Though a 50-boat tournament series is one idea ESPN is considering for the 2002-03 season, it was not brought up at Thursday's (10/18/01) meeting between ESPN and the 10-man pro advisory board. That's the report from several people who attended the meeting.
Instead, a more likely scenario -- at least in the short term -- is reducing the number of boats in BASSMASTER Tour (Top 150) events and substantially increasing the number of tournaments. If that happens, the pros will likely have to choose between fishing BASSMASTER or FLW.
Fact-Finding Meeting
Attending the meeting were:
> The 10-man pro advisory board -- Denny Brauer, Rick Clunn, Mark Davis, Paul Elias, Gary Klein, Larry Nixon, Ray Sedgwick, Peter Thliveros, Kevin VanDam and Jay Yelas.
> Various ESPN personnel -- ESPN Outdoors execs Gary Morgenstern and Michael Rooney; Candace Hawkins, Tina Thornton and Jim Downs, all of whom are with the ESPN Outdoors block on ESPN, and at least two of whom (Hawkins and Downs) were involved with ESPN's growth of the X Games; and an ESPN marketing person responsible for getting advertisers for the BASSMASTER Tour.
> Jerry McKinnis, Mike McKinnis and Angie Thompson from ESPN Outdoors' production company, JM Associates of Little Rock, Ark.
> B.A.S.S. personnel -- Dean Kessel (new general manager who reports to Rooney), Dewey Kendrick (national tournament director), George McNeilly (PR), and Dave Precht (editor of BASSMASTER Magazine).
Clunn described the gathering as a "fact-finding meeting. There were no definite answers to any requests or suggestions one way or the other," he said. "That's the best way I can describe it."
He added that ESPN basically "listened for 5 hours." ESPN personnel "interjected a thought here and there," but were basically "in a learning mode."
Discussion Highlights
Though many topics were floated and nothing was set in stone, following are some of the items discussed at the meeting, according to pros who attended.
> Existing Tour: Explored was decreasing the number of boats on the BASSMASTER Tour, and increasing (perhaps doubling) the number of events.
> Classic and AOY: ESPN talked about elevating the importance of Angler of the Year (AOY) and decreasing somewhat the importance of the BASS Masters Classic. The pros liked the former and argued against the latter.
> Payouts: Despite profiting roughly $1 billion last year (as reported in Walt Disney Co.'s FY 2000 4th quarter earnings statement), ESPN allegedly said at the meeting that it can't substantially increase payouts unless it sells enough tour sponsorships to support a payout increase. This non-increase in payouts surprised and disappointed at least two of the fishermen.
Two industry observers pointed out that this begs the question of whether ESPN expects the pros to pay twice as many entry fees without better payouts, and if it expects pros to stop fishing the more-lucrative FLW tournaments.
ESPN noted that it is spending a fairly large amount of money upgrading systems and other things at B.A.S.S.
(Note: The above section was re-edited on 10/22 to make clear that the pros neither knew of nor brought up the $1 billion figure. Clunn also said later that a majority of the 10-man board was not surprised and disappointed by ESPN saying it wouldn't appreciably increase payouts without first selling sponsorships.)
> Ranking System: On the heels of the BassFan.com World Rankings, B.A.S.S. PR director McNeilly proposed his own "B.A.S.S. World Rankings." The pros didn't like it because it excluded FLW tournaments, and because they feel an independent entity should handle the rankings to maintain objectivity.
> 50-Man Tour: Apparently the 50-man tour was an idea floated before the meeting, but was not brought up at the meeting. The 50-man field would be a Superstars-type field.
The rest of this article will run tomorrow.
- End of Part 1 (of 2) -
