Stars Collide in Ultimate PBA Tour Finals

The final televised title event of the 2025 PBA Tour will take place this weekend at Steel City Bowl and Brews in Bethlehem, Pa.

The A-list field features the top eight players in competition points over the past two seasons.

EJ Tackett led the way in each season, compiling close to twice as many points as the next player. Tackett will be joined by defending champion Anthony Simonsen, Jason Belmonte, Bill O’Neill, Kyle Troup, Andrew Anderson, Marshall Kent and Graham Fach.

In the previous eight editions of the PBA Tour Finals, only four different champions have been crowned. Tackett, Simonsen, Belmonte and Troup have each won the event twice.

This year’s event will be the final edition featuring the current qualifying procedure, which means either the tie will be broken for good or a fifth champion will emerge.

Tackett and Simonsen are the only players who have competed in all nine events.

Simonsen leads all players with 53 lifetime games in the PBA Tour Finals, averaging more than 231, while Tackett has averaged more than 226 in his 50 games.

Belmonte qualified for all nine PBA Tour Finals, but withdrew in 2020 and 2021. Bolstered by his two perfect games, he has averaged a whopping 239.35 in his 43 games.

The two-day title event includes nine hours of exclusive, live coverage on CBS Sports Network. 

Saturday’s positioning round shows, airing at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. Eastern, will feature two groups competing in a three-game eliminator.

Tackett, O’Neill, Troup and Fach make up Group 1 with Simonsen, Belmonte, Anderson and Kent comprising Group 2.

All four players will bowl two games on dual oil patterns, 40-foot Monacelli and 46-foot Petraglia oil patterns.

The players with the lowest scores will be eliminated for the day, but will return Sunday as the No. 3 and No. 4 seed in their respective group stepladder.

The top two players in each group will bowl another game (with pinfall not carrying over) to determine who will be their group’s top seed — a pivotal position as the final match of each group stepladder is a Race-to-Two. Preceding matches are only one game.

Sunday’s group stepladders also air live at 5 p.m. and 7 p.m. ET, respectively, on CBS Sports Network.

The winners of each group will immediately reconvene for the championship, a Race-to-Two match airing live at 9 p.m. ET Sunday night.

More information on the PBA Tour Finals is available here.

No. 1 EJ Tackett

64,610 points, $685,332 earnings, 6 titles, 19 top-five finishes, 24 top-10 finishes

If you only took the points Tackett earned this season, he would have not only still qualified for the event, but been just 355 points shy of the top seed. 

Tackett, the 2017 and 2019 champion, won two titles with one major in 2024 and has doubled each of those so far this season.

Only two players have won five titles with two majors in a single season: Earl Anthony in 1974 and Tackett himself in 2023.

No. 2 Anthony Simonsen

35,045 points, $341,200 earnings, 3 titles, 9 top-five finishes, 14 top-10 finishes

Though Simonsen has yet to win a title this season, he has been at his best under the brightest lights. His average finish in majors was 10th, which marked the best on tour.

Simonsen has only gone winless once (2020) since his rookie season in 2015. The defending champion will aim to keep that number intact this weekend.

No. 3 Jason Belmonte

34,180 points, $326,634 earnings, 1 title, 8 top-five finishes, 17 top-10 finishes

It’s hard to fathom that Belmonte hasn’t won a singles title since March 2023. The two-plus-year gap is the longest gap between singles titles since Belmonte’s first and second wins.

He’s been the third-best player on Earth over the past two seasons by points, which only feels like a disappointment because of the lofty standard he set for himself. Belmonte won a doubles title earlier this season with the next player on this list and led the PBA World Championship.

Considering his field-high 241 average last year at Steel City Bowl & Brews, Belmonte flew halfway around the world soaring with confidence, too. 

No. 4 Bill O’Neill

30,803 points, $282,620 earnings, 2 titles, 9 top-five finishes, 1 top-10 finishes

A stellar 2024 campaign did the heavy lifting as O’Neill finished 16th in points this season.

The veteran sports a 231.21 average across 24 games in the PBA Tour Finals. He looked well on his way to a championship appearance last year before Kent’s comeback in the Group 1 final match.

Competing an hour and change from his hometown of Langhorne, expect to see a motivated O’Neill this weekend.

No. 5 Kyle Troup

29,768 points, $286,965 earnings, 2 titles, 5 top-five finishes, 9 top-10 finishes

For Troup, the PBA Tour Finals is perhaps the best evidence in his case for who has been the top player outside of the big three of Tackett, Simonsen and Belmonte.

Only those three players have qualified for the PBA Tour Finals more than Troup, who owns two titles, a 300 game and an average of 235.57 in 37 lifetime games in this event.

(The other prime example is Troup’s 2024 U.S. Open triumph when he beat Tackett, Belmonte and Simonsen in succession and said “to hell with the big three.” Yeah, that was pretty cool.)

No. 6 Andrew Anderson

28,410 points, $230,175 earnings, 2 titles, 6 top-five finishes, 9 top-10 finishes

Back-to-back PBA Playoffs appearances will often net you a berth in the PBA Tour Finals, but a second-place, single-season finish in points is a strong way to guarantee it.

Anderson pushed Tackett as much as any player this season, beating the fellow one-handed star in U.S. Open qualifying and in the PBA Mike Aulby Nevada Classic title match.

No. 7 Marshall Kent

26,208 points, $227,108 earnings, 2 titles, 5 top-five finishes, 8 top-10 finishes

Kent’s qualification for this event further illuminates the brilliance of his 2024 season, in which he captured two titles including a climb of the PBA Tournament of Champions stepladder.

Kent finished runner-up to Simonsen in last year’s event, coming up two pins shy in the Race-to-Two championship match roll-off.

No. 8 Graham Fach

25,626 points, $235,300 earnings, 1 title, 5 top-five finishes, 9 top-10 finishes

By the skin of his teeth, Fach overtook Chris Via for the final berth in the field. Had he finished one place lower in the TOC — and Fach only surpassed Tackett in the final few games of match play — he would instead be watching the Stanley Cup Finals from his couch.

Based on points, Fach has been the best left-hander in the world over the past two seasons.

Past PBA Tour Finals Champions

2024 - Anthony Simonsen
2023 - Kyle Troup
2022 - Jason Belmonte
2021 - Anthony Simonsen
2020 - Kyle Troup
2019 - EJ Tackett
2018 - Jason Belmonte
2017 - EJ Tackett

2025 PBA Tour Finals Schedule

Saturday, June 7 | CBS Sports Network
5pm — Group 1 Positioning Round
7pm — Group 2 Positioning Round

Sunday, June 8 | CBS Sports Network
5pm — Group 1 Stepladder
7pm — Group 2 Stepladder
9pm — Championship Match