After my first Racquetball article, which went over the state of Racquetball and how it’s seemingly on life support as a sport was well received among the Racquetball community, I thought I’d offer a Part 2, discussing my opinion on what the community can do to bring the sport back to it’s former glory.
Obviously, I’m just one person. I won’t have all the answers, or possibly any of the answers. To be clear, I’m no expert on Racquetball. But with this article I’ll know I did my part, by sharing my thoughts, and how I feel on what we can do together to revive the sport. You offering your comments and opinions online, and sharing this article is crucial to reviving this sport too. And therein lies the first step:
We need to talk.
Grab a drink, grab a snack, we’re in for a bumpy ride.
Wait! Before you dive into this juicy article, right before publishing this, I decided to take it upon myself to create a Discord server just for Racquetball, which hopefully can be the place we build this community from, together. It’ll be a place where we can share ideas, share content, and rebuild this community from the ground up. I welcome you all to the Racquetball Revolution Discord Server! Now back to the article:
Accept the State of the Sport
As a Racquetball fan, you can no longer sit on the sidelines in denial about the reality of your favorite sport, and the direction it’s heading. You need to be aware of what has happened, and be conscious of the depth of this hole we’re in. To get out of it, there needs to be a lot of work done.
Social Media Presence
There are zero Racquetball influencers online. None. I checked. No one with over 1,000 subscribers on YouTube is actively making quality engaging content about Racquetball. Heck, nowhere online can I find a single Racquetball community with over 10,000 people in it! That’s not normal in 2023 (happy new year btw!) for a sport and hobby that millions of people play. I’ve been on the internet for a long time, and time and again I am flabbergasted by the types of niche personalities that exist, who make their entire online presence solely about some of the most unique hobbies out there. And they make a living doing it! Casino Game YouTubers, Polaroid Camera YouTubers, Hot Sauce YouTubers, Pickleball YouTubers, More Pickleball YouTubers, the list is endless. Type in “How to play X” or “Best X to buy” for any hobby, and there are many YouTubers who’s entire personality is making quality content daily answering questions such as these, and providing entertaining content as well around their niche hobby, who are successful! Racquetball doesn’t have that, even though it easily can. If you’ve been considering starting a YouTube channel, Racquetball is certainly a gap in the market waiting for some talent to fill it in.
I emphasize YouTube because YouTube is truly a metric showing a hobby’s popularity in the world. If a random video about some hobby you never heard about trends and gets 2 million views (you’ve clicked on them, you know exactly what I’m talking about), the market for that hobby literally changes. Any products mentioned in the video get a spike in sales, people try the hobby for the first time, and of course the YouTuber who made the video gets a fat check from YouTube, which other YouTubers see and then begin to imitate. But we have no one doing that, on any social media channel, whether it’s TikTok, YouTube, Facebook, etc.
Tournaments
We need more support for the tournaments. I’ll be honest, I don’t know much about how to solve this one, but hearing Kane Waselenchuk say at the end of a match, “Obviously Racquetball isn’t my main thing, I still have a job to go to every day…” doesn’t sit well with me. A top player shouldn’t be having to say such a thing when he’s a top player in a sport. One way or another, these players need to be making money, and compete for prize pools that they can live off of. If there’s real money at play, more players would compete to win it. At least in my primitive view of the issue. All I could say is that this would happen if the sport gained popularity. The specifics of how to actually raise the prize pool I’m not educated on. But the issue exists.
Young People
The average age of players for this sport needs to drop significantly. I don’t know if there’s stats on this or not, but I think we can all agree that there’s a perception that this game is for older folks. It exists because many people who have been playing for decades are older now. And if you are one of those people, please do your part in sharing your favorite sport with the next generation. Patiently show off this sport to your kids, host a league or tournament in a local school, do something if it’s in your abilities to do so to change this perception, and make this a sport for everyone. If you’re a younger person, share this with friends, invite some friends to your court, and get them playing. It’s a grassroots movement that is crucial to this revival. The small things YOU do will make a big change long term.
Brands
Dear Brands,
Where are you? Or better yet, WHEN are you? Why aren’t you with us in 2023? You still seem to be back in 2004. Enough with these ads that are dated, and start bringing influencer marketing to your products. I get it, most of you are only making a small percentage of revenue through Racquetball, and are instead making your real money through Tennis and the other racket sports. But even as a business that’s not a good idea. You have the power to sell more product, easily. Send out, what, 20 units to 20 Racquetball influencers who show off the latest and greatest your company has to offer? With that we now have influencers who can make a living sharing well-made videos with their fans going over your product that a player may be interested in buying, showing off the latest in your racket technology for example, and allowing players to make educated purchase decisions. This is healthy marketing. What you are doing now is just wasting money. Hire a good marketing team that operates in the 2023 era, not 2004. It’s a win-win; more content online, more brand recognition, more players will become interested in buying your product, the community will grow and you’ll have more customers, which will result in more money in your pocket. Rinse and repeat. It’s ridiculous that you research, design, develop, and manufacture rackets and other products every season, and I cannot find even 1 video reviewing your product in detail. How am I supposed to know what to buy? I certainly won’t be spending $200 on your racket without a review going over it by a 3rd party. But hey, that’s just me.
To those reading this, get in contact with your favorite brands, and tell them to wake up. Tell them that we want to see them actively on Twitter, Instagram and YouTube. We want to see their products in the hands of influencers who will do their best to show off their products to their communities. Right now all of the available social media channels haven’t had any new posts or activity in years, or are nonexistent. Tell them to get in their DeLorean and join us in 2023.
P.S: If you choose to become an influencer, you may be able to convince these companies to send you review units, who wouldn’t love that?
