The World Squash Federation’s 2019 Men’s World Team Championship will be broadcast live across the globe through an agreement between tournament host Squash On Fire, the WSF and SquashTV, the broadcasting arm of the Professional Squash Association, with social media platform Facebook to live stream the event.
Taking place at the Squash On Fire club in the US city of Washington DC from December 15-21, this year’s coverage of the biennial tournament follows on from SquashTV’s successful transmission of both the 2017 event in Marseille, France, and the 2018 WSF Women’s World Team Championship in Dalian, China. It is a direct result of the Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) that was signed by the WSF and the PSA in September 2017.
All matches from the glass court at Squash on Fire will be broadcast live on SquashTV to all members with a free digital subscription and will also be available to watch for free via Facebook Watch and the official Facebook pages of the tournament, the WSF and PSA.
In addition, the live stream will also be cross-posted to the Facebook pages of tournament partners, national federations and players. The Facebook broadcast will also enable fans of the sport to engage with each other during the transmission.
Squash On Fire co-founder Philippe Lanier said: “This year’s WSF Men’s World Team Championship will be a landmark edition of the tournament, becoming the first squash tournament of this calibre to fully embrace social broadcasting on a global level. The fact that we can share the live coverage with our partners, federations and players through their Facebook channels means that we will be able to engage with fans in greater depth.”
PSA chief operating officer, Lee Beachill, added: “In recent years, we have been able to broadcast our sport to an ever-growing spectatorship through SquashTV and social media, which has helped to raise the profiles of the sport’s best players and key tournaments.
“We predict that this will have the same effect for the WSF Men’s World Team Championship in Washington, while thanks to the addition of Facebook as a partner, we expect over three million views for the event this December as the local and global squash audience continues to expand.”