October '07 Global Gallery @ SquashTalk by Martin Bronstein

October '07 Global Gallery
...Jansher ... The Shrinking Dollar ... The shrinking Journalist Pool...

Global Gallery, October 18, 2007
The Monthly Round-up of the Interesting and Inane of Squash this month from Martin Bronstein, dean of the Squash Press

© 2007 All rights reserved.
all photos© 2007, Debra Tessier and Fritz Borchert

THE SHRINKING DOLLAR

Jansher in London Return (Martin Bronstein photo:© 2007)

Both WISPA and PSA have been boasting about great increases this year of their tour prize money. WISPA prize fund for the year is up a massive 56 percent over last year and the PSA are boasting that their total purse had doubled in four years. I am delighted to hear that positive news because a few years ago the picture looked grim; in England the alleged home of squash, there wasn’t a tournament worth more than a dime and the British Open almost went under through lack of sponsorship. In fact England still struggles to mount a major professionally-run tournament and by major, I mean with prize money in excess of $150,000.

Sharp-eyed readers will note the dollar sign in front of that amount. The reason is that the US dollar has become the currency of major sports events. But here’s the rub: the dollar has weakened considerably over the last few years. Five years ago it stood at around $1.5 to the pound Sterling. Now it trades at two for one as well as being on par with the Canadian dollar. (When I lived in Canada twenty odd years ago, we had to pay C$1.34 for a US dollar). What this weakened dollar means is that players are losing out to the tune of 15 -20 percent on their paychecks.

When I checked this out with WISPA’s Andrew Shelley, he said that inflation and other wage-eating effects are hopefully countered by increasing the ranking bands of WISPA tournaments so that in order to stand still a $10,000 tournament would have to increase prize money to $12,000 next year. But those players who do not live in dollar countries, this will not make up for the loss when trading dollar for pound or Euro. Not being an economist, sorry, I have no solutions.

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