June 6, 2024 Nolan Hughes

Defending champion Kyle Troup is one of eight finalists in the 2024 PBA Tour Finals

Eight of the PBA’s best descend upon Steel City Bowl & Brews in Bethlehem, Pa. this weekend for the PBA Tour Finals.

The title event features nine hours of live coverage on CBS Sports Network across June 8-9.

The field is composed of the top eight players in competition points earned during the 2023 and 2024 PBA Tour regular seasons.

EJ Tackett, who led the tour in points both seasons, enters the event as the top seed. Anthony Simonsen, Jason Belmonte, Bill O’Neill, Marshall Kent, defending champion Kyle Troup, Packy Hanrahan and Jakob Butturff round out the field.

O’Neill and Kent are the lone participants who did not qualify for the 2023 event, supplanting Dom Barrett and Kris Prather.

First place will award $30,000. Tickets to attend the PBA Tour Finals have sold out.

Tackett, Simonsen and Belmonte have qualified for all eight iterations of the PBA Tour Finals dating back to 2017. (Belmonte did not compete in the 2020 event due to pandemic-related travel issues.)

Those three players have combined to win five of the seven PBA Tour Finals titles. Troup won the other two events, including last year’s Hall-of-Fame-eligibility-clinching victory.

Format

Players will be split into two groups based on their point totals over the past two seasons. Group 1 includes top-seeded Tackett, O’Neill, Kent and Butturff. Simonsen, Belmonte, Troup and Hanrahan will compete in Group 2.

For Saturday’s positioning rounds, all four players will bowl two games on the dual patterns (46-foot Petraglia on the left lane; 38-foot Holman on the right lane).

After two games, the third and fourth qualifiers will earn the No. 3 and No. 4 seed for Sunday’s group stepladder; the top two qualifiers will bowl an additional game (pinfall does not carry over) to determine which player earns the top seed for Sunday’s group stepladder.

Group 1 and Group 2 will compete Saturday at 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. ET, respectively, on CBS Sports Network.

On Sunday, the first two matches of each group stepladder will be a single game. Each final match, as well as the championship, will be a Race-to-Two match with a ninth and 10th frame roll-off as a tiebreaker.

Advancers from each group stepladder will meet in the championship, taking place at 6 p.m. ET immediately following the Group 1 stepladder (2 p.m.) and Group 2 stepladder (4 p.m.).

PBA Tour Finals Competitors

Stats based on 2023 and 2024 regular PBA Tour seasons

No. 1 EJ Tackett

71,120 points, $703,450 in earnings, 7 titles, 19 top-five finishes, 23 top-10 finishes

If Tackett did not bowl a 2024 event, he would’ve qualified as the No. 3 seed; if he finished last in every 2024 event, he would’ve earned enough points to be the No. 2 seed before the end of the World Series of Bowling.

But Tackett did not rest on his laurels: He led the tour in points and earnings; he is on pace to set the single-season average record; he made five consecutive shows to tie a PBA Tour record and came one place shy of a sixth straight at the USBC Masters; he will earn a 12th top-10 in the Tour Finals to match his 2023 total.

With four players tied with two titles — Tackett, Kent, Troup and David Krol — a third title would be monumental in the Player of the Year race.

Tackett's PBA World Championship victory earlier this season marked his second straight World Championship title and first title with his son in attendance.

 

No. 2 Anthony Simonsen

58,295 points, $529,850 in earnings, 4 titles, 18 top-five finishes, 23 top-10 finishes

In one season, Simonsen led two major championships, climbed a stepladder to win a title, and bowled conventional and back-up in a single game. That’s the singular standard the 27-year-old has set.

Simonsen may trail Tackett by a decent margin in points, earnings and titles, but the underlying statistics show the enormous gap between those two players and the rest of the tour over the past two seasons.

Simonsen finished top 10 in all 17 2023 PBA Tour title events.

