They have a line of young, tech savvy people waiting to go broke chasing the dream

Eventually professional fishing is just going to be a shaggy hair, skinny pant-wearing, prepubescent display of family money anyways. I have absolutely no evidence to back this up but I feel like professional fishing has seen it hey-day, and even back then it was not a huge deal. Most of my friends could care less about tournament fishing, don't have a clue what FFS is, and if KVD walked up to introduce himself, they wouldn't even be phased. Tournament fishing is an endless pit of bad financial decisions, and once dad's credit card reaches it max, the ride is over. FFS is the least of the things wrong with the sport. Fishing will never be viewed as anything more than a redneck hobby, and the amount of people who get rich because of it will continue to remain miniscule.

I won't argue that Professional Fishing will ever be mainstream.. And it will never draw as many viewers as a rerun of 'Everybody Loves Raymond..'

But there will always be a certain section of the country that watches it..

And..

Did You Know…
• U.S. anglers outnumber California’s population - the largest state in the U.S. – by 25%.
• More Americans fish than play golf (20.9 million) and tennis (13.1 million) combined.
• If fishing were a company, the amount spent by anglers to support fishing-related retail sales would rank #51
on the Fortune 500™ list.
• Fishing generated more revenue ($47.7 billion) than Lockheed Martin ($46.9 billion), Intel ($43.6 billion),
Chrysler ($41.9 billion) or Google ($37.9 million).
• The economic activity generated by sportfishing is greater than the economy (measured in Gross State
Product) of 17 states.
• If U.S. anglers were their own country, their population would rank #30 out of the 217 nations tracked by the
World Bank, just ahead of Spain

Of course this is copied and pasted from the all knowing internet..

Tournament fishing is a subset of angler's and very small. I like the idea of limited use that Major league fishing adopted. Alas it does not matter to me what they decide, i still watch fishing and don't get upset with a level playing field.

This is an interesting take that I am sure has validity but it seems very broad and raises questions.

1. What percentage are actual hardcore tournament fisherman?
2. What are we calling anglers? Are we calling an angler someone who bought a Walmart fishing pole and fished one time 3 years ago?
3. What percentage is saltwater? My guess is a very large percentage of anglers are saltwater anglers.
4. If the money is that good, why is it not translating?

My conclusion is that professional fishing is but a fraction of "angling", and like with MLF, these numbers are a bit skewed or inflated. I know many more people who don't fish than do fish. I am not sure how you would do it but would be interesting to see the numbers. Professional bass fishing has such a difficult barrier for entrance that it eliminates 95% of us who aren't willing to go broke trying to do it, and that alone will keep the sport from being anything more than a glorified hobby.

It’s always been that way so FFS has nothing to do with it

50/50 seems like a reasonable compromise. It will be interesting to see how they divvy it up though. One thing that will always be certain is that you can never please a tournament angler.

In for 20 pages

It’s called living the dream man. Come on! They are all rich and famous with a bad [censored] boat.

You can have FFS and lose many of the real people who used to fish tournaments or do away with it and have opens where many fish . The lure& fishing gear people should no that it's not only the guys with all of the equipment and 100K boats that buy their products. I see a split coming but it want be good for fishing.

Problem with your theory, non-FFS tournaments aren’t drawing more people than FFS allowed tournaments are. Typical whining of people, they complain and don’t support.

Ban it and Garmin, Lowrance and Humminbird will sponsor a new trail. Can these trails exist long term without the big three electronics companies funding the pro's electronics? Can these young anglers afford the electronics for their boats without sponsor donations? Bass fishing tournaments are a business. Weekend angler or pro they must make money or go extinct. Shutting down sponsors for the whiners seems to be popular but in the long run, unsustainable. Haters gonna hate, whiners gonna whine, timeless and inevitable but the future wins every time.

“Real people who used to fish tournaments” these are the people with 20 year old boats that eat dinner at 4pm- they don’t spend money- it’s irrelevant.

I think the thing some of you guys refuse to address is the lack of participation in Bass Champs and the TTT. The turnouts have been historically low this year, with champs only drawing over 200 teams twice this year, and TTT entries also being way down. I am not willing to blame FFS 100% for the low participation, but to infer that it doesn't have a negative impact is ludicrous. Not counting all the toddlers with rich parents, the age group that spends the most money in the industry are the 30-60 year old class, but the organizations are catering to the 16-25 year old class. I understand advancement, but phasing out your highest paying group of people entirely and placing your bets on a much smaller, financially unstable group isn't great business, which is what BASS seems to be doing. FFS entered the market extremely fast (I know its been around awhile, but really didn't hit until Miliken at Ivie), and it didn't give the guys who have invested massive amounts of money into the industry time to accept it. Instead, it opened the door for a completely new set of personalities, some good and some not. There are plenty of guys, with money, who are tired of the egos and the attitude being experienced on the water, from both the younger and older groups, that have said to hell with tournaments I will just fish for fun or many cases, quit fishing near as much to spend more time with family or other more important priorities. JMO.

I'm not sure about that. I think it's a tough comparison as the non-FFS tournaments are typically new circuits. I know NPFL filled up with BASS guys pretty quick, and there's been plenty of instances in which non-FFS tourneys are outdrawing traditional tourneys. I know it's only one examples but I know in March the Toyota on Rayburn turned out 2/3rds, if not less their normal turnout, while on the same weekend a non-FFS on T. Bend had giant participation.