Good question.

However, people seem to think that the sport condition is hurting the tour. I tend to agree. (see other PWBA post). Bowling on the sport condition is a requirement to keep the WIBC sponsorship. So, it's a catch-22 - but if they did lose the WIBC sponsorship, they'd also lose the sport condition requirement.

Now - if we just knew something about the fall swing???
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Bowling? Of course it's a sport.

I don't buy the argument that the use of sport conditions has hurt the national tour.  There are regions that still use carry-contest conditions and suffer for entries.  Add in the regions that simply suffer for events, and you have a malaise affecting women's bowling in general.    

Where the sport condition impacts entries, if at all, is the guest that might have bowled the national stop within a few hours of their home.  They hear all the nightmare stories from local bowlers and the internet about sport conditions and decide that $350 for a few days is more than they want to chance.  However, some of those same bowlers won't come out to compete in a regional (not using sport-compliant patterns) at roughly one half the cost, so the excuse that sport is a significant impact doesn't cut it in my eyes.  If anything, carry-fest conditions might run off even more of the few-time entries.      

My experience with the national events has been that many of the conditions do not play unbearably difficult, but they do require different adjustments than many of the women have ever had to make bowling on china.  They also require a different thinking pattern on surface prep and drill patterns, but the same thing holds true in regional settings.  

It is hard to say what could or could not occur with an SMO.  Ultimately it might have a lot to do with how funds were to be apportioned between men, women and youth and whether each group had some semblance of autonomy is expenditures.  Or you could see some funding also going to the PBA if the PBA made a request for funds.  

Regardless of whether you have high scores or low scores, there is always going to be a camp that says the show is boring.  Some sports are, by nature, not exactly fan friendly when viewed on television...just my opinion though.  Personally, I feel that the components that make the show boring are not necssarily the bowlers themselves, although more natural excitement would help (IMO).  Forced emotion isn't going to get the job done, and some have been stifled over the years because of rules pertaining to displays of emotion.  

Commentary that doesn't seem to change from week to week is boring.  Not calling the shots as they happen (and labeling horrid shots as good) is boring.  Lack of emotion is boring...if you are worried about something being said, run a delay of a few seconds- they should have a button in the truck to do that.  But it is not the scoring pace on some sport conditions that makes the show boring...otherwise, even the higher scoring shows on sport have to be labeled as boring.