 

No. 3 Jason Belmonte

41,995 points, $467,125 in earnings, 1 title, 8 top-five finishes, 16 top-10 finishes

Belmonte finished lower than 11th just twice in his 13 events this season; his median finish of eighth trails only Tackett this season.

Though he has not won yet this season, a refreshed Belmonte is one to be reckoned with. Upon his return to the U.S. after a brief visit home to Australia during the midseason break, he nearly took home the Masters title and then earned a runner-up finish with O’Neill in the Roth/Holman Doubles Championship.

Belmonte's 226.61 average this season ranks second on tour.

 

No. 4 Bill O’Neill

34,850 points, $255,445 in earnings, 1 title, 7 top-five finishes, 11 top-10 finishes

O’Neill closed the 2023 campaign with six straight top-20 performances — a product of an assertive return to 15-pound equipment — and never looked back. He finished top-20 eight more times this season, a 70% clip during that stretch.

Following his semifinal loss in the PBA Playoffs, O’Neill said he planned to reevaluate his performances on television and determine if any wholesale changes need to be made. Perhaps the short 1.5-hour commute to the Tour Finals from his home in Langhorne, Pa. will be the solution.

O'Neill's PBA Players Championship victory made him the fourth (now fifth), full-time, active player with 14 titles and three major championships.

 

No. 5 Marshall Kent

34,617.50 points, $242,900 in earnings, 2 titles, 4 top-five finishes, 10 top-10 finishes

Much like O’Neill, Kent performed solid-but-unspectacular in 2023 before making The Leap in 2024. Kent recommitted himself to the game in the offseason and the results speak for themselves: He earned two titles, including his first career major, and finished second in points.

Kent climbed the PBA Tournament of Champions stepladder to net his first career major title.

 

No. 6 Kyle Troup

32,172.50 points, $319,850 in earnings, 3 titles, 8 top-five finishes, 8 top-10 finishes

Few players elevate their game in the postseason more so than Troup, who is the only player to win both the PBA Tour Finals and Playoffs. With two titles this year, including a U.S. Open crown, Troup has his eyes on a third title and a leg up in the Player of the Year race.

Troup eliminated Tackett, Belmonte and Simonsen to capture the U.S. Open title earlier this season.

 

No. 7 Packy Hanrahan

26,585 points, $177,120 in earnings, 2 titles, 11 top-five finishes, 11 top-10 finishes

Hanrahan couldn't quite match his superb 2023 campaign, in which he won two titles, but the lanky lefty did earn four top-10 finishes this season. Hanrahan finished top 10 twice in major championships, while also notching a runner-up finish in the PBA Scorpion Championship.

Hanrahan brought home his best finish of the season so far during the World Series of Bowling XV.

 

No. 8 Jakob Butturff

26,495 points, $197,975 in earnings, 1 title, 10 top-five finishes, 10 top-10 finishes

Butturff rode the struggle bus in 2024, tallying just one top-10 finish, which only makes the brilliance of his 2023 campaign more impressive. As the lone southpaw in Group 1, Butturff has an excellent opportunity to make up for a disappointing season — just like last year’s No. 8 seed, Troup.

Butturff's 2023 PBA Scorpion Championship title marked his first win in nearly three calendar years.

2024 PBA Tour Finals TV Schedule

All times are listed in Eastern

Saturday, June 8 | CBS Sports Network
3 p.m. — Group 1 Positioning Round
5 p.m. — Group 2 Positioning Round

Sunday, June 9 | CBS Sports Network
2 p.m. — Group 1 Stepladder finals
4 p.m. — Group 2 Stepladder finals
6 p.m. — Championship

Past PBA Tour Finals Winners
2017 — EJ Tackett
2018 — Jason Belmonte
2019 — EJ Tackett
2020 — Kyle Troup
2021 — Anthony Simonsen
2022 — Jason Belmonte
2023 — Kyle Troup

More information on the PBA Tour Finals is available here.