About SPLASH!

SPLASH!

Overview

SPLASH! is the trade media brand of the Australian swimming pool and spa industry, centred on SPLASH! magazine and its website, splash.online. Published six times a year, the magazine serves the professional "wet industry" — pool builders, retailers, service technicians, equipment suppliers, aquatic centre operators, swim schools, specifiers and regulators in Australia and New Zealand — with industry news, technical features, product coverage and business advice. The brand is owned by SPASA Australia, the national peak body for the swimming pool and spa industry, which acquired it in August 2017; the magazine is also the official publication of the SPLASH! Pool & Spa Trade Show, the industry's major exhibition, staged in 2026 at the Gold Coast Convention and Exhibition Centre. In October 2026 the website was publishing fresh news and video content several times a week, and the magazine itself had reached Edition 167 (released 30 July 2026), with Edition 168 in production — clear evidence of a title in current, active operation.

History

SPLASH! was first published in 1998, the same year its companion trade show began; the magazine marked its 150th edition in 2023, which it noted was its 26th year of publication. For most of its life the title was published by The Intermedia Group in association with Interpoint Events, which organised the SPLASH! trade shows in Australia and New Zealand; under publisher Simon Cooper it grew from a magazine into a broader media brand that included the SPLASH! Trade Directory — nicknamed the Blue Pages, first launched in 2006, taken online in 2008 and published in print until 2012 — and an Asian joint-venture show, Piscine SPLASH! Asia, run with France's Piscine Global. In August 2017 the Swimming Pool & Spa Association of Australia (SPASA Australia) acquired the SPLASH! brand — both the magazine and the trade show — from The Intermedia Group and Interpoint Events. Announcing the deal, SPASA chairman Lynley Papineau said the magazine and show would operate exactly as before under a seamless transition, with editorial independence maintained and the two former owners continuing to oversee publication and the show under consultancy and management arrangements. Key staff, including managing editor Chris Maher and national sales manager Karen Jaques, remained in place, and the title has continued on the same six-editions-a-year cycle since, passing its 160th edition in 2025 and reaching Edition 167 in July 2026.

Programming and Content

The magazine's content is built around the working needs of the pool and spa trade. Regular coverage includes industry and association news; regulatory and safety reporting, such as SPASA policy manager Ben Makepeace's updates on pool safety reform, warranty schemes and workplace exposure standards for chlorine; technical features on water treatment, sanitation, pumps, filtration, heating and new technologies such as robotic cleaning and aerial pool measurement; construction and design case studies, including the winning projects from the SPASA Awards of Excellence and the National Pool of the Year; retail and business advice on marketing, selling a business and customer loyalty; and profiles of industry people. Long-serving contributor Veda Dante writes many of its feature stories. The brand's video arm, SPLASH! TV, publishes interviews recorded on the trade show floor and in the field — in October 2026 it featured product interviews with Fluidra, Daisy Pool Covers, Europe Imports and Compass Pools — while a fortnightly newsletter keeps subscribers current between editions. The SPLASH! Trade Directory, now wholly online, lists hundreds of suppliers (626 at the time of its relaunch on the current platform, according to the publisher) across the pool, spa and aquatics industries. The title has also run industry awards, including the SPLASH! Environmental Awards recognising sustainable pool design.

Audience and Reach

SPLASH! is read by businesses across the whole pool and spa supply chain. Its media kits describe an audience of builders, retailers, service and maintenance firms, commercial aquatic operators, swim schools and teachers, landscape architects, certifiers, engineers and inspectors, and note that the magazine is distributed to exhibitors and attendees of the SPLASH! trade shows in Australia and New Zealand. The audience figures the title itself has published are its own: its 2021 media kit, citing emma (Enhanced Media Metrics Australia) readership data from 2017 to 2020, claimed distribution of more than 8,000 copies and approximately 33,600 readers per issue, with the largest shares of readers in New South Wales (31 per cent) and Queensland (25 per cent), followed by Victoria/Tasmania (16 per cent), Western Australia (9 per cent), South Australia/Northern Territory (8 per cent), New Zealand (7 per cent) and overseas (4 per cent). Those figures are several years old and are the publisher's own claims; no newer independently audited figure was sighted for this profile. What can be said independently is that the brand remains the central media property of its industry: its trade show is described by the title as the biggest pool and spa event in the southern hemisphere, and its August 2026 edition was reported by the magazine as a record-breaking expo.

Digital Presence

The brand's digital home is splash.online, a news site that publishes well beyond the magazine's six-edition cycle: in the weeks before this profile was written it carried daily or near-daily news, product stories and SPLASH! TV videos, including coverage of the record-breaking 2026 SPLASH! Trade Expo (27 August 2026) and the Australasian Pool & Spa Awards. Each new edition of the magazine is released as a free digital edition on the site, with an online archive of past editions, and readers can subscribe to have the digital magazine and the fortnightly newsletter emailed to them. The site also hosts the online SPLASH! Trade Directory, event information and the brand's social channels. The digital operation was relaunched on its current platform in late 2018, when the title's own year-in-review noted "the launch of the new SPLASH! website, complete with SPLASH!TV and many other great features."

Ownership and Organisation

SPLASH! is owned by SPASA Australia, the Swimming Pool & Spa Association of Australia, the industry's national peak body, which bought the brand from The Intermedia Group and Interpoint Events in August 2017, a transaction SPASA said was made possible by the merger of its Queensland, South Australian and New South Wales/ACT associations. Under the arrangements put in place at the acquisition, Intermedia and Interpoint continued to manage the magazine and the trade show under contract, with Simon Cooper of Interpoint Events remaining managing director and publisher of SPLASH!, Simon Grover leading The Intermedia Group, and editorial independence expressly preserved. Chris Maher has been the magazine's managing editor since before the change of ownership and remains its editorial face, conducting the SPLASH! TV interviews published in October 2026; Karen Jaques has served as national sales manager across the magazine, website, newsletter, directory and trade shows. Advertising enquiries for the magazine are handled through SPASA, with the association's David Stennett listed as the advertising contact in the title's media kits.

Contact and Availability

SPLASH! magazine is published six times a year and is available by subscription; the digital edition of each issue is free to read at splash.online, where readers can also subscribe to the digital magazine and the fortnightly newsletter, browse the archive of past editions and search the SPLASH! Trade Directory. Print distribution has historically been to industry subscribers and to exhibitors and attendees of the SPLASH! trade shows, which are held in Australia and New Zealand, with the flagship SPLASH! Pool & Spa Trade Show staged on the Gold Coast. The magazine's advertising contact, as published in its media kits, is David Stennett of SPASA Australia (david@spasa.com.au). News, products and editorial material channel through the website, which also carries the brand's SPLASH! TV video content and links to its social media accounts.