"Marty" wrote in message
...

"SimRacer" wrote in message
r.com...
How lame is it (IMHO) that the Super Bowl
(Classic) winner from our sport only got $200,000 in money? You can just
about score that much by placing in the top 10 of any of a handful of
PGA
golf tournaments these days...

I've seen others compare fishing to the PGA, but it's night and day. Golf
tournaments have thousands of paying spectators, millions of TV viewers
and
big-dollar sponsors. When that happens in fishing, you'll see the big
bucks,
but don't hold your breath.



Trust me, I understand business, I own several. I just don't get how bass
fishing can be a billion dollar + a year industry and NOT at least be on its
way to becoming more big time. I won't hold my breath, but I would not be so
pessimistic as you, it took 40 years for NASCAR to really catch on (outside
the South), and now look at it...if ESPN can find the right "angle" and
build it, they will come.

I guess you just had to be at this year's Classic to see what I am talking
about. There are lots of folks that would be ticket paying customers if it
came to it, based on the crowds and the gallery on little old Wylie Lake
anyway. As for paying spectators, charge us, we'll still go. NASCAR tickets
already start @ $75 a pop and rise astronomically from there. TV viewers?
Put more of it on TV and fishing will too, then the sponsors will come.
Given that a lot of males fish and watch fishing I'd bet Levitra, Cialis and
Viagra are just chomping at the bits to break into another male-dominated
sport...and who, besides insurance companies today, have more money than the
pharmecuticals? BASS's main albatross at this moment, sadly, is ESPN iteslf.
It's a shell of its old self since losing NASCAR and at times seems to want
to show billiards or table tennis in lieu of recent fishing tournaments, but
that's just me. They'll never grow the sport with maybe an hour (on a
Saturday morning no less, when I am most likely to BE fishing myself) a week
and Classic coverage IMO.

Not trying to be argumentative here, but fishing could be a bigger money
sport than it is, and I just don't understand no one even giving it a
chance. Like I said, the Big Rock Marlin tournament a few months back paid
out over $710,000 gross to the winning boat and it got a blurb on the local
news and some columns in the local paper...I just don't get that. Although,
Curtis Strange (yes, that Curtis Strange) recently came on board the Big
Rock's board of directors (www.thebigrock.com) as a marketing guy so *maybe*
they are starting to see the writing on the wall...dunno.