Hello All,
Guess it's time to chime in again...LOL
The PBA registration is and always has been a pretty hot topic with our company. There are many factors that go into our decision, and while I can't go into all of them with you, I will give a basic outline.
1) Registration fees- PBA registration fees are nearing $130,000. This registration simply allows PBA bowlers to use our equipment, and does not mean that any of the exempt players would use it, nor does it mean that the equipment would get any exposure on TV.
2) Staff Members - In order to get any benefit out of being registered, you really have to put atleast 1-2 players on staff. This would include a base salary and expenses. Also, there would have to be incentives for the bowler when they make the shows and/or win a telecast. For a season, the minimum you could assume would be around $60-70,000.
3) Ball Rep - Every player on tour wants to have a ball rep with him. They are in charge of making sure the bowler has the correct ball with the right layouts, surface etc. This includes a salary and expenses, which again usually amounts to about $50-60,000
4) Incentives - Each time a bowler uses your equipment on a telecast, they receive an incentive from the ball manufacturer. This could range anywhere from $3-10,000 for each time it makes a show. Obviously, if you are involved with the PBA, you want it to make the show as often as possible, but having it on TV comes at a price.
5) Balls have to be supplied for the tour truck. This usually amounts to atleast $7-10,000 a year.
By the time you are done being involved with the PBA, our out of pocket costs come close to $300,000. Now, that being said, you have to sell a ton of balls to make up that amount of money. Now, I'm not going to go into actual sales figures, but to keep things very simple let's assume the following:
Assumption 1) Profit margin without advertising expenses is 25% (assuming that we don't do any additional advertising with the PBA)
Assumption 2) Avg wholesale price on a ball is $90 (this would include mid-priced and high performance sales to both pro shops and distributors)
From this, the average profit per ball would be $22.50 (without advertising, marketing, commissions for salesman, shipping etc.). Now, you divide the expense by the profit and you find that you have to sell and additional 13,333 balls just to break even.
Unfortunately, the PBA is not the marketing tool that it used to be. At one point, anytime a ball showed up on a telecast, bowlers called and ordered it the following Monday. That is simply not the case anymore. This is most likely a combination of the fact that viewership is not what it used to be, there aren't nearly as many sanctioned bowlers anymore, and there are a lot more balls to choose from now.
When we were registered, our bowlers made a number of telecasts, and won several PBA and PWBA tournaments, and not once did it create a significant increase in sales the following week. Sure, there was a small blip in sales, but a 10% increase in sales over a 2-3 week period is not a significant amount, and is not even close to the amount necessary to break even.
I would love to be registered with the PBA, so that everyone who wanted to could use our equipment, but we would be doing the business a serious injustice if we market using a method that we know is going to cost a lot more than we are going to get back in return.
The grassroots method is another way that we have considered involving ourselves with the PBA. However, this program is not cheap either, and you create no national exposure through this program at all. It would benefit pro shops who have PBA members as owners or employees, but from the research studies we have done, there aren't enough of these pro shops to warrant spending this type of money either.
Instead of registering with the PBA, we have done our best to promote our equipment as well as sponsor tournaments and bowlers on the amateur level. In addition, we have kept our pricing lower than our competition to try and save our consumer some money (on both our mid-priced balls and our high performance equipment). We understand that bowling is not like golf, and not many bowlers want to spend $300 on a bowling ball. I know there are some pro shops who do not pass this savings on to the consumer, but unfortunately that is out of our control.
hartungrj - You are partially right. During national and regional PBA tournaments, our equipment cannot be used period. However, tournaments like the US Open are actually governed by the USBC up until the TV finals, so bowlers can use our equipment during the tournament, just not on the PBA governed telecast.
I hope this helps explain our position a little bit, and I would be more than happy to answer general questions. Please don't ask for specific details on costs, total production, sales etc, because those are confidential and I cannot give out specifics.
Fire away,
Jason Wonders
Visionary Bowling Products
Edited on 8/13/2008 3:52 PM
