All right - off the top of my head, this would be my view of a tournament bowlers association.
Firstly, an independent body, not necessarily affiliated with TBA. Similar to PBA/ABC in th US.
Second - the initial monies NOT to go towards prizefunds. That is pretty pointless - might as well raise the cost of the entries. I'd be looking to establish a committee to use that money to approach potential sponsors, hire a professional management agency to chase corporate sponsorship (such as IMG, for instance) and perhaps try to organise TV coverage for the SPC (our biggest tournament). More on tV coverage later.
Most professional athletes have a manager to arrange financial matters for them. The manager gets a cut of proceeds/earnings. The tournament circuit could be the same. Hire a marketing industry professional and they get a retainer plus a percentage of any sponsorship monies.
Memberships: if a commitment from a major chunk of the bowling industry could be obtained to support this idea, then I'd envisage a players card that gives say a 10% discount on practise games and equipment for members. Goldpin and AMF incorporate a majority of Australian centres, so if we could get them onside, a discount card would be well worth 50 bucks a year to most bowlers, let alone scratch bowlers. Buy two balls and you'd be in front.
TV - the key to getting real money into the prizefunds is sponsorship, and the key to sponsorship is TV. To get bowling on TV, the stations want their advertising time for the event filled. That will take some money, and it may be that the advertising will need to be subsidised by the assocciation to some extent, but it's an investment for the future. Plan to coincide with the school holidays, when AMF run their ads anyway, and they would probably come on board. The format needs to be made more exciting so that the non-bowlers don't go to sleep - one match in a half hour show is boring. Edit the show so that we can run through a top 4 stepladder quickly. Get the bowlers to get in each others face and spice up the show a bit, too. And plaster the centre with sponsors signs. You think watching the 18-footers is more exciting than bowling? The 18-footers are on TV because every boat has a 30 foot ad on it.
Ideally we'd have all the super 6 and three or 4 of the other majors televised eventually. But finalise the show in one hit waiting two months for the public to find out who won the Coke was like watching grass grow. I'd love to see a PBA stop or an invitational event here ventually so that the producers here could get some ideas from the PBA camera crews, too.
Tournament prize funds: extra money to come from sponsorship raised by the association. Chop up the pie based on membership numbers in each state. In my view, we need a feeder State circuit in each State or region. For instance, in Qld. i'd like to see a State circuit of 8 tournaments. Add the 8 or 10 majors and that is a pretty full calender for anyone who wants to bowl every third week, but allows 6 weeks between local tourneys. Keep 3 of the AMF GP tmts, add or build up another 2 or 3 metro tmts, and support 2 or 3 in the SE corner region - Gold coast, Caboolture, Kingaroy, etc. If we could get back to the days of having 90 bowlers come to a scratch tourney, we could have the centres bidding to hold the events as the PBA does now. Or simply rotate them around the interested centres.
One thing here - the "amateur entry" concept will be important here to boost the centre linage figures, and make holding the tournaments most appealing to the centres, as well as raising interest with the average league bowler too. Or hold Pro-Ams on the Friday before, again as they do for PBA events. These events are used by the ball comanies to sell balls, too, as the bowlers can pay extra and get a ball included. Worth a try.
Time for coffee.
Rob.
