Breaking down the results of our CoCo Player Survey

Earlier this year, we got to work doing something that was frankly long overdue - we finally put out the first edition of our CoCo Player Survey.

It was an important step forward for us as an organization. After all, ever since our inception, we've been talking the talk. We care about the player community, we value your opinions, we incorporate your feedback, and so forth. But until now, we hadn't yet made a serious, comprehensive effort to get the full scope of those opinions and that feedback. It was time for us to walk the walk.

Now, we're walking it. We finally sent out our inaugural player survey on Feb. 3, and from there, we watched the results gradually trickle in over the course of a few weeks. We got 43 responses in total - a pretty impressive number given that, let's be honest here, answering surveys from brands tends to be pretty annoying and time-consuming. We were pleased to discover that so many people actually care about the CoCo as an organization enough to take a few minutes out of their busy lives and share their thoughts. Sincerely: Thank you, all 43 of you!

What comes next for us is the interesting part - filtering through all of those responses, making sense of all the data, and finding concrete ways that we can actually do things better for the sake of you all, the players. That's going to be a long-term process. We'll probably spend months holding internal discussions and strategizing our next moves, so we can't exactly promise any big changes right away.

But for now, here's what we can do - share the results with you all! Let's dive right into all the questions and answers from the 2025 CoCo Player Survey.

1. When you're considering whether to play a Scrabble tournament, what factors are likely to influence your decision?

Scrabble, much like real estate, is all about location, location, location. Most of the highest-ranking answers to this question were all about where a tournament is, including location convenience (selected by 93% of all respondents), location affordability (56%), and location attractiveness (40%). Other top answers included whether friends are attending (58%), strength of the field (44%), and size of the field (42%).

All of this tracks. When people go about choosing tournaments, they want to go someplace they can realistically go (and enjoy going), and they want to find lots of other Scrabblers there, especially ones they're friendly with. We've always prioritized these things as we've gone about planning our tournament calendar - we try to put tournaments in convenient, fun cities and draw the biggest and best fields that we can. We'll try to keep it up.

2. If you don't play as many tournaments as you'd like to play, what factors prevent you from playing more?

There were four main answers that really stood out here. In order, they were: lack of tournaments in a convenient location (68%), lack of disposable income (37%), lack of vacation days or schedule flexibility (32%), and family obligations (29%). It was eye-opening to see how these numbers broke down.

Of course, if you've got long hours at the office or a busy weekend taking care of your kids, we can't really do much about that. But it was interesting to see that the top two results are both areas where we can help! As for locations, we're really pounding the pavement in 2025 to recruit new directors in new places, and the plan is to broaden access to CoCo tournaments geographically in a major way. As for money matters, we're happy to offer Newcomer Discounts as well as a host of other ways that players can still attend tournaments, even when they're a little strapped for cash.

3. How do you find out about upcoming tournaments?

By far, the two winners here were checking cross-tables.com (84%) and checking the CoCo website (61%). Finishing a distant third, fourth, and fifth place were social media posts from Scrabble organizations (35%), word of mouth (32%), and email (30%).

Well! It's a good thing we've made moves over the last year or so to get all our tournaments up on cross-tables, isn't it? As for our own site, we take pride in having a clean, simple interface that makes it easy for people to browse and quickly find the tournaments they're looking for.

All in all, the key takeaway here is the internet is a powerful thing. We're proud to be, y'know, using it.

4. The CoCo has tried two different models of championship events - co-sponsoring with WGPO (Word Cup 2022 and Word Cup 2024) and running a separate, Collins-only championship (the North American Collins Championship in 2023). If we were to run both events in the same year, which would you be likely to play?

We were pleased to see that both (56%) was the runaway winner here, followed by Word Cup only (27%), neither (10%), and NACC only (7%). Sure - both! Por qué no los dos?

Everyone loves more Scrabble, and I certainly think that in an ideal world, we'd find a way to run both the Word Cup CSW division and a CSW-only championship every year. It's just a matter of finding the time and the money and the volunteer personpower to make it happen. This survey result is definitely an emboldening one. Nearly two-thirds of you would play more NACCs if we had them, so it's probably high time we got to work planning the next one.

5. Where would you like to see a major Scrabble event held? And what's the best time of year for a championship event?

As you might imagine, we got a wide range of responses here. Pretty much every major city you can name got shouted out at least once - New York, Los Angeles, Chicago, Seattle, Toronto, Montreal, you name it. A lot of people made a lot of good points about different locales. For me, probably the three most interesting were:

• L.A. is a major metro area with a ton of people and a ton of Scrabble players. There should really be more Scrabble tournaments there.

• Any major city in the Midwest is a good fit because it's centrally located for everyone in North America to get to.

• There are several big cities in Canada - Toronto, Montreal, Vancouver, etc. - that could really use more of a tournament presence.

