4 April

Some interesting statistics/info regarding table soccer ("foosball"), both nationally and internationally...

In response to demands from tournament and league players worldwide who actively sought increased coordination, organization, standardization and both official and public recognition of table soccer as not just a game, but as a professional, competitive sport, the International Table Soccer Federation (ITSF), was founded in France just over three years ago. Since then, the ITSF has gained 35 Member Countries and has established player contact in nearly every country recognized by the United Nations.

The ITSF World Tour this year features 36 sanctioned tour tournaments including the World Cup of Table Soccer and five World Series class events, with tens of thousands of participants spanning five continents. Each of the World Series events is played on a different "ITSF Official Table," the manufacturers of which include Brunswick's Tornado Table Soccer, Jupiter's Euro-Soccer, Garlando, Bonzini, and Roberto-Sport -- the "big five" in the industry (all having been in the table soccer business for over 30 years apiece). Of these most popular foosball tables in the world, approximately 50% of the National Teams competing at the World Cup in Hamburg, Germany have chosen Tornado as their "home" table. (Of note: the American-made Tornado table has set the standard for playability by players worldwide regardless of their styles of play, such that over the last few years nearly all of the other leading manufacturers have made modifications to their tables to play more like Tornado.)

The ITSF World Cup of Table Soccer, to be held in Hamburg, Germany May 24-28, 2006, is expected to draw thousands of spectators, not the least of which should include many of the over 20,000 news-sport media press corps that will already be on station in Hamburg to cover the Soccer World Cup. ITSF, together with its host country partner, the German Table Soccer Federation (DTFB) hopes to significantly leverage the connection between the two events and highlight table soccer as a professional sport with news media very hungry for a unique story angle. Media from several nations have already been documenting the progress of selection, training and other preparations of their national teams.

The U.S. National Team, widely considered the leading contender to win the World Cup of Table Soccer in May, features a competition-proven group of seven men and three women from throughout the United States who hold a combined total of over 20 World Champion titles, over 100 national-level titles, and countless regional/state titles. Team members traveling to the World Cup are: Louis Cartwright (NV), Dusty Bambenek (OH), Lotus Leong-Chesborough (WA), Stayce Fowler (IA), Dave Gummeson (MN), Robert Mares (CO), Terry Moore (IL), Billy Pappas (MA), Tom Yore (FL), and Adrian Zamora (CA). Team coach-manager is Alan Cribbs (NC).

Additional items of interest:

Table Soccer skills and tactics are now taught as a course of study in the athletic curriculums of numerous schools in China and India, and it is officially recognized as a sport by the governments of Argentina, China, Italy and France. Italy has a 24/7, 365-day a year dedicated table soccer sport training hall, while China has state funding, coaches, tournaments, AND a training facility in the Guangzhou Olympic Center. Many countries like Germany, Belgium, Italy, France and Luxembourg have as many as 10,000 players in their National Leagues , while the United States has had organized tournaments and pro tours with as much as $1 million in prizes for over 30 years.

Table soccer has been featured in movies, to include two upcoming documentaries; television, in everything from ESPN to the popular show "Friends;" and in television commercials from Pepsi to Right Guard. Tournament and player sponsors worldwide have included Pepsi, Schlitz, Carlsberg, Paul Mitchell, Dell, Microsoft, IBM, and even various clothing manufacturers, among others.

The United States Table Soccer Federation (USTSF) was one of the first member organizations to affiliate with the ITSF. The USTSF is coordinated by an all-volunteer staff of veteran professional player-promoters: Larry Davis, Executive Director (CO), Kathy Brainard (WA), Bruce Nardoci (NC), and Jim Waterman (MD). The USTSF acts as the United States' liaison between the International Table Soccer Federation and the various USA-based foosball organizations (e.g., the United States Table Soccer Association (USTSA), Bonzini USA, Independent Foosball Promotions (IFP), etc.) as well as all the manufacturers and the United States Olympic Committee.

