Teqball is one of the fastest growing sports in the world and the foundation of it in Europe and South America is seeping down towards Australia, where the sport is slowly but surely reaching the mainstream.
The Australian Teqball Federation (ATF) established in 2022 by President Jarred Bester and Vice President Shannon Bester has made a mark on the football scene in Australia very quickly with their portfolio of partners.
The ATF have secured partnerships with A-League clubs Brisbane Roar, Western United, Adelaide United and the Western Sydney Wanderers whilst also recently adding Football South Australia with a driving ambition to create a competitive scene that will eventually tune out some of the world’s best Teqball athletes.
In a chat with Soccerscene, ATF President Jarred Bester discusses the motivation to launch the federation, the ambition to become an Olympic sport and the popularity of the sport booming on social media.
The Australian Teqball Federation was established in 2022, a lot later than the rest of the world, where did the motivation to launch the federation come from initially?
For myself and Shannon (Vice-President) we’ve been involved in football for a long time. I’m an accredited coach and worked in football at various levels, Shannon & I have kids involved in sport, so we’ve always had that involvement & passion for football.
It would have been early 2022 where we got in touch with the manufacturer of the tables which is Teqball, as we were seeking equipment to support with athlete development. Our approach, wanting to know when Teqball was coming to Australia, they put us in touch with the International Teqball Federation (FITEQ, Fédération Internationale de Teqball), to assist with our enquiry as to “where can we play the sport” and at that time there was no iteration of Teqball in Australia. We started probing and asking the question, well “what would it take to get Teqball into Australia?”
We pretty much pushed the boat out to them to say we would be willing to help support bringing the sport into the country and they obliged and said they were keen to establish a federation in Australia. We pretty much put our hands up to be the ones to help get it off the ground.
One of the main goals on the website is Education and Training, comparing that with your current partnerships in the A-League and with the state federations, how will you implement that to grow the sport?
The remit of the federation is for the exposure of the sport, development and governance of the sport as the governing body essentially.
The partnerships we have with the A-Leagues club is from that promotional perspective because obviously they’ve got the member base and viewership of people that know football and Teqball is really closely related to football, there’s a lot of transferrable skills there.
From the perspective of the partnership with Football South Australia, that’s the training and education side. We are working with them at the moment to deliver courses for coaches and referees to bring that skill set up because to build a framework that’s going to support this sport going into the future, you have to have coaches and officials.
That’s what that partnership is really based upon, it’s giving access to the sport and the governance of the sport to coaches and referees to underpin what we’re trying to do with the development side of it, eventually creating athletes to represent Australia which goes back to our ultimate goal as the international federation across the world is to create an Olympic sport.
That’s the ultimate goal and there is all these steps we need to take in between to get to that point, and these are the foundation points.
The Olympic goal was mentioned on the website, and it talked about establishing competitive leagues, tournaments and national championships. How is the competitive Teqball scene in Australia and how quickly is it growing?
In Australia, the Teqball competitive scene doesn’t yet exist, but we are working with a lot of clubs to try and establish grassroots clubs. We’re talking to clubs in Victoria, South Australia or New South Wales that are grassroots or NPL clubs and talking to them about establishing a Teqball club which we can then start to partner with the state federations.
We are currently fielding expressed interest in establishing a state-based Teqball federation which will be responsible for developing competitions in each state and then we can have state-run competitions, we can have national-run competitions (state vs state) and ultimately for us to be able to then start selecting athletes to represent Australia at the Teqball World Championships.
There are established leagues in other countries where, as you can tell, we’re the newest federation to come on the scene, so we’re sort of trying to build that grassroots level of Teqball to eventually go to state and national based competitions then put athletes forward for international competitions as well.
Teqball hasn’t quite hit the mainstream in Australia just yet. What about the sport is so entertaining and enticing for new audiences?
Teqball is the fastest growing sport in the world, it was established only 12 years ago and it’s now one of the biggest sports that has been taken on by new participants internationally.
Obviously, the world game being football, this is a sport that has many transferrable skills, it has been used as a training tool to help develop athletes, even in the elite sense there are many international clubs that use Teqball to help their players refine their touch and develop their ability to weigh their passes and things like that. It also is great for kids to help develop them with those hidden learnings where they’re having fun playing the sport but they’re learning and developing their skillset at the same time.
Where Teqball has a great niche is on social media, it’s an attractive sport to look at when it’s played at the very highest level, the technicality in it is amazing.
You have sports that are constantly trying to refine and create a more condensed, exciting version of their sport. AFL had the AFLX for a little while, Cricket has T20 that’s a condensed version with a bit more excitement, and Teqball is like that from its inception. Teqball is an exciting sport, you watch it, and you see some of the flair that athletes in the sport have, it’s super attractive from a social media perspective.
When you also have Ronaldo, Messi, Neymar all playing the sport and finding it fun and entertaining on top of the millions and millions of impressions if you use the hashtags around the sport of Teqball. It’s an engaging and technical sport with a flair aspect that is big on social media like TikTok and Instagram, which is a huge driver in its increase in popularity.
