Where do you see the bass boat market headed in the next 10-15 years? Will more manufacturers consolidate? Will 18 footers no longer be offered? Will tournament organizations start allowing higher HP motors to account for the increased hull sizes and weights of boats loaded down with electronics?

^$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$^ !

Probably for a downturn for a bit.

About the same as far as boat makers... Max HP will be determined by insurance companies. I could possibly see trails limiting number of graphs or the actual size... Other than that it'll be the same old, same old... Dan

+1

If its anything like back in '08-09 then a few names will disappear and within a few years new names will appear.

hopefully down not many can afford 100k for a boat... now even aluminum 18ft is 35k which is wild.

20 foot boats with 250's,entry level rigs (think bass tracker) and nothing in between!

So glad I bought my fx 20 in 2019…… I wish I would have bought a house lol

The COVID boats should be hitting the used market soon. Prices are too stupid to even think about. They don't make them like they used to IMO.. Will prob repower when I am forced.

No matter what happens to the market, the price tag won’t change dramatically.

We’ve said that the market is back to those 2019 numbers in the last R12 quarterly results. Those are likely the first full years worth of sales after CoVid slipped back some. A year ago we were seeing hospitalization increase again as hot weather showed up.

Things that we see today on our boats we seldom saw, or numbers were lower before 2020… well here’s a list regarding the chaos en highest production choices. The speed that the expensive market items have changed has been exponential. Especially in the retail segment, we are not thinking about professional boats as they always load them up. And no doubt even the cost of those has grown faster. Everyone forgets that almost no boats other than limited serious event participants and professional anglers, ran GPS before the 2003 model year.

1. Hydraulic Plates: the percentage of hydraulics before 2020 was about 20-30%, while today it’s nearly every boat.
Added Cost- $1000 to $1500

2. Power Poles: These really started getting popular about 2016-2017, and SpotLock trolling motors started eating into that about 2019 some. Dual Power poles do cost and they also are parasitic on batteries.
Added Cost: $4000 to $5500

3 Multiple dash graphs: Iaconelli started the trend over 15 years ago running a full back up small 7” set. The side imaging, mapping, and importing more through graphs has blown the dual electronics at the dash up. Then there’s those BBT, Beat Down, Geiger, Precision, and more out there now.
Added Cost: $1500 to $5000

4. Multiple Bow Graphs and Live Sonar (FFS): No doubt this added greatly to the cost, which also requires mounts on most rigs. Then you add live scope, or you drop on a third graph/chart, and now you’ve got more going on than a cop car on Saturday night. Let alone the bracket costs for most boats. Add a second battery for that Live sonar FFS unit and you just leaped beyond the $7000 number on some. It’s gotten very common in 2024 to see that. Go to triple 12” screens, or more, and even the number below is blown away.
Added Cost: $1000 to $7500

5. Wheels: Now we all want those fancy 17” and 18” rims, which we do agree with. Those can add another $400 or more on a trailer package. Which usually expands to the full 18” setup. Yes they pull very nice, thought at a cost. .
Added Cost: $ 400 to $1,500.

6. Lithium Batteries: about 6-7 years ago it wasn’t common outside of touring pros. As with anything the market lead among them with 2020 being a pivotal growth year for lithium batteries. Today we will go out on a limb and estimate that about 40-50% of retail boats have some form of Lithium batteries. Then if you go Power Pole Charge, add another $1000 onto most boats.
Added Cost: $1400 to $4000

7. Screen size: well, we will just leave this one at that.

8. Spot Lock Trollers: Spot Lock was released at ICAST, by Minn Kota, in 2016. By 2020 we were seeing virtually every boat with some form of Spot Lock, as both Lowrance and Garmin introduced their own formats as they were entrants in 2019 to the new trolling motor market race. Now we have the Power Pole Move that can top the $5500 mark easily. Then there’s more that goes along with that like larger breakers, bigger wire and better mounting.
Added Cost: $1000 to $4500

We can go deeper into the four strokes that started in 2010 with SHO, or the V8 in 2018. There is so much like torsion axles, multi axle brakes, larger boats, more connectivity. Larger boats could be contributing to another. $2500 to $5,000 in costs. Beyond that… Gosh, some boats have five to eight phone apps to manage the software and upgrades. Especially if you join up multiple brands. Then you have the increased cost of those newer products. As companies must try to recover the R&D cost associated with new technology.

This was a quickly built list, but from the list, and thought, it’s easy to see that todays boats will be between $12,000 and roughly $35,000. That’s well beyond where some of your boats were in 2019. Then during CoVid, we have one of the largest class growths in our history, which is responsible for massive inflation we hadn’t seen since the early to mid 2000 to 2005 era. Inflation alone has tacked on another 18% to 25% since 2019.

Factoring in the inflation and your now between $22,000 and $50,000 more than your 2019 model year product. There’s no way to pin that number down, as we and our rigs are all different.

Yes, boats are just like always, Danged expensive. Just more expensive by comparison than they were when our first house was $20,000, $30k, $40k, $50,0000 or…. ______________?

Have fun this weekend and Happy Fathers day to everyone!

And sadly you can omit all of the stuff posted above and the price does not reflect that. Nobody builds hull, motor & trailer only. They all add the retail priced add ons.

Ya ya ya. People have been saying this for couple of years. All the people who bought toys during COVID aren't letting them go back or we would have already seen it.

There will always be those that can afford luxury toys and will buy them and enjoy them. I said I would never spend $50k+ on a boat, I did twice, then I said I would not spend $80k+ on a boat and I did and now I am saying I won’t spend $100k+ on a boat, but I might, lol. It only hurts the day you write the check.


The whole “if boat companies don’t lower the prices or they’ll go belly up” narrative is Bs. They will still build them and people will still buy them.

You can order boats with no electronics, batteries, trolling motor, shallow water and many other add ons.