Continued ramblings from TBA survey thread re tournaments

Michael Little

Active Member
As per developing a tournament series within each state, this may assist with a state based ranking system, establish part of a selection criteria for state teams and possibly help build back up the broken down pathway to national team selection if bowlers were to be interested.

Alot of bowlers complain about the high cost of attending rachuig including myself and the loss of appeal for this tournament, but another option is perhaps to have each of these state based events allocate a percentage of entry fees to each respective states travelling rachuig teams. I think most players who compete wont mind donating through entry fee a couple of dollars to assist fellow bowlers rep their state. Might give incentive to "other bowlers" who wouldnt normally rolloff a reason to do so.

Bringing back the state based events, could also give those fringe bowlers, developing their game to attend events against similar skill level of bowlers, learn more about bowling tournaments and then get to test their skills against national level bowlers when the national based event rolls around for their state. It will allow developing tournament bowlers a better grounding, not have bowlers get so discouraged if they fail at national level and allow them to work harder etc.

I would love to be able to bowl in a few decent state based events that coincide with the national ones and see tournament bowling back somewhere near where it was.

Another idea that has been stewing in my head for a long time, is for each of those newly formed state based events, to have specific ball company sponsorship linked with each event. Obviously to get these events up and running requires some level of sponsorship, getting it from the distributors is an obvious choice, donate to the prize fund for each event, for the opportunity to sell some gear over that weekend. Each event will have a different brand attached and could also allow for demos nights on new release equipment and so forth.

For examply in NSW, there are already 2 decent established events, one in Orange and the other in Coffs, Newcastle have been trying to get an event up and running over the last year or two, so there is a 3rd event with the 4 and possibly 5th being run down in Sydney somewhere.

In regards to tournament prize funds, once established I would like to see a minimum of $4000 for each "major" is not $5000, at least $3000 for all other national events, with around $1500 for the state based ones if not $2000 which Orange and Coffs Harbour already offer. I also dont see why tournaments should pay 1 in 2, 1 in 3 is fine, nowhere in the rest of the world do events come close to paying 1 in 3 and is in reality closer to 1 in 10ish or thereabouts.

I would also like in regards to Nationals and in particular Masters, not carry rankings points for the national rankings but be a stepping stone to representative honours, this may be a litte left field but each respective winner from Adult and Junior or perhaps youth could then go on to represent Australia at events like the Commonwealth Games and not take the winner of a poor rankings system. Perhaps this could be put in place once Nationals, Rachuig and Masters is restored to in previous status, but its an idea and also give extra incentive to other bowlers the chance of national rep honours. :p
 
Nice to see you put forward some interesting ideas to help reestablish our sport Michael. I think we need more of our former National reps coming up with ideas like this or at least providing some constructive input.

I like the idea of going with already established events and trying to get ball companies on board to bolster the event through sponsorship on the basis that they can have free rein to push and sell their products at and around the event. Getting the bowl to help push the sponsors products at least two weeks before and after may also help sweeten the pie for those companies.

We have a couple of possible events that we could look at here in Victoria as candidates for state based events and we may also like to look at the viability of incorporating or at least trying to get the sports series proponents in each state to get involved.

A person who contributes to bowling like Mary Flower has to QLD competitive bowling is badly needed in each state to help get something off the ground ASAP.

Let's hope we have more like yourself who put up ideas that we all can take on board and build upon.
 
Another idea that has been stewing in my head for a long time, is for each of those newly formed state based events, to have specific ball company sponsorship linked with each event. Obviously to get these events up and running requires some level of sponsorship, getting it from the distributors is an obvious choice, donate to the prize fund for each event, for the opportunity to sell some gear over that weekend. Each event will have a different brand attached and could also allow for demos nights on new release equipment and so forth.

Michael

already there are a few Ball Company Sponsored tournaments held
The Hammer Qld Senior Classic ( yes it is just for the Seniors) held in January each year is just one of many that Hammer help with.
I also know that the Ebonite, Track, Columbia Family are also involved with different events.

As for some level of sponsorship, getting it from the distributors is an obvious choice, you will find that most of the Australian Distributors are already committed to helping quite a few tournaments with either cash or product

"Obviously to get these events up and running requires some level of sponsorship"
also takes a lot of hard work from the tournament promoter ;)


Still, all in all a good post

Carol
~Yes, tis me~
 
Hi Carol and Lawrie,

I know that ball distributors and companies already do a massive service to keeping tournament bowling alive in this country.

The point behind my post is that there should be a good base to build upon to make it stronger. There are plenty of people within the bowling community who have business contacts outside of bowling.

There isnt a bottomless well of money in bowling but the only way to get out of the rut is continued assistance from within the bowling industry to sustain what is there, then branch out and hit the wider business community to add to it all.

The other aspect that most people have seemed to miss, especially in regard to what I can get out of bowling or from the TBA, is that it all needs money to begin with. Without registration fees from bowlers the TBA cant grow, without continued support of tournaments they will fold and die. It is the bowlers who need to do the most in the immediate future and hope it gets better.

I was also alluding to already established tournaments within each state as the basis, and another point that I was trying to get across was not to promote one particular brand of ball over others (even though I have personal interest in this) but to share the opportunity around, I honestly dont care if Columbia Hammer and Ebonite group help out, as all balls companies do, this post isnt about which company is better, but to put it forward that each event can have its own designated sponsor, allow the demo days to be spread around, it allows for each brand to have a chance to continue to survive on a whole and also doesnt burden one particular distributor with the costs.

One thing I also agree on is that it is up to the tournament promoter and other volunteers to make a tournament a success, the level of promotion of a tournament will ultimately determine how well it is attended. Unfortunately, quite possibly a reason why some of our current national level tournaments are in serious decline.

As per the other post I made, I would really love to see a tier level of tournaments throughout the country, having major national tournaments, another tier of national tournaments then have X amount of state based tournaments linked with the national one in each state. There doesnt have to be a gazillion tournaments throughout the year.

I really hope this can be the future of tournaments.
 
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