Zorb Football: A Brief Introduction

Have you ever watched a group of people playing football or soccer with giant balls around them, leaving only the legs exposed for play? This is called Zorb football and it was invented as a joke by two people in Norway in 2011. The founders are Henrik Elvestad and Johan Golden. Although it started out as a joke, a video went viral in April 2014 in Algund, Italy and it “set the internet on fire.” According to Goole traffic volume, there was a massive spike in the search for this sport from barely no searches to millions of searches within the period of a week. As a result, it gained in popularity and more and more people wanted to play this new interesting, fun, and exciting sport. The craze hit North America, too, but there were several problems. Since the sport was so new, it would become difficult for insurers to underwrite the sport and ensure a proper form of insurance should injuries arise. There were also no industry standards on what constituted a proper bumper ball. As a result of this, in 2014, the National Association of Bubble Soccer (NABS) was established with the goal of resolving these issues. It dealt with problems of the lack of formal game rules, quality equipment, and willing insurers to ensure that the players were adequately insured to play the sport. The NABS has accordingly re-written the book on the sport.

So, now that there is an organisation that oversees this sport, it is time to play it! And you might now be asking how would one play Zorb football? The answer to this question is very simple. Firstly, standard rules of football/soccer apply to the game. The goal is for each team to score a goal in the opposing team’s goal posts and try to score as many goals as possible with the winner being the team with the highest number of goals. The only difference is that full contact is allowed. Since the bumper ball protects the players’ hands from touching anything (as they are inside the ball), it would be very difficult to injure your upper body when playing. You might fall, but your fall will be buffered by the bubble that you are wrapped around. You might get kicked in the shins, but the space created between the players by the bigger bubble ball makes it harder for these types of injuries to occur. Moving on from playing the game to groups that are forming around it, you might be surprised to hear that there are over 35 North American cities (and this figure is growing) which now stock all the necessary equipment you need to play Zorb football. This means that whether you’re playing privately or in a league, you can rent out your equipment and enjoy the game on the pitch with friends and competitors alike. And just to make the game even more exciting, you won’t be surprised that North America has even created a championship called “The Bubble Bowl” where players compete for the Vince Lombubble Trophy in Las Vegas.