Every top squash player is sponsored by a racket brand. So which brands have signed the best? Tecnifibre has the most players, Dunlop and Head have more than their share of the top 10, Prince once had the world No.1s, and the race to sign the next ones is already on.
Rankings to 9 November 2026.
Almost every top player carries a sponsor’s racket, and the brands compete for the best players as hard as the players compete for titles. So which brands have signed the best? We counted the racket each player’s profile names, checked by hand for the stars who changed sponsor. Of today’s 200 players in the men’s and women’s top 100, 26% are Tecnifibre players, about as many as Dunlop’s (16%) and Head’s (10%) together. But the biggest team is not the whole story.
Key findings
- Tecnifibre sponsors the most players: 26% of today’s top 100, men and women.
- Head and Dunlop sign fewer but better: Head has 10% of the top 100 and 30% of the top 10, Dunlop 16% and 35%.
- Since 2000, Dunlop’s players have won the most World Tour titles (26%); since 2015, Tecnifibre’s (33%).
- Prince’s players held the No.1 spot longest: 31% of all the weeks at No.1 since 2000.
- Dunlop has the teenage stars at the top: 3 teenagers in the top 20. Head’s players are the oldest.
Today’s Top 100
Tecnifibre’s strength is its size: 26 men and 26 women in the top 100. Its team page reads like a roll of honour: Mostafa Asal, Nour ElSherbini, Nouran Gohar and both ElShorbagy brothers. Tennis has a similar leader. In the ATP’s men’s top 100, the two biggest brands, Wilson and Yonex, sponsor 25 players each (Tennisnerd, Aug 2026), about as many as Tecnifibre’s men.
Here is the top of both lists, player by player.
One caution. 22% of the top 100 name no racket on their profile, and they are not a random group: all of the top 10 name one, but only 69% of those ranked 51 to 100 do, and 50% of those ranked 201 to 300. They are younger too, a median age of 24 against 26 for the top 100 as a whole. Any brand that signs young, lower-ranked players is counted short here.
Take-away: Tecnifibre has the biggest team, about a quarter of today’s top 100, with Dunlop and Head next.
Punching Above Their Weight
A big team is one thing; a team of champions is another. Compare each brand’s share of the top 100 with its share of the top 10, and the order changes.
Head has 10% of the top 100 and 30% of the top 10, 3.2 times its share, with Paul Coll and Hania El Hammamy among them. Dunlop has 16% and 35%, 2.1 times, with Orfi, Diego Elias and Mohamad Zakaria. Karakal does it with one player: it sponsors only 4 of the top 100, but one of them is Joel Makin, in the men’s top 10. Tecnifibre’s share of the top 10 (25%) is about the same as its share of the top 100. Harrow goes the other way: 8% of the top 100, 5% of the top 10.
Why do two smaller brands have so much of the top? They build their teams in different ways.
Head’s looks like a team of sure winners. It is small and top-heavy: 32% of its top 100 players are in the top 10, against 10% of Tecnifibre’s, and with a median age of 31 it is the oldest of the big teams. Its two biggest recent signings came near the top. Paul Coll joined from Eye as world No.5 in 2020, and Hania El Hammamy from Tecnifibre as No.3 in 2025, and both went on to become world No.1 as Head players. Not every Head signing was a sure thing: Amanda Sobhy joined as No.28, on her way back from injury.
Dunlop’s top is younger. Next to established stars such as Diego Elias, a Dunlop player since his junior days (Squash Source), it has two teenagers in the top 10, Amina Orfi and Mohamad Zakaria. When Dunlop signed Ali Farag in 2015 he was world No.33; he became No.1. Dunlop has bought proven stars too: Ramy Ashour came as No.2 in 2010, Nour El Tayeb as No.8 in 2017. Below its stars, Dunlop’s team thins out: only 6% of its top 100 players are ranked 26 to 50, against 24% ranked 11 to 25.
Tecnifibre spreads its team across the whole list, 29% of it between 26 and 50 and 44% between 51 and 100. It signed Mostafa Asal as No.21 in 2020, long before he reached No.1.
We know the signing date only for the stars who changed brand, and they point both ways, so this is a pattern rather than proof. But the teams themselves fit it: Head’s is old and top-heavy, Dunlop’s has young stars at the top, and Tecnifibre’s runs deep.
Take-away: Head and Dunlop have two or three times their share of the top 10: Head with an older team of proven winners, Dunlop with young stars already at the top; Tecnifibre’s team is spread across the rankings.
A Country’s Racket
Where a player comes from says a lot about who sponsors them. Of the 378 players in today’s top 300 who name a racket, Egypt has the most, 59, and 49% of them are Tecnifibre players. Tecnifibre’s lead is in large part an Egyptian one: 37% of its players in the top 100 are Egyptian, and since 2000 41% of Egypt’s World Tour titles went to a Tecnifibre player, against 24% to a Dunlop one.
Of the eight countries, France is the most loyal: 63% of its players are with Tecnifibre, a French brand founded in 1979 (Wikipedia). In Malaysia, 59% are with Dunlop, Sivasangari Subramaniam, Eain Yow Ng and Aifa Azman among them, and in Australia 44% are with Karakal. England is the most mixed: its biggest sponsor, Dunlop, has only 28% of its players.
Take-away: Sponsors follow countries: Egypt and France are Tecnifibre’s, Malaysia is Dunlop’s, and much of Tecnifibre’s lead is built on Egypt.
