Forget padel, Britain’s forgotten sports are making a comeback, and lawn bowls is leading the charge
There is a quiet revolution happening on the greens of Britain, and it is being led by a sport most people assumed belonged to their grandparents. Lawn bowls, the game of village fêtes, retirement afternoons and cream trousers, is back.
Listen to this article
Only this time, it looks nothing like the version you remember.
When my business partner Will Goy and I launched The Bowls Club in Finsbury Square in 2022, people thought we were mad. A pop-up lawn bowls festival in the middle of the City of London? With DJs, street food, cocktails and live entertainment? It sounded like a punchline.
Five years later, we have welcomed over 100,000 guests, hosted more than 1200 corporate clients, raised over £46,000 for Great Ormond Street Hospital and built what is now officially the largest lawn bowls festival in the world.
We did not set out to save lawn bowls, we set out to solve a problem. After fifteen years in live events and hospitality, I knew that the corporate summer party market was stale.
The same rooftop bars, the same generic team-building exercises, the same forgettable afternoons. What people wanted was something genuinely different, an activity that everyone could do together, regardless of age, fitness or ability, wrapped in an experience that felt premium without being exclusive.
Lawn bowls turned out to be the perfect answer. And the reason is deceptively simple: it is one of the most inclusive games ever invented. You do not need to be strong, fast or coordinated.
You do not need to have played before. You can hold a drink in one hand, have a conversation mid-game, and still feel the genuine thrill of competition when your bowl kisses the jack. It strips away every barrier that usually stops people from joining in a sport.
That inclusivity is not just good for a party. It is why the sport itself is experiencing a global resurgence. Earlier this year, World Bowls, the international governing body for the sport across 54 member nations, announced a formal partnership with The Bowls Club to help grow participation worldwide.
Their CEO, Neil Dalrymple, said they see our model as a blueprint for attracting new audiences in both established and emerging bowls nations. It is a partnership I am enormously proud of, because it validates something we have believed from day one: that the future of bowls is not about protecting tradition, it is about making the game relevant again.
Britain is full of so-called forgotten sports. Croquet, pétanque, archery, tennis, all with rich histories, all quietly gaining new audiences. What they share is accessibility. In an era of hyper-competitive fitness culture and screen fatigue, people are gravitating towards activities that are social first and sporting second. Lawn bowls fits that brief perfectly.
The Bowls Club returns to Finsbury Square this June and July for its fifth season. Twenty dates, thousands of guests and a game that has survived for over five hundred years finally getting the audience it deserves. Not bad for a sport people had written off.
_
Christopher Scriven is co-founder of The Bowls Club London and Season Story, the live events company behind some of London's most distinctive pop-up experiences.
LBC Opinion provides a platform for diverse opinions on current affairs and matters of public interest.
The views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official LBC position.
To contact us email opinion@lbc.co.uk