These bag makers are small businesses from around the country with almost all being a mom-and-pop size entity. While that sounds like a perfectly good business move, they followed that up this year by implementing a new 15% "tax" on the bag manufacturers in order to gouge them because their production costs for their ESPN tourneys are much greater than the revenue they are bringing in. They forced them to either sign exclusively with the ACL or their bags would not be featured on ESPN.
#ACL BOARD DIMENSIONS PRO#
For example, after forcing players, who pay $1,000 just to compete in the ACL pro circuit to commit exclusively to their program (ESPN events), they went after the bag manufacturers. While the ACO hasn't created any regulations against players participating in both leagues (as many franchise club owners run local leagues for both), the ACL has continually tried to strong-arm every facet of the industry in order to create a dictatorship per se' where they control everything and has basically become the bully-on-the-block. While the ACL has blatantly copied everything they do from the ACO and almost their entire organization is comprised of either current of former ACO members, they've done a good job moving the industry forward as a whole simply by showcasing the sport on ESPN and a solid ongoing PR campaign. The ACL is focused on putting together four or five televised tournaments with large purses and of course, that is appealing to many of the top players. The organization is more "family-based" with it's marketing with goals to bring more people from the backyards to local leagues and eventually the bigger events. If the board was truly an obstacle, then you wouldn't see the consistency that is displayed by the top players such as Matt and Bret Guy, Kaleb Hurt, Tanner Halbert, Maggie Geiger, and Erick Davis.Īs far as the difference in the three organizations (outside of the boards), the ACO is in its 16th season, hosts over 35 Majors (large scale tournaments that affect the national ranks and World Championship seeding), has legitimate leagues in 48 states and five countries, operates an actual cornhole media network (think the Netflix of the sport), and is the recognized governing body for the sport worldwide. It's easy to test this by watching an ACO tournament ( and /AmericanCornhole) and studying different players on the same boards. If someone is overshooting the hole it's because of their bag or their shot, period. This would leave less of a chance for the board to have any influence on the shot, not more, which is the point. I am not sure what the other person was commenting on as far as ACO boards having more "bounce" because, as was pointed out, they are 10 lbs heavier by regulation.
Hypothetically, playing on an ACA board would be the exact same as playing on an ACO board because the ACA is the ACOs board manufacturer.