From Gutter to Glory

Inside the Madmen Bowling League's Epic Comeback

All Photos by Tom Christmann (@tom) available for license in the Catch+Release

Creator Community

One day, while brainstorming ways to get the name “Catch+Release” in the heads of advertising people (our target audience), someone suggested reviving the Madmen Bowling League, an advertising bowling league I had co-founded with friends in 2010. This sounded ambitious. But the marketing team was intrigued. They only had one question: What did bowling have to do with our mission to raise creators of all kinds and make it possible for brands and agencies to simply License The Internet? Good question. I said I’d think about it. We had a lot of other things to make. Webinars. Podcasts. A Curation Masterclass.

But honestly I couldn’t stop thinking about the prospect of reviving the league.

The Madmen Bowling League had gone dark when the pandemic hit, but for ten years before that, the league had been a source of joy and connection for so many in the NYC advertising community, myself included. It’s a very small industry. And if you look at the posts from people looking for work on Linkedin, it seems to be getting smaller and smaller. Would anyone even have time to bowl anymore? Would anyone care? I decided to send out an email to the former captains, half expecting it to get lost in the shuffle of busy pre-summer inboxes. To my surprise, replies poured in within minutes. The response was inspiring. But it also hinted at an answer to the question posed by my marketing colleagues. More on that in a minute.

A League Is Born

The Madmen Bowling League was the brainchild of Karen McKibben, Anya Zander, and me. It started in 2010 as a friendly argument over who were the better bowlers, New Jerseyans (me) or Georgians (Karen). We created a Facebook group to settle the argument once and for all. Soon people were joining the group and asking “when are we bowling?” So we did what advertising people had done since the Mad Men era: we made it happen.

Anya negotiated with the lanes. Karen recruited captains for the teams. And I promoted it on Facebook and asked people to join. We started in year one with eight teams. Then ten. Then twelve. At its height, the league had sixteen teams. Eventually, we took up an entire side of the Chelsea Piers bowling alley. It went for ten years, creating this vibrant community of ad professionals who bowled every Wednesday night between the Super Bowl and Cannes Lions.

Before the pandemic, the advertising industry in NYC was a whirlwind of parties, late nights, and constant social interactions among a group of some of the weirdest (in a good way) and most talented people in the world. The league was just another one of these parties. It provided a weekly dose of camaraderie and friendly competition. We made sure that the teams would never be limited to people from one agency or production company. Everyone had to mix it up. The prospect of rolling a few frames and talking smack on the lanes made those long workweeks bearable.

The pandemic brought our league (and everything else) to a halt. It ended the parties. Including Cannes. Even shoots went remote. And the work suffered. A lot of people, of course, lost their lives. So the fact that the industry had become less fun overnight was not really that important. But also, it was. And it still is.

And that’s what bowling has to do with Catch+Release: It’s all about the power of human connection.

A New Sponsor. A New Season. Let’s Roll.

As an Evangelist for Catch+Release, my job is to show the value of authentic human connection. Our product makes it easy to license authentic content directly from the original creator. If you can find it on the vast internet, you can license it with Catch+Release. The outcome is a more organic, human piece of content. And we believe that when you play along with your audience, good things happen.

Finally, I had an answer for the marketing team: this league lets us play along with our audience the same way Catch+Release lets brands and agencies play along with their audiences. Budget approved. We were starting a league.

Now came the moment of truth: would anybody show up? I sent an email to all the captains of the original Madmen Bowling League to see. The response to my email was overwhelming. I believe the first response I got was from Rasha Clark, Executive Producer at Attaboy Studios. It read, simply, “F***, yes.”

People were eager to get back together, reconnect with old friends, and make new ones, while rolling a heavy ball down a wooden lane. And the season was nothing short of spectacular. A team named TiNY Lebowski, captained by Jeff Rosner and Mike Rovner, emerged as the champions, with Slutter Guts (Rasha and Andrew Bly’s team) and The Corner Office (Karen McKibben’s team) coming in second and third, respectively. Thomas “Scags” Scaglione of Tiny Lebowski, a Creative Director at Manifest, turned out to be a great bowler. Same for Brian Gallagher of Strikes Is High, an ACD at FCB Health. And Jason Krebs of Slutter Guts, a freelance music composer who also graciously offered to do the handicapping if we decided to do the league again next year. (Thanks Krebs!) More on that below.

The real victory, however, was in the connections we rebuilt and the new friendships we forged. Where else could Cliff Lungaretti from Google, Kinney Edwards from TikTok and Dannielle McMillian from Verizon eat chicken fingers together? Humans from agencies like McCann and Publicis were buying pitchers of beer for people from production companies all over the city. The Madmen Bowling League Linkedin Group has become a who's who of NYC advertising people. Catch+Release threw fantastic opening and closing parties, and provided a professional photographer to capture our memories, which will of course live on forever in this collection and this gallery on our site. (Who knows? Maybe somebody will license these shots in the future. Anybody know anyone in the Bowlero marketing department?)

New Season Starts February 2025

The Madmen Bowling League’s return was a huge success. Why? Because it’s a celebration of the human spirit and the vibrant human community that makes the advertising industry so special. I am so thankful to everyone for showing up each week and helping make this season happen. Especially the Captains. And to Catch+Release for footing the bill and buying us all t-shirts (want your own? Click here). The highlight of the season for me was hearing people say how much they needed something to look forward to again. And seeing everyone have so much fun.

Humans are the best.

And here’s the big news: We’re doing it again in 2025. Catch+Release will be sponsoring again. And this time we’ll bowl between the Super Bowl and Cannes, just like the good old days. Here’s to more strikes, spares, and unforgettable memories. This industry is built on human relationships, and those relationships are what make advertising truly beautiful, even when we’re throwing gutter balls.

So join the Linkedin Group. And stay tuned. I hope to see you on the lanes in February where I will once again kick things off by saying the magic catchphrase that started it all back in 2010: “Let’s Play Bowling!”

-Tom “Kingpin” Christmann