Baby Steppin’ Our Sport To Superstardom

It is said that first year law students are scared to death, second year’s are worked to death, and third year’s are bored to death. As a professional squash player, you can expect to lose money in your first year (scary), break even in your second year (as a result of a lot of hard work), and hope to make money your third year (substitute fun for boredom). Having just completed my second full year on the tour, I have not only trained hard to prepare myself to compete against the world’s top one hundred players, I have also been able to gauge what direction the professional world tour and squash in the United States is taking. In leaping from New York to Boston, Cleveland, Boca Raton, Toronto, and Belo Horizonte, Brazil over the past eight weeks, it has become clear that basic economic principles are responsible for guiding the Professional Squash Association to build its tour at the top. More specifically, the directors of the PSA speak of selling the tour by "pulling on the top of the tree" and allowing the bottom of the tour to fill into new shoes.

This trickle down approach proposes an interesting alternative for our sport to move forward from the traditional grass roots, critical mass argument that has been a long-time favorite. Since sponsors and ticket-paying spectators want to see the top ten in action, the introduction of many top-tiered tournaments will provide the financial reward that the athletes so well deserve and keep them dedicated to playing PSA events rather than random invitationals. More top-tiered events will also benefit lower ranked professionals by putting pressure on existing smaller and medium sized tournaments to increase their prize money if they want to, at best, maintain the caliber of players entering their draw.

North America’s two new events in Toronto and Florida are testaments to how the PSA’s tug at the top of the tree has benefited squash at many levels. The Florida Open had an absolutely stunning venue: a Flushing Meadows-like pavilion in Del Rey gave the event a high profile. The marketing glitz was sensational, giving the impression that squash is every bit as credible a sport as tennis: security guards and vendors everywhere, entertainment in between games and matches, brilliant choreography from player profiles to carefully selected music to the escorting of the finalists to the Perspex court via red and yellow Ferrari’s! Perhaps most importantly, the event was very well documented: plans were made to broadcast the event six times to 250 million viewers each time. I had to ask Robert Edwards, the promoter of the event and a PSA board member, twice before I could believe my ears on this one.

Even more glorious than the extensive media exposure was learning that the sponsor of the Florida Open was so pleased with the outcome that he announced tentative plans to launch two new top tier events in Las Vegas and Beverly Hills! This would result in the creation of a great economically competitive tournament promotion machine with which John Nimick’s Event Engine must compete. Because these tournament promoters must compete with each other to attain and keep a venue and because they are looking to make a profit in their endeavors, they will not be able to cut many corners in the production of the event and will only be further rewarded if they can come up with fresh new ideas in marketing the sport.

The number of top-tier tournaments in North America would increase to six if Las Vegas and Beverly Hills were to join the tour. If that should happen, several top ten players feel that a second residence in the United States would be justified. This would, in turn, cause more of the lower ranked players from Europe to move to the US in much the same way that Americans currently choose to live anywhere but America in order to be exposed to the top coaching and talent. The next logical step would be to establish a professional squash league, which would probably be adapted from and/or added to New York’s already well established "Squash Wars." It can then be surmised that if the world’s best squash players were to be living in the United States playing top-tier events and league matches, top-level squash would be brought to the rank-and-file player’s backyard. American professionals, collegians, juniors, and amateurs would all reap the benefits from this exposure and perhaps additional sponsorship money would be committed to support the craze.

The trickle down, grab the tree by the top theory will translate into more money for the players in the form of total tour prize money, better marketing of the game because of economic competition amongst tournament promoters (a by-product may be that squash will finally have credibility to get into the Olympics in 2008 in – hopefully – Toronto), and more and better squash in America which will trickle down to the improvement and participation of our indigenous players, both professional and amateurs alike.

It is true that squash has had many booms and busts and it is true that this article is partly truth and partly speculation, but you mark my words: Squash will be something yet! The PSA tour has already bounced back to $1.7M from a low of $800K about a year ago and has set realistic goals to reach $2M by next year and $4M in three to five years. If those involved continue to further a given strategy and, more importantly, maintain a positive and enthusiastic attitude, there is no telling what recognition our sport can achieve.