The Invisible Hand
Posted by Pete Robbins on Oct 20th 2019
It’s almost Halloween, which means that: (a) Pumpkin Spice everything is on the menu; (b) Valentine’s Day cards are on display at every nearby store; and (c) professional anglers are in the process of changing sponsors and acquiring new ones.
Silly Season always arrives with a list of press releases and social media mentions of new title deals and new alliances, but the hard part is reading between the lines and figuring out who got axed or saw their renewal notice get “lost in the mail.”
Last year we saw a seismic shift in the fishing landscape, with the addition of a new major tour. The result, it seemed, was paralysis among sponsors. They didn’t want to gamble wrong, so in many cases they kept the status quo intact, or even increased their investment to cover all bases. More recently, we saw another tour purchased and altered by that new entity. That will inject some more uncertainty into the equation, but with an additional year of sales and feedback under our belts, not quite as much.
The bottom line is that I expect that as some anglers get new or better deals, there will be some surprising examples of those who lose them or have them cut back substantially. If you see someone who has been with a particular boat or lure or rod company for 20 years, and now they’re using something else, you have to ask yourself “Why?” I’m not talking so much about KVD’s move from Quantum to Lew’s, which made a ton of business sense, but when you see someone on the next rung down wearing completely new colors and logos, take it as a sign of where money and sentiment are flowing.
