To be up front, I like the PWBA the way it is. Patterns are kinda brutal, but I enjoy watching the PWBA. Mens tour, not so much. But if we're trying to increase the viewer base, we have to make it more fun and accessible. Yeah maybe some wrasslin' is what it needs. Maybe seeing Rash give Belmo the Stone Cold stunner for crinkling a water bottle will increase viewers . . who knows. All I know is there's zero reason for the average person to watch, when 20 years ago it was pretty popular. May not have been huge, but it may just be one of those things that's really fun to do, but not fun to watch. Forcing something to work regardless of whether that's possible or not may just be a futile endeavor. I don't think they've done enough to even test that out though, you have two groups pulling in completely opposite directions. You have the purists on one hand like Marshall Kent who just want it as competitive and technical and brutal as possible, and on the other hand you have the majority of the viewer base who want it easy and accessible.
Bowling has to be the hardest sport on the planet to understand though, because to truly understand it, you almost need a degree in physics. It's not like handing someone a stick with a weird head on it and saying hit that white ball you can see to that flag you can see avoiding obstacles you can see and accounting for weather you can see and feel. Golf is a pretty simple and very intuitive game to play. Bowling fights a daily battle with people who don't understand things or understands them the opposite of how they really are, and that battle will never end. Golf is just a matter of doing, bowling has to be understood first, then there's the doing. Bowling is about like watching a chess match, and it will always be like a chess match because the really interesting critically important stuff is all in the players minds and completely invisible. To those that don't play or understand chess, you see guys moving some pieces around and then someone wins or loses. Boring as hell.
The key to enjoying bowling is interest in participation. Once you participate and start to understand, then you can enjoy watching. I guarantee none of us that actually watch bowling regularly got hooked on bowling by seeing it on tv, and then started playing. Most sports are like that, true, but I've never played football in my life and I still like watching it. Never played hockey, like watching that too. Bowling I could never enjoy watching without doing it. It's the doing that makes the watching interesting. So I feel like it stands to reason that you're not going to get viewers by trying crazy things with shows to get people to watch. You need to get them participating first, and the viewers will come from that. But if you're doing what the Chad and all these elite bowlers are doing by putting everything so far out of reach, you're driving away potential participants before they ever have a chance to enjoy it.
Main Event centers will do more for bowling than USBC and BPAA or the PBA or PWBA ever will, because they make it fun. I'm probably crazy, probably wrong, but these rabbits I chase take me to some pretty weird places. What the hell.
