With 50 countries and 278 of the world’s best bowlers scheduled to compete, the World Bowling Men’s Championships will provide plenty of drama on one of bowling’s biggest stages.

The World Championships begin Sunday in Hong Kong with qualifying and FloBowling will broadcast the semifinals, final and medal ceremony from each event from Dec. 1-5 for audiences in North America.

Here’s what to look for at the World Bowling Men’s Championships:

The defending champions are all back

At the last World Bowling Men’s Championships in 2017 in Las Vegas, five countries won gold medals with Team USA the only country to win two.

All of the defending champions are back, with the exception of a few player changes for Team USA. Xander van Mazijk of the Netherlands will defend his singles title, while Chris Barnes and Tommy Jones of Team USA are the defending doubles champions.

In the trios event, Hong Kong’s Eric Tseng, Michael Mak and Wu Siu Hong will try to repeat as champions in their home country, a feat that would certainly be a significant accomplishment for the Hong Kong bowling program.

Team USA is the defending champion in the coveted five-player team event, which is easily the most prestigious of the titles at the World Championships and may be one of the biggest titles in all of bowling.

"Our expectation each time we put on the red, white and blue is to win," said Jones, who has won 10 medals at the World Championships and an additional silver medal in World Singles Championships competition. "If we do our jobs to the best of our ability, we should have another successful year. The feeling you get from standing on that podium and hearing the national anthem is hard to put into words."

Wu Hao-Ming of Chinese Taipei won the all-events title in 2017, while Canada’s Francois Lavoie took home the Masters title.

The field is stacked

Among the big names scheduled to compete are all six players representing Team USA – Barnes, Jones, Kyle Troup, EJ Tackett, Jakob Butturff and Andrew Anderson.

PBA member Sam Cooley, who recently won the QubicaAMF World Cup, will be among those who represent Australia. Jason Belmonte, however, will not compete in the event as he has chosen to spend time with his family during the PBA’s offseason.

Canada is also sending a strong team that includes PBA champions Graham Fach and Lavoie, while Colombia always sends a strong squad led by three-time PBA champion Andres Gomez. Finland, meanwhile, is led by PBA champion Osku Palermaa.

In total, there are 50 countries that have sent in their intention to compete at the World Championships. They include Afghanistan, Australia, Belarus, Bermuda, Canada, China, Colombia, Costa Rica, Denmark, North Korea, England, Finland, France, Germany, Guam, Hong Kong, Indonesia, Iran, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Kazakhstan, Korea, Kuwait, Latvia, Lithuania, Macau, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Pakistan, Peru, Philippines, Poland, Romania, Russia, Saudi Arabia, Scotland, Sierra Leone, Singapore, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Chinese Taipei, Thailand, UAE and Uzbekistan.

Format and lane conditions

There are six medal events at the World Championships – singles, doubles, trios, team, all-events and Masters.

For singles, doubles, trios and team the formats are all very similar. Each event consists of six games of qualifying with the top four advancing into the medal round to determine the winners.

The all-events medals are based on the 24-game totals combining qualifying from singles, doubles, trios and team.

As for the Masters, the top 24 players in the all-events standings advance to the Masters, which is a match play competition that will eventually narrow down to the final four for the medal round.

As for what lane pattern will be used for the event, we don’t know that yet. The players and coaches will find out on Friday. However, we do know that the pattern will come from Bank 30, which is a bank of various 30-foot patterns.

What the schedule looks like

The World Bowling Men’s Championships actually begin with qualifying on Sunday, however FloBowling’s coverage only includes the semifinals, final and medal ceremony for each event. Here’s the streaming schedule (all times Eastern, only available in North America):

Saturday, Dec. 1
6:30 a.m.-8:30 a.m. – Singles semifinals, final and medal ceremony

Sunday, Dec. 2
5:30 a.m.-8:15 a.m. – Doubles semifinals, final and medal ceremony

Monday, Dec. 3
5 a.m.-8:30 a.m. – Trios semifinals, final and medal ceremony

Tuesday, Dec. 4
4 a.m.-9 a.m. – Team semifinals, final and medal ceremony

Wednesday, Dec. 5
2 a.m.- 5:30 a.m. – Masters semifinals, final and medal ceremony

Click here for the full World Bowling Men’s Championships schedule in local Hong Kong time.