Gimmes are across all "hobbies", every golf tournament I've ever played in has giveaways, water bottles, hats, shirts, you name it. In an earlier post someone talked about how small the potential sponsor pot is for tournaments, but everyone he names was endemic (baots, motors, etc). To make this work you've got to have non-endemic sponsors.... watch tomorrow's golf tournament, BMW, are they riding in BMW golf carts? Rolex, how many of them even have a watch on? In my mind the greatest spurt in tournament money growth was when Irwin was completely involved in FLW (remember the Millenium, or when Suggs won $1mm for the FWC), they had Land O Lakes, Folgers, Chevy. WalMart, Kellogg's, and it went on and on. Irwin knew how to sell (or he just wouldn't take no). Those companies are still spending those advertising dollars somewhere.

an the reason those big sponsors are no longer supporting pro fishing because it was not a good return on their investment if it was they would still be doing it.

There is a shortsightedness in the fishing industry that you know more about than I in regards to developing and caring for pros. The industry, in my admittedly limited opinion, has largely been predatory and selfish in regards to how tournament fisherman are treated.

It's crazy to me that anyone would pay a champs entry or a ttt entry in the first place expecting to win, local hammers excluded, obviously. I'd wager that in a champs field in the ray-ledo loop at least 75% of the field is dead money. But as numbers continue to grow the organizers have little reason to do anything for participants just dying to lose their entry fees to local hammers. But I say that to say this... Tournament trails driven by a "for profit" entity are in the business of making money...... And good for them and good for the fishermen who want to spend their money pursuing a passion.

Why do these trails exist? Because it allows manufacturers to pass off the cost of sales and marketing of equipment.....all equipment.....from boats to worm weights, to minimally subsidized third parties, the tournament organizers (flw, mlf, b.a.s.s., and all regional trails and local trails) and still invest in marketing while passing on the headaches of managing a trail to third parties......that are "for profit" entities.

An answer, in my mind, is as you have stated, just choose not to play if the numbers don't make sense. Until trail owners feel in the pocket, the existing business models won't change.

Some of us just have the BassChamps Curse...it's a real thing, you start one of two ways, either you draw boat number 1167, or you draw boat 3 on the tournament that they decide to be a trailing event. They you go out and everywhere they were, they aren't, everywhere they bit last weekend, they don't this weekend, everywhere you wanna go, there is somebody already there, and you catch 14 lbs and it takes 19 to get a check...but good news is you get to go to Texoma (not me) for the championship!

I fished 2 champs event and was immediately humbled by the intensity of the event and quickly realized I had no chance......the amount of work it takes to pre-fish and prepare means time away from work and family that I can't make. And as you say, there is always a luck factor, weather affected or not, that renders most preparation futile....it's like playing a wsop circuit event after only playing poker in your garage w friends.......I had a great time but lacked the time and money to pay for the experience it takes to be successful at that level......and even then the paahouts issue pops up.....club fishing is perfect for me.....

It shouldn't be that way though. Taking time off work to pre-fish for a weekend series team tournament is crazy.

Bingo!

I agree. But I can say that the local hammers in the "ray-ledo" mafia make a nice chunk of change annually fishing these lakes. if you look at tourney results over the last 5 years and the same names keep popping up....and these guys fish all the tournaments they can......and good for them. the organizers largely take no steps to "protect" the field to level the playing field for weekend anglers. Nor should they. We are all big boys/girls and money laid is money played. That being said, I recognized how long my shot was and I have declined to participate further. At least one tournament organizer, Outlaw outdoors,the "Average Joe" series that keeps big money hammers from entering so average guys can compete more evenly.

I fish BASS federation and club tournaments that offer what I feel to be a more level playing field at a fraction of the entry costs.

Curious, how do they keep big money hammers from their average Joe series?

entries are limited to people who have won less than like $1K in the last year at the lake hosting the tournament. It's not perfect, but the sticks are so well known it's easy to know who they are. It is a great idea.

One thing I'm curious about is the $ amount given to the top 16 pros in the form of tackle, equipment, etc. I say top 16 because that's what the video had compared. I have no clue of those pro's buy their $100k boats or they're given to them. Same with the wrapped truck. Not saying it makes up for the lack of payout, I'm just curious.

I'm new to the tourney scene but from the stand point of keeping things simple, it would seem that if you want to have the biggest fields, best pros and most eyeballs, you would have one tour, no? There's only the PGA. Yes, there's smaller mini tours and such, but there isn't another PGA. There aren't competing NFL leagues or NBA leagues. From an outsiders perspective it would seem that it would be necessary to have one pro tour to generate the biggest cash events and draw the highest number of attendees.

With that being said, all other sports are much better spectator sports IMO. I would be very curious to hear attendance numbers of a high profile fishing tourny vs the golf tourney you mentioned. Not to mention all of the golf tourney's I've been too are basically a ton of people drinking while a golf tournament happens to be being played, lol.

If anything, I honestly see YouTube being a huge secondary source of income for the top pros who are well known. Those are the ones that will be able to grow their channel the fastest and if done right, they can monetize the heck out of it in a way that doesn't come off as greedy. I'm sure we've all seen the non-pro's on YouTube that have 100K-500K subs. That amount of subs will net you a nice income off ad based revenue alone. Not to mention of they come up with their own product line, clothing line, etc.

Professional sports and that is what we are talking about here. Wonder what the NFL players annually salaries are compared to NFL total revenues. Don't know the numbers myself and might not be a good comparison but might be surprised if the percentages aren't the same. Maybe the reason for a salary cap to keep those percentages in line?? Cap will only go up when revenues go up.

Totally agree with the insulin statement too!! Have a diabetic daughter.

I guarantee you the top YouTube guys make as much as any professional tournament angler. If you have never seen it there is a website called Social Blade. You can type in any YouTube site, say the googan guy "1rod1reel". He shows to have 1,200,000 subscribers. They show his revenue from Google Ad Sense, so just the ads google places on his site, it shows his income at between $37k - $590k a year from that source alone, plus whatever else he gets for featuring products, blah blah blah. I'm told that for some of the big YouTubers even that top number is low, but that in almost every case they are making at least half that much. How else did Lake Fork Guy just go to Africa hunting and now he's somewhere up north small mouth fishing. Not picking on you here Ken, but looking at your stuff you obviously aren't in this for the money! Also interesting that I think you put out great content, but these kids who put out a bunch of "PB from a Road Side Ditch" videos get hundred's of thousands of views, maybe you need to dumb it down some....

By the way they can REALLY make some coin if they will hawk My Lucky Tackle Box, or Mystery (bunch of junk in a) Tackle Box. Heard those payouts can be 4-5 times what they can make from the ads.

I don’t think ken was addressing anything that had to do with you tubers... mainly guys fishing tournaments for a sole source income