From the pages of Harry Potter, the game of Quidditch has come down from the magical sky to the earthly grounds.
The Birth of ‘Muggle’ Quidditch
In 2005, Xander Manshel and Alex Benepe brought Quidditch to life in Middlebury at Vermont in the United States. As per Benepe’s Speech at TEDxUCLA….
“Now we’re going to 2005 to Middlebury College in Vermont, where I was a freshman. The fourth Harry Potter movie was about to hit theaters and the audiences had already been wowed by depictions of the fantastical flying sport of Quidditch in the first three films. A very common interaction took place over a lunchtime discussion. My friends came up with an idea: what if we tried to play Quidditch in real life?
We developed a simple but bizarre set of rules. For one, you would run around on the field holding a broomstick between your legs with one hand. The quaffle would be a volleyball. The bludger and bats would be simplified into dodge balls. And the snitch — this was the hard part — we decided to make it a person with a tail hanging out the back of their shorts, like flag football.”
This is how the fictional game of Quidditch was adopted in real life and the ‘muggles’ started playing the sport alongside the wizards.
Rules of Quidditch
In real-life Quidditch, The pitch is rectangular rather than oval-shaped as in the fictional game. There are three hoops of varying heights at either end.
A team consists of a minimum of seven players, of which six are always on the pitch. Three of them are chasers, one is the keeper, and the remaining two are the beaters. The seventh player is the seeker who joins each team after 17 minutes of the match.
Most importantly, teams are required to be gender-balanced. Each team may have a maximum of four players who identify as the same gender on the field at one time. This makes the muggle Quidditch one of the few sports that promotes gender equality on the pitch.
Quidditch to Quadball
The real-life Quidditch has been renamed Quadball by the international governing organisation in 2023. Broadly, there are two major reasons behind the change of the name.
Firstly, the name Quidditch is trademarked by Warner Bros., thus, limiting the opportunities for growth, exposure and partnerships.
Secondly, the Harry Potter creator J.K. Rowling has been accused of being transphobic and the international association has cited her “anti-trans positions” as a reason for the change.
The World Cup
The International Quidditch Association, as it was formerly named, organised the first World Cup in July 2012. The tournament was named the “Summer Games” following its unofficial tie-in to the 2012 Summer Olympics.
The tournament was held at Oxford in the United Kingdom as the Olympic Torch was passing through the city. Australia, Canada, France, the UK, and the USA participated in the inaugural edition with USA emerging as the winner.
Since then, there have been four editions of the Quidditch World Cup. The USA won four times while Australia won once.
