Winning Catch

The Sport Fishing Championship is bringing big prizes and big-time tournament fishing to the masses

Words: Kevin Koenig

Photography: Sport Fishing Championship

As yachtsmen and perhaps fishermen, it’s easy to forget just how good we have it.

We can sit in the cockpit of a multi-million-dollar vessel, trolling some exotic locale, and it can become almost commonplace. But the spectacle of the thing say fishing a 70-foot Carolina custom in the Gulf of Mexico, and hooking into a massive billfish is a dream come true that’s basically made for TV. And that’s exactly what Mark Neifeld of the Sport Fishing Championship realized early on.

“People tune into our shows and they get brought into the back of a multi-million-dollar sportfish with blue waters off Puerto Rico or off Nantucket and it’s incredible for them,” says Neifeld, who is the new league’s CEO and Commissioner. “The SFC brings people into the sport of fishing because the entertainment value is so high. People love to see destination locations and being provided access to a huge pelagic fighting right off the back of the boat.”

Neifeld helped found the SFC in 2021. Today, the league is the largest holder of saltwater tourneys in the world, offering live coverage on CBS Sports of 12 billfishing events starting in the third week of April and lasting all summer long, through the week before Labor Day. The events are held along the eastern seaboard of the United States and in the Gulf of Mexico, as well as in the Caribbean, in hotspot angling destinations like Puerto Rico and the Dominican Republic. Currently, the SFC is the fastest growing media property in the world of offshore fishing.

“We look at it like this,” says Neifeld. “The PGA tour is a huge entity, and only about 24 million Americans golf. Meanwhile, last year, 58 million Americans went fishing. Granted, a lot of that is freshwater, but that’s also a good entry point for people who may be, or become, interested in what these big boats are doing out in the open ocean. Every basshead, if you asked them if they want to catch an 800-pound blue marlin, the answer is always ‘yes.’ We are the PGA Tour of fishing, and we are taking off like a rocketship. In our first season, we had 20 hours of live TV, in our third now, we have 126 live hours plus 200 hours of other programming.”

The SFC is effectively making offshore sportfishing the newest big-business, builtfor-spectators sport. Watch out Notre Dame and Nascar.

Neifeld points to the tour’s stars, like Captain Justin Drummond of the 64-foot Spencer Quantified, as drivers of the league’s popularity. That boat won the league championship last year and currently sits atop the leader board for 2023. “These guys are the best in the world at what they do, they are becoming household names, and for good reason,” says Neifeld.

The teams compete for a one-million-dollar Grand Prix prize at the end of the year. Currently, the tour has about 1,200 active boats 400 of which showed up for Ocean City, Maryland’s legendary White Marlin Open alone. About 90 percent of the boats

are sportfishes, with the remainder center consoles. “The sportfishes work best for these offshore tournaments. The center consoles sometimes shake out because of bad weather,” says Neifeld, “but the sportfish guys say: ‘If the storm doesn’t have a name in front of it, we’re going out.’”

Perhaps not surprisingly, given its stranglehold on the semi-production sportfish market, Neifeld estimates 70 percent of the boats are Vikings, though custom builds obviously do quite well, too, as evinced by Quantified’s success.

We are the pga tour of fishing and we are taking off like a rocketship.

We can sit in the cockpit of a multi-million-dollar vessel, trolling some exotic locale, and it can become almost commonplace.

A large portion of SFC’s rocket fuel is its partnerships and branding opportunities.

One popular promotion is a CBS show called The Catch, which places NFL stars like Dalvin Cook, Deandre Hopkins, and Justin Herbert on some of the SFC boats in direct competition with one another. Last year, Cook’s team, which included New England Patriots linebacker Matthew Judon, took home top honors.

The SFC also holds a media day in conjunction with the Miami Boat Show and has an annual awards ceremony at the Fort Lauderdale show. The league recently announced its SFC Anglers Association, which aims to match fishing clubs from all over North America with endemic and non-endemic brands who want access to partnerships within the sport. The goal is to create economic opportunities, and good return on investment, for brands who want to get involved with smaller local tourneys–something Neifeld says has been a sticking point in the past.

The SFCAA is just one of many exciting developments for the Sport Fishing Championship. This fall, it will move into new headquarters in Pompano Beach, Florida, where it will produce podcasts, documentaries, and talking-head shows all aimed at promoting the league and the sport.

Neifeld attributes his enterprise’s fast growth and wild success, at least in part, to Bob Denison. “Bob has really been instrumental to SFC, offering sage and sound advice at every turn,” says Neifeld. “And he proudly serves on our board of advisors. Bob is a big-time sports guy who happens to have grown up in the yachting space. He is passionate, he loves competition and what the SFC is doing for this sport. We are very lucky to have him involved with us.”

With an epic product to sell and proven business leaders offering a guiding hand throughout its nascent phases, the Sport Fishing League looks to become the “next big thing” in sports entertainment.