News

Year in Review – PSA CEO Alex Gough Recaps 2018

31 December 2018

We are confident that restructuring the tour will simplify the pathway from junior squash to the professional ranks in addition to boosting earnings for all of our athletes and we are encouraged with how the previous five months has gone. The PSA World Tour has gone from strength-to-strength since August, while we are pleased to see that the newly created PSA Challenger Tour is flourishing.

In addition to this, we were also delighted to see the sport make a big impression at the Buenos Aires Youth Olympic Games in October, where over 25,000 people got the opportunity to witness squash in the flesh. We are hugely encouraged with the feedback we have received and remain committed to working alongside the World Squash Federation to get squash into the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

One of the star attractions at the Youth Olympic Games was the incredible interactiveSQUASH front wall and we have developed our relationship with them throughout 2018, with their interactive front wall making an appearance at the PSA World Series Finals in Dubai.

The PSA is committed to innovation and, as such, we have also developed our partnership with Sports Data Labs. Using their proprietary data capture and tracking technology, we have been able to track our athlete’s physiological data. Not only is this used to enhance our live broadcasts, we are the first sport ever to make this data available for commercialisation.

Despite all of these major developments over the past 12 months, we are confident that 2019 will be even better and are excited to stage the sport’s first $1 million tournament – the Chicago PSA World Championships – in February.

The tournament will be a major milestone for the sport and we are incredibly thankful for the support of Mark and Kimbra Walter. We look forward to working with all parties over the next couple of months as we aim to make this the best World Championships of all time.

We are also delighted to have Qatar come on board to host the men’s 2019/20 World Championships next November and are hoping to announce the location of the women’s 2019/20 World Championships shortly.

The PSA Tour calendar is also strengthened by April’s DPD Open – which has increased in prize money and stature to stage both a men and women’s Gold event – and the Manchester Open, which will host the world’s leading female players in May.