This weekend I was coaching up folks and watching matches from two tournaments, the HOF IRT tournament in Minnesota and the High School Nationals in St Louis. As I was internet surfing something hit me as far as participation in our sport at the tournament level.
Here are the R2 tournament numbers the weekend of feb27-Mar 1
HS nationals—311
IRT Minnesota-138
Regional handball Ohio-48
Oregon state handball singles—111
Florida state rball—81
Racquetball Va (Lynchburg?) college—27
Racquetball ECRC Albany, NY-62
Ohio Racquetball-Columbus-43
Squash-Calgary Ca 55
Pickleball—Oklahoma-122
Kentucky racquetball-33
So here are the racquetball tournaments’ numbers—311, 138,81,27,62,43,33=695 participants total
Squash-55 participants
Pickleball-122 participants
Handball-48,111-159 participants
Now here is how I interpret the data. First, R2 sports has a solid almost 100% monopoly on racquetball tournaments so of course there probably were other competitions out there, especially in pickleball. But the trend I see is that tournament numbers are down because they are expensive. Entry fees, hotel or Airbnb fees, travel fees not to mention the angst of travel these days, drive the numbers down. So when I went into work yesterday I ran m theory past my co-workers in tennis and fitness. They concurred. So where am I going with all this? Maybe, just maybe the tournament numbers are down not just in our sport and this is the new normal going forward.
So doom and gloomers have at these numbers. One more thing about the racquetball tournament market. It is just the tip of the iceberg. I am estimating 5% of racquetball players play tournaments. Since the invention of the internet 70% (only my wild estimate) of the remaining 95% watch or are looking at the old matches of the IRT and LPRT. So hold your heads high racquetballers and keep rippin’ forehands and backhands!
Go get’em tigers!!