Contingency money is where people make money that that aren't on a fully paid sponsorship. Many of them require the people to have a logo visible during competition and contingency adds up. When I shot competition archery, I only had 1 sponsor and that was an arrow company. But, I could sign up for contingency for the other products I used...sights, arrow rest, release, bow company, etc and if I placed in the top 3, then I would get a contingency check from those companies. For winning the tournament, I might only get say $1,200 but from contingency, I could actually get more than the actual tournament winnings. In fishing, it is similar to that but there is more money to go around in fishing vs archery. Basically in archery, as an amateur you were shooting to try and just recover your traveling fees and such and maybe some extra for equipment upgrades. In fishing it's pretty much the same. When the pro circuits come to Dayton to fish Lake Chickamauga, some of the pro anglers will stay in my hometown of Athens and I don't mean in hotels either. Some of them will just find a vacant parking lot or Walmart parking lot and sleep in their vehicles. You would think in higher profile tournaments like the BASS Elite series that they would all have giant sponsorship deals and all be put up in fancy hotels, etc. That's not the case at all for most of em. I was quite surprised myself.
