PBA Tournament of Champions vs Australian Open Tennis

[Sydpies]

Bring back the GRANDSTANDS at the major's which will bring back the spectators. There is nothing worse having to stand 3-5 hours watching someone bowl. As for noise or distractions, over the years I have seen a lot of spectators told to tone it down as they were upsetting a particular bowler.
Bowling Centres are not build to encourage people to come and watch the game and when you see what centres hold some of the majors you start to realise that those centre need the income to meet their yearly Budgets.

Oz Bowl Altona would have to be one of the best centre's to cater for spectators, yet when we had the Commonwealth Games there, the crowds were very poor.....WHY was that.....Maybe because the AVERAGE bowler is not made aware about these Major events.

Over the years I have been Manager of some big centres in Victoria and very little communication came thru to advise our bowlers that a Major event was being held at another centre in the next couple of weeks. So how can we expect support from spectators if the Industry does not promote itself within all the centres in Australia.

Of course we have so many Majors. which is a bit of a joke and TBA should get back to only ranking 6 Major events.

 

[Brenton_Davy]

WHY was that.....Maybe because the AVERAGE bowler is not made aware about these Major events.

Over the years I have been Manager of some big centres in Victoria and very little communication came thru to advise our bowlers that a Major event was being held at another centre in the next couple of weeks. So how can we expect support from spectators if the Industry does not promote itself within all the centres in Australia

This is only part of the problem. Back in the 60's, 70'and 80's average bowlers wouild flock to major events to SEE SOMETHING SPECIAL. Nowadays with the high scoring league environments, "average bowlers" can see 250+ games every league night. They see tournament bowling as nothing special any more and the fact that the tournament players are playing on oiling patterns that would lower average Joes scores by 20 to 30 pins is totally lost on them.

Look at Rachuig. The fact that you no longer need to be one of the top players in your state to gain a state representation, means that to most people that Rachuig has lost that air of being something special. Its value has been eroded by the fact that you can make a state team by being a low average player. This is ONE reason that no-one bothers to turn up to Rachuig. Its not purely a matter of poor promotion.

What I am saaying is that the tournament bowlers is no longer seen as something special by the wider bowling population. Some of this is the fault of the tournament bowlers themselves, but I see it mainly as being caused by scoreability issues in league and the decline of the elite status of the state shirt.