BATON ROUGE – I know here at WBRZ.com and in columns in the previous publication, I said that the 2025 USBC Open would probably be the city’s last foray into the expensive to hold, but a beneficial local tax generator tournament at the Raising Canes River Center.

As Lee Corso has said so many times, “Not so fast!”

The USBC held its annual convention May 5-8 in Las Vegas and USBC Executive Director Chad Murphy had a town hall meeting with delegates which was carried on Bowl TV. A question concerning the next open date to host in 2031 brought a response that makes me think Baton Rouge may be very much in play for a future host date because the USBC wants to come back to one of the most successful hosting sites in the first 25 years of this century.

The questioner, who happened to be Keith Dumphy, who hosts his very successful Open Championship information page on Facebook each year, asked about any interest for the 2031 USBC Open which is the next one available for a host site.

“Did we get any interest? Man, I’ve been living this the last few weeks,” Murphy said. “I was in the Mayor of Baton Rouge office last two Tuesdays ago (three weeks now as you read this). The Caesars Reno guys were, Tuesday night, I met with them. We can go to Billings (Montana). Houston is still on the docket, obviously. Greenville (2028 site in South Carolina) would like another tournament.

“What we’re trying to do right now, there’s still all the same cities that are always kind of there. But as I think you know, most of those cities are in kind of that Southern belt, excluding Billings. Is Indianapolis interested? They are not. Is Chicago interested? They are not. Is Orlando interested? They are not. But where we’re at with that right now, just so you know, is we’d like to lock Baton Rouge in as it is the biggest tournament we’ve had since 2012. And from there we’ll fill in the rest.”

That 2012 event was in Baton Rouge. Murphy did say that the 2025 event has 11,684 five-man teams as it continues to roll through the end of July.

Baton Rouge has hosted three USBC Opens in 2005, 2012 and 2025. The 2017 USBC Women’s event in a rare arena setting was kind of a bonus for bidding on the 2025 event.

Here’s the thing. This is very reminiscent of what happened in 2005 after the wildly successful event drew over 13,000 teams in what was the brand-new exhibit hall at the River Center. USBC was back in town just weeks after the tournament ended wanting to get it back to Baton Rouge as quickly as possible.

That event in 2012 drew close to 12,000 teams.

So here we are as we are kind of in the middle of this year’s event. Murphy has pretty much put it out there. Now how will Baton Rouge respond and how much will it cost or is this like post-2005 when something can be worked out to make this a win-win for both parties.

The future host cities for the USBC Open Championships are: 2026 in Reno, 2027 in Las Vegas, 2028 in Greenville, 2029 in Reno and 2030 in Las Vegas, NV. The 2031, 2034, 2035, 2037, and 2038 events have not been announced, but the 2032, 2033, and 2036 events will be held in Reno, Las Vegas, and Las Vegas, respectively. The 2039 event is scheduled for Las Vegas.

Let’s see if we can rewind the tape and do it one more time in Baton Rouge.

PBA Playoffs

There are just two shows remaining on the FOX Sports contract and it will be the final two shows of the 2025 PBA Playoffs. The event is down to the semifinals which will be bowled on Sunday with a guarantee of a new champion to be crowned as Graham Fach will face EJ Tackett in one semi and Jesper Svensson and Chris Via will meet in the other match.

That show will air on Sunday at 11 a.m. on FS1. The championship match will be on May 24 at 1:30 p.m. on FOX Sports. That will be the final show on the network as the contract with the PBA comes to an end.

So far, it is known that the PBA will air on 2026 on over-the-air CW Network with 10 consecutive Sunday shows. More is expected to be announced but whether that will be streaming or a cable channel remains to be seen.

We’ll talk more about the FOX years and discuss how they raised the visibility of the tour in a future column. Back with you next Monday.

Thanks as always for dropping in and as always, good luck and good bowling,

                                                Kent Lowe