Professionals
Just like brands, the pros in Racquetball should be doing their part in making the sport more recognized, and to bring the community together more online. A professional player who makes modern YouTube content would be a big boost to this community. I’d love to learn technique from a pro. At the very least, being a well-marketed social media personality on places like Twitter and Instagram will still do wonders. It doesn’t take much. Being interactive online isn’t a lot to ask of passionate professionals of our favorite, dying sport.
Tournament Budget
The budget for hosting a tournament needs to go way up. Obviously this will only happen as a result of all the other ideas successfully reviving the sport. But I’m pointing it out as an issue from now anyway.
There should be more referees looking out for every error, big or small, and also who call out faults from a side angle, not just from the back. There should be dedicated people who rush in to mop out any sweat on the floor between matches or upon request, rather than the players needing to do it themselves with a rag as I’ve seen currently. It’s not a good look.
We need more camera angles and camera operators, who skillfully switch between angles at proper times, and offer replay closeups of potential faults, allowing the viewer to see for them self if a ball was a fault or not.
The announcers need to have better communication with the referees, as more often than not they sound unsure of why the game stopped, or what the call is, and as a viewer obviously I don’t know either, and it’s not really entertaining when this happens. So overall, more technology and salaries need to be expanded upon, as soon as it’s possible.
The Step-By-Step Solution
Let’s cut right to the chase:
Share your thoughts online. If it’s racquetball related, share it with the world. Love a racket? Share it. Prefer a certain ball? Share why. Taught yourself something you’ve never seen someone do before? Share away. Have a critique about a professional player? Let the world know. Want to make fun of certain stereotypes at the court? I’ll have my popcorn ready!
Whether it’s on Reddit, YouTube, Facebook, TikTok, etc., share your opinions about anything and everything Racquetball. Wake Racquetball up from it’s decades-long Internet hibernation.
Learn how to market yourself too. Many videos don’t show up in search results because people forget to put the word “racquetball” or other relevant information in their titles. Make sure you’re doing what you can so that the most amount of people can find your content easily, and so the algorithm can help as well.
Also if you choose to take this seriously, invest in proper equipment to record quality audio and video. Don’t use your phone’s microphone from behind the court’s glass as your actual microphone. Stuff like that doesn’t make a quality video. Rather you should invest in a proper mic that would limit echo and would attach to your shirt. Again, we’re in 2023, and we need to start acting like it.
For the viewers, share the videos with others. Like the videos. Subscribe and follow people who make good content. Leave comments. This helps a LOT in today’s world of algorithms.Lastly, join the Discord Server I just made so we can help each other rebuild this sport, together. Be one of the first to join, and let’s talk further about how we can expand Racquetball’s online presence.
Watch tournaments. Support tournaments by doing the same thing as step 1. Share them, and like the videos. Turn notifications on so you can watch them when they go Live. Interact in the live chat.
Here are 4 official YouTube channels who actively host live matches you can subscribe to:
Hold brands accountable. Inform brands that we want them to do their part. We are their consumers of their products. But they don’t do enough to reciprocate in ways that will help the sport overall. We’re not asking them to spend and lose money on our behalf. We are merely asking them to invest in the sport in 2023 style; in a way that would make them ultimately richer. It’s not too much to ask. If more people play, they make more money. How do they get more people to play? Proper marketing.
Introduce 1 or more people in your life to the sport. I don’t care who it is; family, friends, classmate, colleague, or a random person at your local gym / club who does something else there. Show people in your life the joys of Racquetball, and why it’s worth their time to play. Share the benefits of exercise, hand-eye coordination, and the satisfaction of getting an opponent out, or hitting a well-executed serve. This sport is fun, and let them know they’re missing out on a good time.
Those who you do introduce, be patient with them. You may be leagues ahead of them skill-wise, so don’t make them feel as though they’re not good enough, or aren’t welcome to the court because they currently lack skill.Change the tone online. Stop blaming Pickleball for Racquetball’s demise. Stop blaming Covid. Stop blaming yoga rooms and gym equipment. We’re in a capitalist society. If it makes financial sense to build and maintain Racquetball courts, in due time that will happen. It CAN happen. We need to look forward from here on out, not backwards. We need to look at what small things we can do that can make a long term positive impact. And those small things is what will eventually lead to a financial shift where courts would be rebuilt and maintained.
In Closing
People who will find the sport are on the internet. Many people in our society make daily decisions based on the opinions of the internet. We need the internet to be a welcoming, hustling and bustling place for those who find the sport. We need videos, we need followers, we need subscribers. We need haters, and we need fans. We need personalities that can offer their best to the sport, and introduce it to their current and new fans. We need product reviews, educational content, entertaining content, and more to make the sport inviting to the newcomers.
When I recently got back into the sport from when I last played with my dad outdoors as a little kid, the internet felt dead. I felt like I was starting a hobby not worth starting, because it’s going downhill, not up. No recently uploaded videos for seemingly decades, no active communities, instead only a few dedicated commenters on Reddit and Facebook, and a handful of “YouTubers” recording their sessions in low quality and posting them every couple of months. I was nearly ready to not pursue this thing. But I’m glad I did, because the sport is a blast to play. But it does not sit well with me knowing that the internet lacks ANY community in this sport. Without using the internet as our way to revive the sport, the day will come when your local court closes up, or a brand you love sells its final racket.
I understand many of you will respond with “It’s dead, it’s been dead for a while, and there’s nothing that can be done.” But fundamentally, I disagree. When something is good, the right people will eventually gravitate towards it. I think Racquetball just needs a strong push to bring it back. The game is good.
But the sport needs YOUR help to revive it, and to make it a success, once again.
What will you do to bring Racquetball back?
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