Steve, and Stephen,
It is a shame that two people with such a long history in the sport are so convinced that it would be impossible to get the proprietors, Goldpin and AMF to support a televised tour. It would be a bigger shame if you turn out to be correct, but with the existing fragmentation within the industry that may well be the case. Just for fun though lets have a look at some options that might work.
First, a Players Association. As I said, simply sticking you hand out for $200 will simply not work. However, if a deal could be negotiated with the centre owners for a really good discount on practice games in dead time - say $2 per game between 4-6pm, when you can fire a cannon through most centres safely - even a tightwad like me would consider joining. What else - maybe try to get one of the airlines on board, not so much for cheap fares (after all, they are pretty low these days anyway) but something like an automatic baggage excess waiver would be nice. Get hold of a national motel chain for a discount when member attend tournaments, and you start to have an attractive looking package. Set an average cap on membership, like the PBA does, so that membership has to be earned, and you have created an exclusive 'club' that people will _want_ to join.
So what is in it for the centres? After all, they are 'giving something away' in the form of cheap games, and it is no good telling the AMF bean counters that it is extra income that they would not have got without the card. There has to be a return to the centres to keep the accountants happy. So, a requirement of membership should be (IMHO) that members donate some time to the local participating centre. This could take the form of a couple Saturdays a year with the juniors helping to coach (most people won't do too much damage in 2 days, some might help), bowling a couple of exhibition matches for the juniors, hold a ball surface cleaning/preparation workshop, whatever.
If the centres hop on board, and it takes off, 1,000 members at $200 each gives you $200K. That might be enough to get a couple or three tournaments televised, with a little left over to boost prizefunds. It's not much, but it is a start.
Is it possible to raise, say, $3 million to start a real televised circuit? Maybe. Sponsors, for some strange reason, like to see a return on their sponsorship dollars, and are even happier if they can measure that return. We have what, 150,000 registered TBA members across Australia? What if the TBA card was a photo-id card linked to a fly-buys type of account. Recruit 24 key national sponsors, one each from as many industries as posible. Phone companies, grocers, tyre places, whitegoods, banks, real estate agents.... whatever. Arrange a discount for TBA members on production of the TBA card. Points accumulated go towards bowling stuff - doesn't matter if it takes a million points for a free coke & fries as long as the bowlers think they are getting something for nothing. Here's the catch - whatever discount you can squeeze out of a sponsor, the bowler only gets half, and the other half goes to your tournament war chest. We need to make it more attractive for the prospective sponsors - after all most people are too apathetic to check to see who their card gets them discounts with before they go shopping, and the businesses out there know this. So, each participating centre has a display wall with the sponsor of the week (fortnight, month, whatever) showcasing their wares. Your 24 sponsors stagger rotate through all the centres, and you are now selling a wall of advertising with 150,000 people plus social bowlers walking past every week. That is a nice carrot for a business. If the average TBA member averages $2K a year spend with the advertisers, 1% of that as a kickback brings in $3 million. With the right people, you would get more. Again, what is in it for the centres?. Toss $5k-$10K back to each centre for in-house tounament promotion. Or buy 100 cars and put one up in each centre for a perfect attendance draw, to cut absenteeism. That is a nice incentive for the centres, and you still have a couple million left to hopefully fund a dozen televised tournaments on ABC. That is enough to cover the existing majors and Super Six circuit, so you have the added bonus of avoiding an industry bunfight over which events get televised.
Is it possible to do something like this? I don't know - I'm a chemist, not a salesman. To find out, someone from TBA (or AMF, or Goldpin) would have to pick up a phone, call a leading ad agency, and talk to someone. There are people out there who do this stuff for a living. Probably get it done for a retainer and a percentage of profits.
On to the Olympics. I actually believe that bowling should be in the Olympics on merit. However, the modern olympic movement is about one thing - making money for the IOC. They would put professional tiddleywinks in if they thought they could get bums on seats and a squillion dollars for the TV rights. The existing olympic sports are either in historically, drag in huge gobs of money (eg. tennis), or are fillers for existing arenas after the events that do bring in gobs of money (think synch swimming and rhythmic gymnastics). Bowling, unfortunately, has a low profile as a television sport, often requires yet another dedicated facility to be constructed in the host city, and is not conducive to mass spectator viewing (outdoor arena-style venues could help here) so it has the odds against it. For bowling to make the Olympics, it first has to make it as an attractive sport for TV and sponsors, and therein lies the difficulty. Luckily, we probably have 3 or 4 Olympics to raise the profile of Bowling before they chuck out tennis and someone else gets a go. Kudos to Brunswick for trying, but it is obviously not working, so maybe it is time for a different emphasis.
TV - everyone seems to want to televise tournaments. Why can't we (once we establish a advertising cash stream) make a Bowling Show on the lines of the fishing shows, cricket show, etc. Maybe I'm just a geek, but I find a lot of the background stuff in bowling facinating. I think a very entertaining weekly half hour show could be generated by looking at things such as how balls, pins, lanes and machines are made, the physics side of bowling, lane oiling, odd bowling records,weird centres in strange places... whatever. One of the problems that the SPORT of bowling faces is that the general level of knowledge that bowlers themselves have is abysmal, and in the general non-bowling population it is more like zero. Be nice to fix that.
Well, there are some ideas. If you have any reasons other than industry apathy as to why they won't work, fire away. Or perhaps Steve is right, and no-one gives a stuff.
BTW, Steve, who the hell is Bob? :wink:
