Across the globe, there are far more sports available to play than appear on cable TV. For example, one of the most recent inventions to take the country by storm (and surprise) is pickleball, a variant of tennis played on a smaller court with a plastic racket. It has a lower net to increase accessibility. It’s also been cited in noise complaints – the bats hit the balls 25 decibels louder than a tennis racket would.
Dig deeper, and you might find yourself faced with cheeserolling and kayaking in giant pumpkins. Rugby union and rugby league are two shades of the same coin, while underwater hockey – Octopush – takes the classic field game to the bottom of swimming pools.
Less physical activities, like table games, have seen experimentation, too. People who play roulette online can choose from both multiball and multiwheel variants, including Three-Wheel Roulette. Similarly, blackjack comes in “lightning” formats. These offer much shorter rounds.
Now for the kicker: soccer, one of the world’s oldest sports, is surprisingly responsive to change – and a new game called OmegaBall expands soccer beyond its century-long canon.
“Ten Times more Scoring”
OmegaBall is a chaotic take on soccer that’s best explained in numbers. It has three goals and three teams of five players. It’s designed as a less “strict” mode of soccer, where sometimes complex extra rules, like offside and set pieces, are abandoned for the sake of keeping the game moving.
It’s played on a circular pitch instead of the classic rectangle, occupying half the area of the field used by its inspiration. Games are much shorter than soccer, resembling the structure of NBA games. OmegaBall is played over three periods of 13 minutes.
OmegaBall is a recent invention of Anthony Dittmann, who appeared on CBS Mornings earlier this year to introduce the sport. He appeared with Ricky Lopez-Espin, a former US soccer pro (Fort Lauderdale, Lansing Ignite) turned OmegaBall “analyst”.
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Dittman explained that OmegaBall games have “ten times” more scoring than traditional soccer, and that dropping the offside rule was the “catalyst” for creating the game. Overall, the sport’s rule changes are a reaction to Dittmann’s frustration at frequent stoppages in soccer.
A Deliberate Effort
Dittman hinted that OmegaBall’s creation was a deliberate effort to influence the future of sport in the United States, and that conversations passed over baseball and American football first. To that end, Dittman engaged with former colleagues from ESPN.
Overall, the “north-south” or end-to-end playing style of field games was the aspect that Dittman found most unlikeable about soccer.
While the game is still relatively unknown (even online), OmegaBall has established male and female competitions. Orange Crush won the very first women’s OmegaBall Championships in March 2022. Team Smoke claimed the men’s title.
OmegaBall is mostly shown as highlight reels on YouTube. The game has reportedly attracted interest from the Fox Network and Caffeine TV in the past. For now, OmegaBall claims a quest to expand worldwide. Its visibility even in the US might pose a hurdle for the sport’s aspirations, however, as even the names of the teams is a hard-won discovery.
