The debut season of the Optasia Squash Super League (SSL) galvanised the English club landscape in 2024/25 — bringing the world’s best players into communities who, in many cases, had never seen top-class professional squash before.
Bars and galleries were packed, juniors enjoyed court time with world top 10 players, club heroes were cheered to the rafters, young pros got a new platform for their talents and audiences got to watch the likes of Mohammed ElShorbagy, Karim Abdel Gawad, Hania ElHammamy, Satomi Watanabe and Joel Makin up close at their own home courts.
Each of the six teams is made up of a top male and female pro, a men’s and women’s Under-25 player, and a ‘club hero’ (a local legend for supporters to get behind). The pros conduct coaching clinics with the host club’s junior players before each match night gets under way.
In season one, teams played each other home and away over 10 raucous Friday nights, before the top two faced off in a Grand Final, which was won by the Leamington Royals against the Chichester Centurions in a thrillingly tight encounter.
At a time when the viability of some long-standing English squash clubs is under threat, the SSL’s inaugural season helped breathe new life into the sport’s grassroots out in the shires.
The previous domestic pro team squash format, the Premier Squash League (PSL), had existed in several different guises since 1978. However, it had rather lost its lustre, with only one completed season since the pandemic, which had just five teams and a slight lack of international stardust on the playing roster.
Joey Barrington, the popular ex-pro and Squash TV commentator, remodelled the tired format as part of his new Membership and Commercial Partnerships Manager role at England Squash. As he plans the SSL’s second season, he told Squash Player what he learned from its inaugural campaign…
IT’S ALL ABOUT SHOWCASING WORLD-CLASS SQUASH
There is a balance to strike between staging a credible competition and fulfilling the league’s most important function, which is showing people what brilliant top-class squash looks like and growing a zest for the sport.
Of course, the teams care about winning and losing, but this is about a night of great squash which gets a club buzzing. That’s why I intervened at several points during the season to make sure levels of opponents were matched up. When world no.3 Hania ElHammamy was unable to play for Coolhurst Cavaliers due to the closure of Heathrow Airport, I got Sarah Jane Perry in so that Sivasangari Subramaniam had a close match.
This is why I haven’t gone down the route of offering a win bonus to the champions. I want to offer all participating clubs benefits, so that even if they’re bottom of the table, it’s too profitable and too much of a cool experience to give up.
It’s been brilliant having Squash TV coverage of all the matches. We had four cameras for the Grand Final at Winchester, and when the crowd shots showed the members going nuts at the end of a brilliant rally and sinking a few pints, that’s what it’s all about. That is the essence of our sport.
BEST-OF-THREE IS THE PERFECT FORMAT
Squash can be a poor product when the match result is a foregone conclusion but it takes an hour to reach that conclusion. That’s why best-of-three, with sudden death at 10-10, is an excellent format in the context of a one-night team fixture. It’s an opportunity for a player to have a good go at a higher-ranked opponent.
If you’ve got the levels roughly equal, watching two pros knock the living crap out of each other for 40 minutes is a great spectacle for people to watch in a club on a Friday night, especially when they have a home team to support.
The key is matching up the levels, because if there’s a big disparity, the match is over very quickly. Next season, we might look at the possibility of playing three games no matter what, even if one player goes 2-0 up. That’s to maximise having the pros there and to see more quality squash to benefit the spectators.
WORLD-CLASS SQUASH CAN MAKE CLUBS MONEY
We’ve been tracking data on match nights and clubs made between £1,200-£1,500 profit in bar sales alone compared to a normal Friday night’s takings. Add ticket sales of between £20-£25 per person (with capacities varying between 80-125), plus proceeds from raffles, and host clubs are coming out with a nice chunk of change.
Our model is not to charge a registration fee for the league, as happened with the PSL, but for clubs to pay the players themselves. Any money the league itself makes goes towards paying referees, branding, and the PSA’s social media and streaming team.
CLUB HERO
The ‘club hero’ position in each team has been hugely popular. Local legends like Tim Vail at Chichester and Miles Jenkins at St. George’s Hill have helped rally fans behind their own team. At times, the club hero match is more entertaining than the pros!
The criteria has not always been easy around the club hero, particularly at Bristol which is a university team so doesn’t have ‘club heroes’ as such. Although that’s been a little bit awkward, I’m not changing the club hero element. It’s a vital part of the league’s success.
If a team wants to select a female club hero next season, I will ensure she is matched up with a female club hero for the opposing team too.
I initially wanted to make the ‘young player’ slots for U21s, but unfortunately the depth just isn’t there in England right now, so I extended it to U25s to give both men and women in that category equal opportunity.
SCHEDULING IS TRICKY
Originally, I wanted to launch with 16 teams in four regional divisions, to limit travelling time and create local derbies. But finding gaps in the busy PSA calendar, as well as the French and Dutch leagues, proved so tough. Player availability was the big issue.
We also learned from the first season that having all three matches simultaneously splinters the audience on Squash TV. Next season, we may stagger matches over a weekend so we don’t oversaturate the viewership. Having strong viewing data helps us attract sponsors.
Speaking of sponsors, we have a nice suite of partners now. In addition to our title sponsors Optasia, we have Aspect Capital, Expression Networks and adidas, and more to come in.
Next season, we’re looking to run a kit printing service for fans so the kids can buy a football-style branded Joel Makin replica shirt, for example, complete with all the sponsors. Profits will be shared between adidas and the relevant club.
Season one couldn’t have gone much better, but I’m a perfectionist, so I’ll be making lots of tweaks for 2025/26.
We have a couple of new clubs wanting to join next season. It’s especially exciting seeing clubs who have never played in major leagues before flourishing through this experience. I want the SSL to keep thriving and growing for many years to come.
