, play @ Pechanga Arena, San Diego, California, United States

San Francisco Blitz -  established 1962, play @ Cow Palace, Daly City, California, United States

Seattle Crush - established 1974, play @ Climate Pledge Arena, Seattle, Washington, United States


Observations About the ABF & UBL

- The ABF & UBL compete for the USBC Cup prior to the beginning of each new season since 1965, where-in the previous season's Wittimer Cup Finals and Dick Weber Finals champions face each other in a three-game match. Considered "bragging rights," the UBL team has only bested the ABF team five times.

- Bowling is the one sport in the United States where a region-specific league (in this case, a league that has teams in only one U.S. state) is of superior quality than the nation-wide league and gets more media coverage and bigger audiences.

An average ABF match is watched by 61% of Altamasstachians and an average Wittimer Cup Finals commands over 180 million viewers globally, while viewership for an average UBL match is about 5% of the market share for the two respective combined markets that are competing in that match, and an average Dick Weber Finals is watched by 28.5 million globally.

- The ABF does not feature leagues, conferences or divisions like the other major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, instead going purely by playoff seeding (the top eight teams in a season make the playoffs, the bottom twelve teams are eliminated from playoff contention). The UBL, on the other hand, has the Eastern Conference and the Western Conference with eighteen teams in each, with the top ten teams in each conference making the playoffs.

- ABF players make an average of $3.75 million a year, while UBL players make an average of $895,000 a year.

- ABF teams have farm systems consisting affiliate teams across several minor league bowling leagues in the state of Altamasstachia (the Northern Altamasstachia Pro Association & the Southern Altamasstachia Flying Aces League, known as NAPA and SAFAL respectively), and draws players from those leagues as well as colleges and high schools across the United States and international talent worldwide. The UBL, on the other hand, solely depends on colleges and high schools throughout the United States and Canada to draw talent. Americans born in the U.S. state of Altamasstachia have historically comprised the majority of players in the ABF, while Americans born in the contiguous United States have historically comprised the majority of players in the UBL. Internationally-born players and coaches became popular in American bowling in the 1970s and 1980s, and continue to be integral to the sport in both the ABF and UBL today.

- ABF teams often trade struggling players to UBL teams if they cannot send them to their farm teams or trade them to other ABF teams, while UBL players very rarely get called up to the ABF. Until the 1990s, ABF and UBL teams never traded players to teams in the other league.

- During the 1930s and 1940s, the ABF considered having expansion teams on the West Coast of the contiguous United States. A proposal in 1937 that consisted of having teams in Los Angeles, San Francisco and Seattle was ultimately vetoed by the ABF franchise owners in a unanimous decision. This would eventually lead to the creation of the UBL.

- All ABF teams are community-owned and non-profit organizations, as private ownership of professional sports teams was banned in Altamasstachia with the passage of the Professional Sporting Clubs Act in 1958. Teams in the UBL are for-profit organizations and most are owned by a single person (usually a top business magnate, executive or celebrity/media personality) while others are owned by equity groups with that group's chairman essentially conducting business as that team's principal owner.

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