Who Lifts the Trophies
The top 10 changes every month; titles stay won. Since 2000, Dunlop’s players have won 26% of the 1,249 World Tour titles, Tecnifibre’s 22%. At the biggest events, the World Championship, Platinum and Gold, it is closer still: 162 to 156.
The lines show three eras. Prince’s players had their best year in 2008, with 18 titles, the years of Nicol David and Ramy Ashour. Tecnifibre’s took over in the 2010s and peaked in 2022 with 31: since 2015 they have won 33% of all titles, the era of ElSherbini, Gohar and the ElShorbagys. Over the last 12 months, Dunlop’s players are back in front, 28 of the 78 titles to Tecnifibre’s 21, led by Orfi and Elias.
Take-away: Dunlop’s players have won the most titles since 2000, Tecnifibre’s the most since 2015, and over the last year the lead has swung back to Dunlop.
The Big Finals
When two brands meet in the final of a big event, one sponsor gets the trophy photo. Since 2015, a Tecnifibre player and a Dunlop player have met in 72 finals at the biggest events, more than any other pairing.
Tecnifibre’s players won 56% of those finals, 67% against Head’s and 65% against Harrow’s. Head’s players have the edge on Dunlop’s, 16 finals to 14.
For a sponsor, the best final is one it cannot lose. Of the 300 finals at the biggest events since 2015, 26% were between two players of the same brand, and 53 of those, 18% of all the big finals, were Tecnifibre against Tecnifibre. 27 of them were Nour ElSherbini against Nouran Gohar: a whole rivalry played out between two Tecnifibre players. In roughly one big final in six, Tecnifibre had the champion before a ball was struck.
Take-away: In the finals that matter most, Tecnifibre’s players have beaten every other big brand’s more often than not, and in about one in six both finalists were Tecnifibre’s.
One-Star Brands
Some brands have a deep team of winners; others built their record on one player.
David Palmer won 70% of Black Knight’s titles since 2000, Borja Golan 67% of Eye’s and Nicol David 44% of Prince’s. At the other end, Dunlop’s titles came from 40 different champions, and its most successful, Ali Farag, won only 12% of them.
Take-away: Dunlop’s record rests on the deepest team; for the smaller brands, signing one star made their name.
The Rackets of the World No.1s
Titles come and go in a week; the No.1 ranking shows who held the top for months at a time. Here the brand that has all but vanished from today’s lists comes first.
Counting the men’s and the women’s No.1 together, Prince’s players held the top spot for 31% of the weeks since 2000: Nicol David’s long reign, Peter Nicol, Ramy Ashour and James Willstrop. Tecnifibre’s follow with 28% (ElSherbini, Mohamed ElShorbagy, Gohar, Asal), then Dunlop’s with 25% (Ali Farag, Amr Shabana, Gregory Gaultier, Nick Matthew). Today Prince sponsors just 6 players in the top 100.
Take-away: Prince’s players held the No.1 spot longest since 2000: a sponsor is only as strong as the players it signs, and players move.
When Stars Change Sponsor
Players move between sponsors more than fans may notice. Among the stars we checked, 14 switches have a full year of matches on either side: Nicol David to Prince in 2005, Ali Farag from Prince to Dunlop in 2015, Mostafa Asal from Head to Tecnifibre in 2020, Hania El Hammamy from Tecnifibre to Head in 2025.
In 11 of the 14 cases, the player’s Elo rating was higher a year after the switch than around the time of it (some switch dates are approximate). That says something about when sponsors make their offers, or when players can ask for more: most changes came on the way up. It says nothing about the rackets themselves.
Take-away: Stars mostly change sponsor while they are rising: brands sign players in form.
Signing the Next Stars
If players move on the way up, the brands that sign them young have the best chance at the next champion. Dunlop has the youngest team: 36% of its top 100 players are under 23, with a median age of 25.
Orfi, Zakaria, Anahat Singh and Adam Hawal are all still teenagers, and all Dunlop players; three of them are already in the top 20. Tecnifibre has more teenagers in the top 100 (6 to Dunlop’s 5) and the most players under 23, 17. Head’s team is the oldest: only 5% of its players are under 23, and their median age is 31, with Coll and El Hammamy at its head.
Prince once had the best players in the world and now has almost none. Today’s leading brands know how quickly that can happen, and the race for the next Orfi is already under way.
Take-away: Dunlop has the young stars at the top, Tecnifibre the most young players coming through; Head’s team is the oldest.
About the Data
A player’s racket here is a sponsorship: this article counts which brands sign the best players and makes no claim that any racket helps a player play better. Each player’s brand is the racket named on their player profile, with the spellings joined (“Prince O3 Speedport Black” is Prince). The profile shows only today’s racket, so for the stars who changed sponsor we dated each switch from signing news, the brands’ team pages and tournament equipment reports. Nicol David, for example, was a Prince player when she won her first World Open in 2005 (report) and moved to Wilson in 2017. Some of those dates are approximate. Where no source names a star’s earlier brand (Karim Darwish before he joined Head in 2009), those years count as no racket listed; any other player who changed sponsor without a public record counts for today’s brand over their whole career.
Titles are World Tour events (PSA and WSA, Copper up to the World Championship) since 2000: before that, most champions name no racket. Since 2000, 96% of the 1,249 titles went to a player who names one. The weeks at No.1 count each ranking list’s No.1 until the next list, the men’s and women’s lists added together. The ratings in the switches are the Squash Stats Elo ratings.
Over to You
Which brand will sponsor the next world No.1?