It’s great to cover sports that don’t get as much coverage here on UKSN, and for the first time we have the opportunity to look at what Squash has been doing to engage with fans of the sport.

The PSA (Professional Squash Association) has been running its PPV internet streaming service, SquashTV, since 2010 and covers a minimum of 12 tournaments and 300 live games from around the world.  At the end of 2013 they looked at ways in to bring the fans closer to the action and launched #Voice4Squash just before Christmas.

The competition started off with a post showing entry information on their website and social media channels, asking fans to submit an audio clip to a specific piece of action and then email it into the PSA.  The prize for doing so?  The chance to to join the SquashTV online streaming team and commentate live on the action in 2014.  It’s the squash equivalent of joining John Motson up on the gantry for a Premier League game.

Almost 100 clips were received by the team, so the next step was to filter these down into a top 10.  Those lucky few were then challenged to record a second commentary, this time to a different action clip.  At this point voting wasn’t public as the PSA again whittled the numbers down to select their top 5.

Those top 5 audio clips were then dubbed over the action and the final videos were uploaded onto YouTube for the fans to listen to.  They were asked to vote for their favourite by using the hashtag #STVComms followed by the 3 letter code at the end either on Facebook or Twitter.

“We are really pleased with the levels of interest and engagement that we received from the squash community to this competition. We received clips from every continent bar Antarctica to the initial stage of the competition – which was completely above our expectations.  The competition was very exciting for us as an organisation as it allowed us an opportunity to really combine all of our social media channels in one exciting campaign while also delivering something truly unique to our fans.

“From hosting both the initial ’test action’ and the finalists’ commentary clips on SquashTV’s YouTube channel, conducting the voting stage via Facebook and Twitter and using our official website as the ’news hub’ for the competition, we saw higher engagement levels than in any previous campaign.”  –  Nathan Clarke, PR & Comms Manager, PSA

The final outcome was one winner with almost 50% of the votes.  Those votes totalled almost 800, with the majority on the PSA Facebook page (most of them using the right hashtag) and a few on Twitter.  The engagement on Facebook  could be down to amount of interaction and uploading of teaser video content of matches that have been taking place on the platform (with some very good calls to action).

The winner was English graphic designer Christian Zavanaiu, with American Robert Burns coming second and England’s Kate Mason in third.  The two runners up will also get the chance to commentate on a PSA match this year.  Zavanaiu was quoted on the PSA World Tour website as saying;

“I absolutely adore SquashTV and have been a subscriber for over six years now.  I’m a keen squash player and play at a county level – so when I saw the SquashTV competition offering an opportunity to become the Voice4Squash I couldn’t resist entering but I never thought I would win!

“It’s amazing how much I’ve learnt about my game and the game in general from watching SquashTV. The presenters are incredibly knowledgeable and the banter between PJ and Joey is priceless at times.  I cannot wait to join the Squash TV team and commentate live on Squash TV. It’s very exciting for me – I might just read the rule book once again though beforehand!”

It was a really nice engaging competition which kept fans engaged at almost every step along the way.  I’m sure those who voted will be tuning in to listen to the winner commentating for the first time.  It also gives them the hope that one day they could win such a great prize.  Anyway, here is his winning entry;

http://youtu.be/6HYgX8iIF4g&w=400&h=320

It shows the benefit of investing in a PPV channel by a sports governing body, something they have been leading at for some time.  Some sports are not going to have enough traction with TV companies to start a bidding war and make the types of money that football, rugby and cricket do.  Taking that content and owning it shows that fans are willing to pay for a great product in numbers that make it a sound investment.  Other sports could learn a lot from the PSA.