All tasty food for thought!

As for when to have major tournaments, the summer months were pretty dominant here, with a smattering of votes for later in the year like October and November, too.

6. Do you prefer open divisions or tournaments with multiple divisions?

The prevailing choice here was "either is fine" (49%), followed by multiple divisions (35%) and opens (16%). So, a fairly well mixed bag.

Which is fine with us. The bottom line is, directors are our lifeblood, and we believe in empowering them to run whatever types of tournaments they enjoy running. When left to their own devices, our pool of directors ends up putting together a pretty good motley mix of different kinds of events. That, in turn, means every player gets to pick and choose the tournaments that are just right for them.

7. What length of tournament would you like to see more of?

The leading vote-getter here was 2- and 3-day weekend tournaments (39%), which is unsurprising - these are the bread and butter of the Scrabble tournament calendar, traditionally. After that, votes went to "more of everything" (34%), followed by longer tournaments (17%) and 1-days (10%).

We hear you on this one, loud and clear. This is definitely something we'll communicate more to directors when we talk to them moving forward - more of all sorts of Scrabble tournaments, yes, but a particular focus on that 2-day and 3-day weekend sweet spot is definitely what would best meet player demand.

8. What forms of communication could the CoCo be using more to better reach you with tournament announcements and other news?

The absolutely dominant choice here was email (83%). Trailing way, way behind were posts on our website (33%), social media (30%), and word of mouth from players and directors (19%).

Fortunately, we’ve already taken a big step forward here - we launched an email newsletter this year. We'll do everything we can to plug upcoming tournaments in it. Check your inbox, first Friday of every month.

While we're here, I'd be remiss if I didn't shout out the poor anonymous soul who wrote in:

"I'm losing faith in social media so email may remain my favorite method. I actually really miss the predigital era when everything was physical cross-tables and handwritten letters. (Get off my lawn.)"

Same, anonymous. Big, big same.

9. What do you think about directing tournaments?

Leader in the clubhouse here was "no thanks, not for me" (46%), followed by "I'm already a director" (34%), then "I'm definitely interested" (12%) and "I've thought about it a little" (7%).

If you add up those last three responses, you get a majority of people who either direct or are willing to consider directing! Which is pretty awesome. And it was also nice to see one write-in that simply said "I really appreciate anyone who is willing to organize and direct a tournament" because yes, yes indeed, all of y'all who direct are very much deserving of appreciation.

To anyone out there who's reading this and wants to learn more about becoming a director: Hit us up! We would love to chat with you.

10. Do you have any thoughts on what the CoCo can do to attract new players? And similarly, do you have thoughts on how we can retain players whose interest in Scrabble is flagging or win back those who have quit altogether?

Of course, a wide range of answers here, and lots of interesting ones. A few highlights, in my book:

• Financial incentives, such as stipends to cover travel costs and entry fees

• Leveraging social platforms like YouTube and Discord to connect with new players

• Doing things to reduce the barrier to entry skill-wise, like allowing cheat sheets

There's a lot for us to chew on! And we'll probably spend all year chewing. We appreciate everyone's ideas.

11. Do you have any thoughts on what the CoCo can do to make life easier for directors?

I'd say the responses here broke down into a few main categories:

• Compensation. Multiple people mentioned that they'd like to see directors be paid at least a little something for all the work they do.

• More training.

• Better technology tools for running tournaments.

Another response here that I found interesting read "Share experiences - what's worked and what hasn't." It's thought provoking - there are probably a lot of people out there who don't know much about what directing entails because they haven't gotten enough detail firsthand from people who have done it. More transparency in this area is a good idea. I wonder what we can do here - there's probably something.

12. Do you have any other thoughts you'd like to share?

The catch-all question at the end caught all sorts of things. Here's a smattering.

• "Blitz tourneys and online tourneys are important for the growth of the game. Let's do those" - agreed! We're all for running fun events like this.

• "Social interaction is what keeps many involved. Attempt to break up cliques and welcome others, especially out-of-towners, to join for social gatherings" - agreed here, too. The ideal CoCo tournament is one where every player, from the most regular regular to the newest newbie, feels equally included. There's only so much we can do organization-wide to force this to happen, but that's absolutely the vibe we're trying to put out into the world.

• "Would consider being a CoCo director - what has to be done?" - first of all, tell us who you are! This survey was anonymous! Whoever you are, possible new director, if you're out there reading this, we'd love to hear from you.

• "Thank you for all you do for CSW and Scrabble!" - hey, you're welcome!

All in all, we're really grateful for everyone who took the time to respond to this player survey. We've come away with heaps and heaps of valuable insights from you all, the player community, and we could spend years implementing all the great ideas you've given us. We'll get started today.

And hey - if you want to share with us even more of your ideas, you're always welcome. The inbox remains open.