The man behind the only bowls events to be shown live on mainstream television believes the sport's governing bodies have only themselves to blame for its image problems.

Richard Maddieson, chief executive of the World Bowls Tour (WBT) which staged last week's Scottish International Open - broadcast live on BBC Scotland - and runs the World Indoor Bowls Championships, is sure many more opportunities to promote the sport are being missed by a lack of commercial awareness.

"What WBT do is produce the pinnacle of bowls in the correct manner for an interested audience [but] everybody seems to look to us to do things. At the same time, where we have had approaches from various bowls organisations, we have also been expected to fund it," he explained.

"It's not fair when people seem to think WBT is a cash cow. We're not. We don't have the players' subscriptions pouring in, we don't have clubs who have to pay substantial affiliation fees. Clubs and players pay their national organisations substantial amounts of money.

"I believe there are massive opportunities out there for any country to stage things and to stage things properly."

In that context, Maddieson noted ruefully that he has been CEO of WBT for close to five years, yet last week was the first time he received any contact from those running Bowls Scotland.

Yet, with four Scottish world champions having been in the line-up at Perth last week, the opportunities seem obvious.

"You have the strongest players around and I am surprised that Scotland has not come up with formats that allow people to see the likes of Paul Foster playing Alex Marshall on a regular basis," said Maddieson.

"It doesn't take a lot of imagination to create an event like that. What does take a lot of work is creating the finances behind it."

While he is more than willing to put WBT's know-how in terms of staging televised events at the disposal of governing bodies, Maddieson notes that the national associations have a huge advantage in terms of potential reach.

"These are organisations much bigger than WBT with things that WBT haven't got, such as a data base of clubs and members that can be used commercially. Associations have those and I'm surprised they don't use them," he said.

"We've got the contacts within television, and nine times out of 10, if I can put a good tournament together, including the world's top players on our ranking list, we will get the interest of television. What it comes down to is the funding.

"For organisations to say we can't afford it, I'm sorry, but that's baloney. Yes there are costs in running associations, but with a bit of graft there should be a reward.

"Associations have got much more than WBT behind them, so it shouldn't be beyond them to stage things. It's a shame that it doesn't happen, because if it did, then I think the media would take more interest in us. Newspapers, TV, radio would get behind it, but they need regular events.

"I believe we should be working with perhaps slightly smaller events that don't cost quite as much money. You've still got to dress them, you've still got to stage them, still run them professionally. Maybe not use mainstream TV, because you probably won't get it, but use the likes of the internet, where there will be enough people watching it if the top local players are involved."

However, he also believes that there are far too many cooks at work when it comes to running a sport where the same players play indoors and outdoors under essentially the same formats.

"There are far too many different bodies and because they don't tend to work with each other many opportunities, massive opportunities, are lost," said Maddieson.

"I've been CEO of WBT for four-and-a-half to five years. Part of my job is going out there to find sponsors. The first thing Nike asked me was which part of bowls do you govern. I told them we did the big televised events, but they wanted to know how big we were and how many members we had. That's where we're falling down.

"I notice that when we try to set things up I'll be told an association won't like it or one association won't work with another one. It's time for all that to stop because, until it does, bowls is not going to collectively be able to put things on."