New ‘Champions' event will pit best of Bass Pro Tour, Elite Series against each other for record $1.25 million top prize

A Texas entrepreneur is planning to bring a championship-style event to professional bass fishing this fall featuring the richest purse the sport has ever seen, including a never-before-seen $1.25 million payout to the winner.

Brian Bird, a 51-year-old from Eastland, Texas, with a background in the electrical construction industry, founded World Bass Enterprises, LLC earlier this year and today announced plans to host The Champions, which will be held Oct. 28 to Nov. 1 in Nashville, Tenn., and carry a purse of more than $3 million.

Old Hickory Lake will host the three-day tournament that is being billed as the “first-ever world bass fishing championship.”

The Champions field will consist of the top 25 finishers in 2026 Angler of the Year points from both the Bassmaster Elite Series and Major League Fishing’s Bass Pro Tour with additional automatic berths going to the winners of each of the respective league’s regular-season tournaments.

The scope of The Champions event is still taking shape but in speaking with BassFan late last week, Bird outlined an ambitious five-day footprint (Wednesday through Sunday) that will include a full slate of entertainment and family-friendly activities as well as an expo at the Gaylord Opryland Resort featuring 70,000 square feet of brand displays from the fishing, hunting and outdoors industries. A pro-am tournament featuring the top 15 finishers from the event will take place at Percy Priest Lake the day after competition.

Anglers will receive complimentary lodging, according to Bird, as well as a prepaid $3,000 credit card to cover fuel and meal expenses during the week.

“I just feel like for the type of event we’re producing to crown a true world champion and do something like this I don’t think you go at it any other way,” Bird said in a phone interview. “I think you try to produce the best you can and our idea is to produce a true world champion and put on the best tournament the fishing industry has ever seen.”

Bird also said the purse will come with no strings attached. Initially, the plan was to award $1 million to the winner, but when notified that the sport has seen multiple $1 million payouts before, Bird increased the purse to ensure the winner of The Champions will take home $1.25 million. The runner-up will take home $500,000 and $300,000 will go to the third-place finisher.

“The money will be guaranteed,” Bird said. “Being an entrepreneur throughout my life, I’ve been blessed to have had some pretty good financial success in my lifetime. I sold my company three years ago and it was a pretty good payday for me. There are no investors. It’s WBE and it’s funded by me. We are putting up all the money.”

Fireside Idea

Bird said the genesis of the idea behind The Champions can be traced back to a conversation that occurred around a firepit along the shores of Mille Lacs Lake in Minnesota in August 2024. It was after friends of his – fellow Texans Dalton Smith and Jack York along with Tennessean Sam Hanggi – competed in the Leech Lake Bassmaster Open. Bird said the group was chatting about the state of the sport when the topic of a unifying championship event came up.

“We were talking about who the best angler in the world was and how it’s a back and forth with this league doing it this way and this league doing it that way,” Bird said. “I didn’t really understand the gist of it. I knew what the (Bassmaster) Classic was and I knew there are two leagues and each has their own championship. I asked if anybody had tried to put the top anglers against each other to try to determine a true champion.

“When I proposed that to them, they said, ‘If you did that, it’d be so cool and so many people would show up for that.’ We just started talking about it from there.”

After Bird sold his family-owned electrical construction business in 2023, he agreed to stay on for an additional three years to oversee the transition. That term is ending in April.

“I’ve been trying to figure out what I’m going to do next in my career and this is where we’re at,” he said.

Bird, who grew up fishing small lakes from a float tube in central Texas and has a passion for fly fishing, has gotten to work on mapping out the framework of such a large undertaking. He said Smith now works for WBE, which has partnered with a major public relations firm as well as an event production agency, which has vast experience across mainstream sports and entertainment. Bird also said WBE is in talks with several different producers regarding what broadcast or streaming possibilities exist for The Champions. 

Bird said the current plan is to use a traditional five-fish weigh-in format with competitors allowed to use live sonar on either day 1 or 2 (their choice). The field will be reduced to the top 15 for the final day and live sonar will be permitted for half of the fishing time, presumably 4 hours of the anticipated 8 hours of competition. 

Different Landscape

Bird said he’s aware of previous attempts to crown a unified champion across the major tournament circuits through events like the former Toyota Texas Bass Classic, which was held from 2006-16 at a variety of Texas fisheries. While The Champions will feature similar off-the-water promotional elements to the TTBC and even the Bassmaster Classic or MLF’s REDCREST, he believes The Champions will set a new standard.

“A lot of things have changed since then. For one, I think there are a lot more anglers in the world and more professional fishermen out there,” he said. “Back then when they were producing it, live streaming was almost impossible and social media wasn’t what it is today. The payday was not near as big. I don’t think it drew the attention that it needed to and it’s not their fault. They didn’t live in the world we live in today on this scale and can get the word out on a whole different level.

“There’s no better time to be doing this. The dynamics of the industry have changed and I think we’re going at it a little different than they did in promoting and marketing. I think I’m a pretty good visionary. I think mine might be a little bigger and I see things a little different than they did and I think our production is going to be different than anybody has ever seen in the bass fishing industry.”

The Champions is the latest in a string of tournament series or stand-alone events promising big payouts. Last year, the $1.3 million Ultimate Anglers Championship was launched with support from the state of Alabama in an attempt to crown an overall champion from a variety of tournament trails across the country.

This year, Dual Threat Fishing launched a no-entry fee team series boasting $100,000 payouts to the winners and a championship event promising $250,000 and 1 bitcoin to the winners.

“We’re going at it in a way the industry probably hasn’t gone at it before,” Bird said. “I feel like you’ve got to roll out the red carpet for these anglers and do something for them that they’ve never had done for them before.

“We want it to be the best thing for bass fishing they’ve ever seen. In doing so, it helps the anglers and I think it helps MLF and B.A.S.S. and the industry as a whole. It’ll bring a whole new level that hasn’t been seen before in the competition world.”

Bird understands The Champions launch will be met with some skepticism, but it won’t deter him.

“I haven’t ever failed at anything I’ve done before,” Bird said. “I started my electric company with a little Ford Ranger pickup, some hand tools and a pager 30 years ago and built it into a $300 to $400 million per year company. I’ve been around a lot of influential people. I would just assure them we’re going to produce something that’s special.”