The Bowlero location at Chelsea Piers in New York City.
CNBC
A former executive at Bowlero, the world’s largest owner and operator of bowling centers, has asked a court’s permission to countersue his former employer for extortion and retaliation, after an executive on a recorded call threatened to report him to the FBI if he didn’t admit to spilling company secrets, according to a transcript of the conversation filed in court.
The allegations by Bowlero’s former chief information officer, Thomas Tanase, filed Wednesday in a proposed countersuit in Virginia federal court, come after he and dozens of others filed discrimination claims with the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission alleging they were fired based on their age or out of retaliation, according to company securities filings and the proposed countersuit. Bowlero denies the claims.
The company, which went public in late 2021 through a special purpose acquisition company, or SPAC, was among the select successful stocks to emerge from the SPAC boom. It owns two of the biggest brands in bowling — AMF and Lucky Strike — and operated more than 300 bowling centers across North America as of July. Between 2021 and 2023, Bowlero nearly tripled its annual revenue, from $395 million to $1.06 billion, and it expects sales to grow between 10% and 15% in fiscal 2024, according to company filings.
Tanase started with the company’s information technology department in 2001 before climbing his way up to the C-suite, where he worked closely with the company’s CEO and frequently had access to sensitive information contained in the CEO’s email accounts, he said in court filings. He says the company fired him in May because of his age, and in August, he filed a discrimination claim with the EEOC, according to a copy of the claim, which was included as an exhibit to the proposed countersuit.
Bowlero says that Tanase resigned and then had a change of heart when he realized he wouldn’t get severance pay. In July, the…
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