Image courtesy of Gotoenter at English Wikipedia
A sport that appeared dead (or maybe you didn’t even realize it was alive back in the early 2000s) has been resurrected, thanks to social media and some big-time bucks from the likes of NBA All-Star Blake Griffin and entrepreneurial giant Gary Vaynerchuk.
SlamBall, a contact sport that combines basketball and football with trampoline, generated new hype via the #BringBackSlamBall” social media campaign, and the game’s original founder is downright ecstatic.
“It’s an incredible feeling to be back, and especially by popular demand,” Mason Gordon, one of the people who launched the sport in 2002, told FrontOfficeSports.com. “I want to thank SlamBall’s persistent and passionate fans for making this comeback possible and our investors for helping make the dream real. This is a true Cinderella story — only with helmets, pads, and trampolines.”
As EliteSportsNY.com reports, directly from an official announcement: “The professional league will officially ‘bounce off’ in July with a six-week series in Las Vegas to be followed by a seventh playoff week. Distribution discussions are underway, and a docuseries is in development from Mike Tollin’s MSM [Mandalay Sports Media], the Emmy award-winning producer of The Last Dance. … The revived league will make its debut in a Las Vegas venue with eight corporate-owned teams competing LIVE in a six-week regular season and one-week of playoffs. Highly interactive touring stops will follow in domestic and international markets.”
The sport’s return was first announced last summer, and its founders now are talking with potential television, streaming and social media partners, according to CNBC.com.
Tom Penn, a former NBA and MLS executive and now a SlamBall partner, told SportsBusinessJournal.com that the sport will “go on tour to various hotbed markets around the world where SlamBall has a following and can go in the way that the ATP brings a tennis tournament into town.”
“We see a lot of organic interest in the sport coming back realizing that it’s perfectly suited for today’s sports fan,” Penn added. “It’s a real-life video game with real competition, skill and daredevil mentality.”
The original SlamBall aired on Spike TV for two seasons in 2002 and 2003, with a third season in 2008 that was televised on the NBC Sports Network and, oddly (or maybe not), Cartoon Network; CBS aired the championship game. Games were played in multiple countries by teams with names like Rumble, Mob, Slashers, Bouncers, and Diablos.
In 2010, CNBC.com slotted SlamBall on its list of “seven of America’s most awesomely bad failed leagues” alongside the first incarnations of the XFL and the USFL, the Women’s United Soccer Association and the United Professional Softball League.
Rules of the game
So how, exactly, do you play SlamBall? Well, RulesOfSport.com — which calls the game “one of the world’s most exciting and dynamic sports” — describes SlamBall as played on a traditional basketball court with four trampolines in front of each net, and the court is surrounded by a clear acrylic sheet like those used in ice hockey. Games are four quarters, each lasting six minutes; halftime is 10 minutes. Scoring is similar to basketball (with two-point and three-point shots), and a 15-second shot clock is in place.
Here’s more from the website:
In SlamBall, there are four players on each team and three official positions:
• Stopper: This is the defensive player in the team and is primarily there to stop the opposition from scoring. The Stopper will rarely be seen in offense because of the rapid nature of the game, an attacking team m[a]y need to defend their own net within a mere second or two.
• Handler: A Handler is effectively the midfield player and is the main ball handler of the team, moving the ball from defense to attack and organi[z]ing attacking opportunities. Handlers will also help out [o]n defense too.
• Gunner: The Gunner is the out-and-out attacking player [o]n the team and is solely tasked with scoring baskets and not with defensive duties.
Teams are free to use their players in any combination of these positions such as one gunner, two handlers and one stopper or two stoppers, one handler and one gunner.
Also: Showboating, apparently, is encouraged.
Check out this “best of” montage of clips on Twitter from SlamBall’s first incarnation to see what we mean.
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