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the front of the line – unless you’re a KVD, Mike Iaconelli or Scott Martin?
For the mid-tier pros, the fact that there are now three tours may open some doors. It may end up building the sport up to unprecedented popularity and prosperity, but it also dilutes the attention pool.
Your endorsement of Ranger/BassCat/Nitro/Skeeter/ Phoenix may mean less with three tours, and 300-plus tour pros, than it did in years past.
What is the incentive for a major brand to make you an amazing deal, or even pay you a few hundred a month (either in cash or product) when there are other similarly-situated anglers willing to do it for less?
Does it matter if you fish on a tour where your boat brand won’t get major exposure in the correlated magazine or on the TV days of the tournament?
If you’re Nitro, other than the fact that you probably end up making a few bucks even on memo boats, why do you need pros beyond KVD, Rick Clunn, Edwin Evers and Ott DeFoe? If you have a national staffer who is not working his butt off for you, directly or indirectly selling more boats, what is his value?
Everyone on tour has to have a boat, but not everyone has to have YOUR boat.
To some extent, these are age-old questions that have existed as long as the boat sponsorship game has been played. The stakes have changed, though.
In the early days of B.A.S.S., many top pros made a few grand every year by selling their memo boats. That’s becoming increasingly difficult for most of them, as the market is flooded with similar models from both national and local staffers.
To the extent they’re making bank, it’s because they’re getting electronics and jackplates and other accessories for next to nothing, and then they can build that into their resale cost.
But what if a
few manufacturers
start to exert price
pressure on the
manufacturers of
those accessories,
commanding
them first off the
assembly line and
driving down the
price? Does that
leave everyone
else on the outside
looking in, waiting
to get the “extras”
that create their
separation margins?
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