Just Call It BASSCAR

By RON STODGHILL II

The boat industry was in another of its typically brutal down cycles in the early 1990s when Irwin Jacobs decided that his business didn't have to be so sink-or-swim. Lured with the right bait, Irwin figured, fishermen could offer his company, Genmar Holdings Inc., a buffer of steady, stable growth. After all, the U.S. is a nation of fishing fools--a group estimated to be 55 million strong that buys $40 billion in equipment each year, from rods to reels to tackle boxes. Jacobs, 60, saw a rare and untapped bounty. "I don't make a hundred bets," says Jacobs, who in his other life is a famous Wall Street dealmaker.

His bet: if you create a bass-competition circuit, it could harness the wealth of fishermen and -women into a huge new market that would rival NASCAR in popular appeal and in its ability to attract corporate sponsors who would want to reach them. "They'd never been marketed to as a consumer group," says Jacobs, who knows sports, having once been majority owner of the Minnesota Vikings.

Today Jacobs' brainchild, FLW Tour (named after bass-boat pioneer Forrest L. Wood), has moved tournament bass fishing from the swampy border of sports to deep in the mainstream. Each week pro fishermen aboard boats that resemble floating billboards--welcome to BASSCAR--seek out big fish and big bucks. There are now four separate bass tours and a fifth for walleye that began this year. At this year's championship, to be held on Lake Champlain in Plattsburgh, N.Y., the winner will net $250,000. Says Irwin: "I'm sitting here feeling pretty good."

The FLW has hooked such big-name sponsors as Chevrolet, Kellogg's and Pepsi. "We turn down more sponsorships than we have," Irwin says. And the competition has become a staple on ESPN and ESPN2. Initially, Irwin had to produce the program and buy the ad space himself just to guarantee the airtime.

But Irwin admits that FLW's fortunes might be different if he hadn't landed the whale: he persuaded Lee Scott, now CEO of the cautious but deep-pocketed Wal-Mart, to make the retailer FLW's marquee sponsor. "I said, 'Lee, we've got a program that is absolutely your customer,'" recalls Jacobs. "He said, 'Look, we don't do those kinds of things.'" They do now.

--By Ron Stodghill II