Jesus I got into bass fishing (so i thought) to get away from electronics and the corporate world i have lived in for 20+ years now.

Nothing is stopping you from just going fishing.

True which is what I do now but I wanted to scratch my dried up midlife crisis competitive itch too..


Also - I guess I'm the guy He is talking about since I got a bass boat (although used and under 20k not new and 90k) during covid?

Honest questions here. How does any of this truly affect your own experience? Most trails you can register online. Some you still need to pay the TD. So you get registered, show up, launch and go fishing. You show up, weigh in and go home. You literally control 100% the amount of interaction you have with others. Occasionally yiu might fet someone that cuts you off or crowds you but that happens as well when fun fishing. What about any of that truly affects your own experience?


As for the videos, podcasts and social media stuff again you 100% control that. You control what you see or read. You can enjoy fishing recreationally or tournament wise without giving a thought to who is sponsored by who or who is not fitting laid by a company.

PE isn't the only issue concerning sponsorship dollars. Patch pirates are a big culprit as to why companies are tightening up the money (or investing it in other means). You can invest some money in a guy who has made it to the highest level of the sport and gets you exposure, or you can not invest a dime (other than product) into every crum-munching high-school kid or flat bill wearing wanna be who will get you the same exposure for a discount, sticker, and stock tackle warehouse jersey (speaking of tackle warehouse, visit them online for all your fishing needs. From soft plastics to crankbaits they have it all. That's tacklewarehouse.com. Use code STFU23 to get absolutely nothing). Anyways, why buy the cow when the milk is free?

And the "pros" need to realized they are now competing with the online influencer and you tubers, and in my opinion the pros are getting killed as far as their ability to sell products by these guys.

I watched it again. Some of the subtle things he touched or eluded to and how I took it.

What actually makes a person buy a particular bait, a boat, rod, reel etc? Do prostaffers, pros, influences etc have any real impact on getting Joe Q public to the cash register? Basically do those who want sponsorship dollars have any real value to a company.

What is a reasonable amount that the benefactors of the anglers spend should be reinvested in sponsorships, trails etc.....

How do they determine who gets said dollars?

There are some harsh realities about the PE model. Right off the bat when a PE buys a company they are buying it to sell. The initial impact on profits when a PE steps in is for them to go down. If they are buying some little company that was grown grass roots it probably had little to no debt. The PE is gonna use debt so day 1 there is an interest expense. The PE is also gonna charge a mgmt fee. That's how they get paid on a day to day basis, the PE will also take a chunk of the sale price when they hopefully succefully sell it. The PE is gonna install a pencil pusher or 3 because mom and pop didn't have a statistician on staff or maybe a CFO. Now they have added a pile of costs to their new business and they have to make that up. They don't usually want saving by sharing accounting or other primary functions with other companies they own because they want to sell it as an entity that functions in and of itself so they don't go after economies of scale like that so they have to drive profit another way and that's where issues can begin. A good PE is gonna try and grow it, scale it out, take a regional brand national etc. A bad PE or a PE that is struggling to get a brand or company scaled out is gonna start cutting costs, taking short cuts, etc etc to prop up the financial side and make it look better so they can dump it on some other PE. The money shot for a PE is to take a company public, that's their home run. It's rare. Generally once a company goes into PE it gets passed around to other PE companies like pieces on a monopoly board. And typically there is a time frame in a contract with investors in PE. They have to get this type of stuff done within a certain window. The contracts don't allow for an investor to withdraw for a certain window.