The USTSF also provides professional press release services for ITSF-sanctioned tournaments in the United States. Some statistics on USTSF's last press release distribution are below, and are provided as a bit of additional documentation of one of the significant benefits/value of ITSF sanctioning (in the form of the press release distribution provided by USTSF) and/or possible media exposure benefits to potential sponsors of tournaments, the U.S. National Team, or individual players. This is a breakdown of statistics from just one of our electronic newswire services in connection with the release of the 2006 International Series Tour Kickoff tournament in March. These numbers are after about two weeks, and do not reflect additional results that may have been obtained via USTSF's other newswire service, search engine services, the direct emails, or the direct mail press releases:

PRESS RELEASE STATISTICS

BASIC STATISTICS

Statistic Count/Description

Reads 246,054* / This number tells you how many times your press release was accessed ('hits") from our site and other distribution points where we have the ability to measure a click through. This number does not include the number of journalists who have received your release through email. In addition there are online distribution points that we currently have no ability to track.

Estimated Pickup 743 / This number estimates the number of times your press release was picked up by a media outlet. This does not tell you how many times your story appears in the media. It simply attempts to estimate media interest of your release.

Prints 60 / This is the number of times that someone has printed your press release. We measure this by the number of times that the "printer friendly version" link is pressed. In reality, only a small percentage of users actually click this link before printing a release.

USTSF press releases target local, state, national and international news and sports wire-services, websites, television stations, radio stations, newspaper and magazine media, and local convention, tourism and chamber of commerce organizations; recreation and amusement industry trade magazines and media; national and international sports organizations; local, state and national soccer organizations and media; universities, pool halls, sports bars and amusement machine distributors, operators and locations in the area of the promoted tournament. Of interest, you may also want to try a cut-and-paste of the press release headline (above) and use it to do a search on almost any internet search engine (try yahoo news, excite, dogpile, metacrawler, webcrawler, lycos news, msnbc, etc). By also using various search engine services, we get highest placement on internet search inquiries, which means getting your tournament information into the hands of millions of people worldwide at a substantially faster rate (than if it was solely posted on a website, for example).

* Note: Total views ('hits') for the last three press releases exceeded 700,000 (with worldwide media "pickup" of over 1,000 outlets) indicating an exceptional untapped interest in the sport of table soccer. USTSF first began wire service/search engine enhanced distribution with the IFP SuperBowl of Foosball in January, but will be using these additional distribution techniques from now on...

Update 12/18/2007:

Thanks to the ITSF and in particular the United States Table Soccer Federation (USTSF), foosball has received more public and coin industry media attention in the last two years than was received in the entire seven years (beginning to end) of the T.S. Million Dollar Tours -- media coverage that has included recent articles in the New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, SportsIllustrated.com, MSNBC, the Washington Post, and most recently Men’s Health Living, as well as global syndication by Associated Press, among many others. (There's far more listed on the foosball.com forum.) Indeed, at the Hall of Fame Classic last March, there was more media present than any other tournament Valley has run in 35 years, with stories during the tournament run on a number of local Vegas television channels in Vegas papers. The same has been true for many of the USTSF/ITSF sanctioned tour events all year.

This kind of media coverage generates exposure, both to the public and the press itself, which in turn draws the attention of potential sponsors, like Corona Light. But it's not just big companies that want exposure in return for sponsorship, since any individual player could show this amount of local, national and international media coverage to obtain their own individual sponsor and the sponsor would likely be delighted to get something more out of their investment than "give me money and I'll wear your logo on my shirt." It was done by countless foosball players in the 1970s, and there's no reason players shouldn't be doing it now, while media coverage (and sponsor interest) is strong.

Very respectfully,
Larry "Euro-Foosin" Davis
Executive Director, USTSF
larry.davis @ ustsf.foosball.com
www.foosball.com/ustsf