Zorb Football: Past, Present, Future – and Betting?

Unlike many other niche sport games like lacrosse, Z-Football doesn’t have a long and obscure history; it is a genuinely new thing. Zorbs first started to appear in the 90s following the basic hamster ball concept, but zorb football was first seen in 2011 – as a gag. Yes, that’s right. The popular game started as a sketch in a Norwegian show called Golden Goal. Norway may forever remain as the birth cradle of ZF, but it was in the UK and USA where the game truly kicked off after private entrepreneurs liked the idea and started producing zorb footballing gear.

Nowadays, ZF is considered a fast-growing sport, and if you live in a major city, then there are surely matches taking place somewhere near you. The USA even boasts the first official association – the National Association of Bubble Soccer. With local communities sprouting like wildfire and New Zealand getting in on the fun as well, zorb football has been getting more and more public exposure and becoming part of popular culture.

About two years ago, zorb suits were actually used in professional football training. You might have heard about the club that employed them – it was one F. C. Barcelona. You know, the club Messi plays for? There were videos showing the players taking part in a friendly ZF game, with Uruguayan striker Luis Suarez getting the gist of it pretty quickly and focusing on knocking down his team mates. Jimmy Falon, Colin Farrel and Chris Pratt have also been documented donning the zorb suits on national TV, which has greatly helped the sport becoming as popular as it is.

Even though ZF is still considered to be at an infant stage of its development, there are good portents for its future. It is extremely fun for children, but in a way that can carry on to their adult lives while adding a higher degree of competitiveness and tactical nuance. ZF feels quite different from regular football, so it shouldn’t be considered a mere variation – it stands its ground proudly. Organized games are spreading wide, which is aided by the fact that ZF is still not shackled by strictly defined rules and can easily adapt to most of the existing outdoor and indoor football pitches.

There are still some serious steps that remain to be taken. Once a common framework of rules is adopted, then we might just see the emergence of the first professional Z-football teams. Once this happens, then the game will surely be added to the growing betting portfolios of the online bookmakers. As with most sports, the initial betting will be aimed at guessing the winner of a match, with handicaps being a natural modifier that could be added.

Currently, a specific feature of ZF is the fact that it somewhat mitigates the individual skill of the players. Even Messi would be hard-pressed to make his trademark dribbles while wearing a 30-pound zorb! Running or even balancing in the thing can be a challenge, so it is very hard to protect the ball when an opponent rams you at full speed. Qualities like balance, awareness and strength have thus far proven much more valuable in Z-football, which will translate into quite different qualities of the future pro-players that we are likely to see.

The e-Sports betting boom we have seen in recent years might serve as an indication that once zorb-betting starts, it might just escalate quickly.