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BassFan Reformulates World Rankings
To Accommodate Evolving Event
Landscape
February 2, 2006 - PORTLAND, Ore. BassFan
LLC announced today that it has reformulated the BassFan World
Rankings, the official world rankings of the sport, to accommodate
the quickly-evolving face of the top level of professional bass
fishing.
Three years ago, the top (or tour)
level of professional bass fishing consisted of two tours: the
Bassmaster Tour and the FLW Tour. But it's been changing ever
since.
In 2004, ESPN-owned BASS added a new
series of top events called the Elite 50s. Last year a new independent
championship debuted, the Top Gun Championship. And this year
the Elite 50s have become the Majors, the Bassmaster Tour is
now the Bassmaster Elite Series, and BASS rival FLW Outdoors
added a new tour-level trail: the FLW Series.
In other words, the top level of professional
bass fishing has gone from 14 events to 28 events in 3 years.
In addition, all of the events have different field sizes, rules
and formats.
"Given all of the changes, it
became obvious that we had to redesign the World Rankings methodology
to accommodate the current landscape of professional bass fishing,
as well as the unknown future landscape," said BassFan CEO
Jay Kumar. "That flexibility was a tall order, but I believe
we succeeded."
Previously in the BassFan World Rankings,
each angler received points based on where he finished in a tournament,
including bonus points for winning or placing high. But now each
event is weighted by the strength of the field and the size of
the field, and then points for finishing first through last are
allocated.
Strength of field is calculated based
on the World Rankings of everyone fishing the tournament: Rookies
start at zero, and will move up the rankings list as they fish
more events. Regarding field size, the basic assumption is that
it's much easier to beat 49 or 24 people than it is to beat 99
or 199.
Kumar noted that the new BassFan World
Rankings methodology reflects the uniqueness of the sport, but
if he had to pick a sport with a similar ranking system, it would
be professional golf.
"In golf you have the PGA Tour
(in the U.S.) and the European Tour. The athletes who compete
on one tour or the other typically don't golf against each other.
But the Official World Golf Ranking accounts for that, and all
the athletes show up in the same rankings.
"However, based on our ongoing
research into other sports' rankings, the BassFan World Rankings
are, by necessity, much more complicated than ranking systems
of any other pro sports."
The BassFan World Rankings, formerly
title-sponsored by State Farm Insurance, are calculated using
a rolling 2 years of top-level tournament finishes and are updated
after every tour/series-level event. Michigan's Kevin VanDam,
called bass fishing's Tiger Woods, is now the No. 1-ranked angler
in the world.
BassFan, the leading global bass fishing
news source, is a media company that owns several bass fishing
media properties (BassFan.com, BassFanArmy.com, BassFan Radio,
BassFan MAG magazine, BassFan TV), a membership program (the
Skeeter BassFan Army) and two events (the Top Gun Championship
and the Skeeter BassFan Army Weekend Warrior Championship). Veiw first rankings of 2006.
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