I see your point, and it makes sense from that perspective.
My point is that it's harder to qualify through the WBT because it's only a handful of tournaments spread across the country. You have to travel hundreds, if not thousands, of miles to fish them all - against hundreds of women. And only one makes it to the big show.
By comparison, there's far less traveling for the opens and federation route, and you get to fish local waters that you already know. So from an expense, logistics, and knowledge standpoint, it's "easier". Plus you have more opportunities because there's far more tournaments in those venues across the country.
Great question! Glad somebody asked that. The fact-of-the-matter is, the largest growth potential of this sport is with the women. Not a whole lot of women are participating, but their numbers are growing much faster than any other demographic.
To be sure, women can participate in the other tournaments, and they do. It's easy to argue the women have more opportunities than the men because of the WBT, but they just aren't participating in those other tournaments. More than a 1/3rd of anglers are female, but you don't see that number represented in those tournaments.
Those other tournament avenues have been available for years, but have you seen a lot of women participate? Nope. Why is that? It's because they're dominated by men.
That's not to say the women are intimidated by the men, but look at it from their perspective. If you wanted to do something, but it was dominated by women - even though you would be welcome - you'd feel very out-of-place. I suspect a lot of male nurses felt this way years ago when they first broke into that career.
Since few women are participating in the well-established, male-dominated tournaments, yet we KNOW more women are participating in the sport, something had to be done. Enter the WBT. Now you see hundreds of women participating in just a few short years.
Kinda odd when you think about it. It's actually harder to participate in the WBT than the other tournaments, yet women are attracted to it because they don't have to fish with "the guys".
For clarity's sake, the WBFA was the predecessor to the WBF, and existed for a couple of years - Judy Wong won two of those championships as well. However, the WBFA was modeled after the Federation, and there just wasn't enough female bass clubs to support it.
I suspect that sometime in the future, the need for the WBT will no longer exist. But until then, it's successfully attracting more and more women to the sport. This is fueling the growth, which benefits all.
Again, only one woman makes it to the Classic via the WBT. It's not like hordes of women are invading the Classic. Yet it's an incentive to integrate women into this male-dominated sport.
