Earlier this week, @3Wall Ball owner and operator Mike Coulter (aka MC Vegas on Facebook) announced he was “pausing” the annual 3WallBall outdoor event for 2025 due to the rising costs and current economic climate. The event, which is incredibly expensive to stage to begin with, has seen its projected costs nearly quadruple this spring and Coulter made the understandable decision not to risk personal financial ruin in order to stage the 16th iteration of the event.
Mike has been running major events in Las Vegas for decades, dating back to the old Pro Nationals events that sometimes out-drew the US Open. He’s given more to the sport in terms of time and resources than almost anyone out there, but even he couldn’t pull a rabbit out of his hat this year, and I wonder if we’re seeing the end of an era.
The 3WB team is searching for an alternative venue, likely in Southern California, where courts can be rented instead of constructed, to hold the 2025 version of the event. My bigger worry is the future of the event; once you take an event off the schedule, it’s awfully hard to get it back. Will the STRAT even entertain a return of the event in 2027? Will the staff that supported the event even be there by that time? Will sponsors who skip a year be willing to sign back up after a year away? Will volunteers do the same? All of these issues conspire against events once they’re gone, and its why tournaments in general are dwindling year over year.
In social media in the wake of the event, the tourney directors of another of the sport’s three outdoor majors Geoff Osberg disclosed that three of his primary sponsors for the 2025 Outdoor Nationals event in July have pulled out, putting that event in serious jeopardy as well.
Thus, starkly, are displayed the major issues that tournament directors face in the modern racquetball world, especially for “national” level events that depend on top players to travel from around the country/world and spend money on flights, hotels, and meals for several days, and thus demand a prize purse worthy of their attention and attendance on top of all the other costs that tournaments have (in no particular order, facilities, food, prizes, shirts, labor, permits, etc). Increasing tournament entry fees is met with the typical resistance from long-time players who remember paying $50 for two events in the 1990s and getting 300+ draws and solid prize money. So sponsors are vital to offset costs… but making ROI arguments to sponsors is a tough sell, and generally speaking racquetball tournament sponsors are of the same ilk as national level sponsors: rich guys willing to write a check for charity out of love for the sport. Unfortunately, those guys are dwindling year over year, and we see one event after another drop off the schedule.
This is not a “how do we fix the sport” post, nor is it commentary on the value of tournament/pro events versus grass roots/club play. SFIA’s 2024 survey reports that we still have 900,000 “core” participants who play frequently and another 2.7M casual participants in this country, which pales in comparison to the few thousand actual USAR members who pay for their tournament licenses. Interestingly these two figures are heading in opposite directions; core participation in racquetball is down 9% over the last 3 years, while casual is up 20%. But it’s these “core” participants who buy memberships and who play tournaments and who drive the sport. Which is why we continue to care.
There’s no easy answers here; if there was, we’d be doing them. I suppose this post is just lament for an event i’ve attended multiple times, and to express support for a guy in Coulter who i’ve tried to support the best way I could for years. I hope 3WB finds a 2025 home, and I hope we can return to Vegas somewhere, somehow in the future, with the full support of the community, recognizing that these events are dwindling.