Nominal vs present value
Local display: $0.7m · Rebased to 2024 USD via US CPI-U
How the total breaks down
Tournament prize money. British Open and early open-era purses that remained modest.
Exhibitions & club pro income. How squash champions actually paid the rent in the 1970s.
Impact 80
- Made British Open squash a public story beyond club walls
- Proved exhibitions paid when purses could not
- Set the stubborn economics later PSA reformers still fight
Barrington's living was squash's original warning label: fame without fortune. Every later campaign to raise PSA prize money has been an argument against the exhibition-only ceiling he survived.
Barrington's mid-1970s peak looks tiny in any currency — roughly $120,000 then, under $700,000 now — yet it defined squash economics: win the British Open, then hustle exhibitions.