What is OmegaBall? The three-team, circular pitch soccer game sweeping the USA

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FT Desk

Over the course of the World Cup, we saw a raft of casual soccer fans tuning into the tournament and a lot of the discourse online involved the use of the offside rule, which many of those fans were not familiar with.

One man who previously wondered what the game would be like without offside was Anthony Dittmann, one of the creators of the new form of soccer known as OmegaBall.

"I thought, 'What if you got rid of offside?'" he told ESPN.

"'Would I change the game? Would it make it more exciting?' Almost in my own naivety about the rule itself.

"But I thought, 'What if the game was more circular, less linear? Would that negate the need for the offside rule?'"

It's not just the offsides that are different in OmegaBall, though, as it is played on a circular pitch and features three teams instead of two, with three sets of goals positioned around the circumference of the playing area.

There are also no corner kicks, which is aimed at lessening the stoppages. If the ball goes out of play, it resumes with a kick-in from the closest touchline marker. When a goal is scored, the goalkeeper who conceded has just five seconds to resume play, ensuring the action continues as quickly as possible

Each team typically consists of five players, including a goalkeeper. Matches are divided into three 13-minute periods, with the first public competitions taking place in 2022. Since then, the sport has gained attention through televised events and tournaments and continues to grow in popularity as an innovative alternative to traditional soccer.

Although OmegaBall is a unique take on football, it is not the first version of the sport to involve three sides. During the early 1990s, students in Glasgow, Scotland, experimented with exhibition matches played on a hexagonal pitch.

Later, the concept of three-sided football grew further, with amateur World Cups being held in Sweden in 2014 and Germany in 2017.

In the United States, however, OmegaBall has experienced rapid growth since its inaugural match in California six years ago. The game was created by Dittmann alongside Bob Funk and Jamie Hemann, who worked together to develop the sport's distinctive three-team format.

"We had a small tournament in Southern California in 2022, just collecting a rag-tag bunch of players," Dittman says.

"[We had] ex-Division I soccer players, some ex-pros, and a couple of national team players from other countries who aren't on their national teams anymore.

"We did a tournament and we've really kind of caught fire since.

"We began with eight players on each team and we were like, 'Oof, that was a lot'.

"And then we went to seven players: still too much. Six players: still too much.

"Then once we got to five, we were like, 'Okay, this is good.' It seemed to work well. I think that was really the only thing that we manipulated over time."

Interest in the new version of soccer has spread around the world, with further matches taking place in Spain, Germany, India and Nigeria.

Dittman, a self-confessed casual soccer fan, says the idea came from wondering why Americans don't take to the lower scoring sport of soccer compared to the more popular past times like the NFL and basketball.