Pro Earnings: Where’s the Rest of the Equation?

It’s that time of year where the YouTubing pro anglers – from the safety of basement bunkers and storage units around the country – delve into heavy math. On the back of napkins and the pages of spiral notebooks, they outline their entry fees, gas, lodging and other expenses in one column. Then they tabulate their earnings in another. Compared to one another, the net of the columns typically shows either a slight gain or some sort of loss. Then they decry that you cannot be a pro bass angler today “unless you are independently wealthy,” with the implication that they are not.

I’m genuinely sympathetic to the plight of pro anglers who do things the right way. Despite the occasional effort to organize, they are still competing for their own entry fees, and that’s a losing game. It’s not going to change as long as tournament fields are full.

Furthermore, I appreciate the YouTubers’ efforts at transparency, but something doesn’t add up.

The implication in these videos is that expenses are so high, and payback over time is consistently so low (even for anglers who consistently finish “in the money”) that there’s no way to make a living in the sport. But most of the pros making these videos have been doing it for a decade or two or even more. In some years, things may have been better, but presumably in some years things have been worse. That evens out over time. So if the bottom line is that they’ve been making less than minimum wage – or even losing money – for an extended period of time, why do they keep chasing this path?

After all, if you opened a shoe store and lost money year after year after year, presumably you’d close up that store and pursue gainful employment elsewhere. If you were working as a Wal-Mart greeter and that didn’t support your lifestyle, you’d try something else – maybe go back to school at night or develop a special skill some other way. But these guys keep banging their heads against the same wall again and again, either hoping for a different result or perhaps that eventually the pain will turn to numbness.

So perhaps they’re leaving out some part of the equation. Is sponsorship money still strong enough to make tournament angling a “loss leader” that keeps them visible and marketable? If so, why have none of them outlined what they’re making in sponsorship dollars, even in the most general terms (rounded, say, to the nearest tens of thousands of dollars)? Or is it just an addiction that they can’t quit, or don’t want to quit? Either way, there’s something missing here that makes me simultaneously sympathetic to them and dubious that they’ve painted an entire picture. Something doesn’t add up.