In what’s sure to become more of a norm, one of the more prevalent sponsors in outdoor sporting, such as tournament fishing, GoPro, is instituting significant cuts in its operating expenses, including marketing. It will be interesting to see how many mainstay sponsors also significantly reduce their sponsorship exposure as these companies start working on their 2021 budgets. There is already reports of anglers losing long time sponsorships, so it will be interesting to see who and what survives.

https://techcrunch.com/2020/04/16/gopro-lays-off-200-employees-representing-20-of-the-company/

big o you must have a magic 8 ball with your foresight on things fishing when you have a lot of folks that have nothing to do with fishing giving money to pros that the reward is not that great anyway when things go sideways out of no fault of their own business owners are struggling to stay in business extra non revenue producing ad money is one of the first things to be cut.

It’s going to happen across most industries. Terrible news for anglers who rely on sponsorship dollars, but hopefully it’s a short term issue. It will definitely be interesting to see how this all shakes out.

Nothing new. It’s called the domino effect

Pro fishing is nothing to GoPro. All companies are cutting expense right now and the very marginal sports that GoPro supports will be the first to be cut. They will continue to support the extreme sports and major athletes, but fishing could go away and no one would even notice.

Wait wait wait. Are you feeling OK? Should we call someone? This post isn't about those that shall not be named.

Chy-na ...say it with me this is all thanks to Chyyyyynnnnna.

Have to admit that I was shocked about the subject matter of this post, not being MLF related. I was thinking that sales for fishing equipment should have been better not worse due to so many people having more time than normal to fish while they are not working. I would imagine that most are still buying fishing supplies but thinking about it further, it does make sense. I would imagine that they are seeing all the other businesses struggle to not go out of business and it is a good time to set your business up to maintain just in case it effects you down the road.

After this virus and stay at home stuff, I imagine we will see the model to operate businesses make some big changes in the future and may not go back. This gives them time to see how much paying a pro to be their face really effects the final sell. They might find that it was wasted money in many cases. I'd hate to be a Pro relying on sponsorship money right now.

Gun sales, ammo sales, boat sales and tackle sales seem to be going to the roof right now from what business owners have told me lately.

Move to plugs & announcements section.

This is so true lol

Then the anglers and tournament orgs who primarily have endemic sponsors shouldn’t have to worry about losing sponsors, eh?

GoPro is not that big in tournament fishing...They have been struggling since a couple of years ago when their forecast looked like the titanic. Their flagship drone sucked and they lost a ton on that as well. They try to pump out a new cam every year to keep their investors happy. Its a short term solution to their long term losses. This is not the apocalypse for fishing.

Tournament fishing went through this back in 2008 in our last recession, I remember it very well. Along about that time Walmart pulled out of FLW and all those big money sponsors that weren't from the fishing world walked away with them. I don't remember how BASS fared but it probably wasn't any better. Left a big OUCH on our sport for a while. With the advent of the MLF and it's popularity it will be interesting to see what happens next. Time will eventually heel it all, it always has and always will in any endeavor.

Things always get better after these bumps in the road. It’s just a matter of who can hang on until it does.