NEW YORK (CNN/Money) -
Professional athletes who pay to play.
A sports union president who says, "No one likes to hear the word union."
One owner who says it's important for the sport to increase the athlete's pay. Another owner, a former NFL owner at that, who says he'd rather not see a rapid increase in revenue because it would ruin the sport.
No doubt about it, professional bass fishing is not your typical professional sport. There's interest, sure. And now some big money behind it. But real growth? That still may be the one that gets away.
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| Paul Elias, president of the Professional Anglers' Association, says about his group that represents pro bass fishermen, "No one likes to hear the word union." |
"It's not a good spectator sport live and it's not a good spectator sport on TV," admits Jay Kumar, the CEO of BassFan, the one service providing independent and daily coverage of professional fishing. "There are about 30 million bass anglers in the nation. But given a choice between watching TV Saturday morning or being on the lake, they're going to be on the lake."
Kumar says the sport is growing in popularity as a spectator sport, due greatly to anglers' desires to watch and learn how to fish better. But he said that some disagreements in the sport -- between anglers themselves, and between the athletes and the two major tour organizers, could work against its growth.
"It could and should grow. Whether it does is another story," said Kumar.
Tournament terrain
Professional bass fishing is not some upstart sport. BASS, or the Bass Anglers Sportsman Society, has been holding professional tournaments since 1967. And since 1996 there's been a competing tour, the Wal-Mart FLW Tour, started by boat maker Genmar Holdings, Inc.
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The presence of the FLW Tour, with the influx of Wal-Mart sponsorship money, has taken prize money higher -- up to $500,000 for first place on FLW. Part of the prize money comes from $2,000 entry fees paid by competitors. (Executives at both BASS, which was purchased by ESPN in 2001, and FLW, insist that the events pay out more in prizes than they take in through entrance fees).
"It's profitable in the sense that it's growing the boat business," said Genmar CEO Irwin Jacobs, a former co-owner of the Minnesota Vikings.
Jacobs has broadened the sport's sponsorship base in a way it was never done by BASS. But he says that he has turned down sponsorships to maintain exclusive deals within each product category.
"I know what it is to be an owner. The more owners get, the more the players want. I don't want to see what happened to other sports happen to fishing," Jacobs said.
ESPN aims for lost Nascar fans
ESPN doesn't have any boats to sell, but it wants to reach the tens of millions of outdoor sports enthusiasts. Bass fishing also is a way to get back a part of the audience it lost when Nascar left the network for Fox and NBC. ESPN still chafes that sport grew very popular on ESPN, then left for bigger money deals elsewhere.
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"You invest time and effort and resources, and then it gets into a rights fee issue," said Dean Kessel, vice president and general manager of the ESPN-owned BASS. "When you can own the property this way you don't have to worry."
Under ESPN ownership, some prize money has increased. The Elite 50 invitational tournament is the first major event without entry fees, with total prizes coming to $1.6 million.
"To build a sport, you need to increase your purse levels," said Kessel. "It needs to be compelling where guys can make a living at it. In our sport, this is a milestone."
But the matelote-anglers, while pleased with the larger purses that have come with FLW and ESPN's entry into the sport, would like to see greater growth and a bigger slice of the current pie.
Two years ago many of them formed the Professional Anglers' Association, a quasi-union organization whose leadership doesn't particularly like that description, partly due to its rural southern roots.
"We want a fair share of the growth. We want to work together with tour organizers, we don't want to fight," said Paul Elias, the president of PAA since it's inception, whose career winnings in a 26-year career are just under $1 million.
But Genmar's Jacobs has never met with PAA leadership. And ESPN has set up its own athletes advisory council to get angler's input. While many of that council are also PAA leaders, ESPN doesn't deal with the group directly.
The sports' advocates, both anglers and executives, insist bass fishing is positioned to overtake such individual sports as golf and tennis in popularity, due to greater participation rates.
But there are plenty of examples of disconnect between participation interest in a sport and spectator interest. Relatively few people have ever played competitive football. Meanwhile running and swimming, which have great participation rates, has almost no viewership outside the Olympics.
There's enough interested parties involved in the sport to continue to feed more money into professional bass fishing.
But the sport's premier event, the Bassmaster Classic, reached about 633,000 households last year, respectable but hardly eye popping. Reeling in spectators, and big money, is always going to be a difficult task, no matter how many people love the sport.
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