It's so silly. Everyone already loves ping pong the moment they try it. It's a viscerally fun sport even for newbies. It's growing every year at the recreational level. It seems to me like the tournament structure needs to be easier to understand, higher stakes, and we need more personalities and entertainment value in the sport. It's not like the last ball change made rallies longer, or made the service game any less mind boggling to newcomers.
I refuse to believe spin and deception is too complicated for new viewers to understand. They don't even need to be able to read the spin themselves to understand it's a factor.
American football is infinitely technical with all its formations and play calling, the rules are confounding at first, sometimes there's no scoring for hours.
Boxing doesn't even look like they're trying if you don't understand how cardiovascularly demanding the sport is, and how you can lose in seconds if you get wild even for a second. It can be very boring when fights go the distance.
But for all these sports, people learn because the commentators explain it, enough viewers have some experience, and people catch on. It feels like people are trying to solve a problem that is not a problem!
>I refuse to believe spin and deception is too complicated for new viewers to understand.
Not everyone approaches sports the same way, and not every sport can be approached in same way, As you noticed, Boxing and Football are far more complex in ruleset. There are a ton of viewer-only sports where no one participates, e.g. hockey, baseball, MMA, weight lifting). These are all power sports. To 80% of their viewers, they are about a culture, atmosphere, and marketing, not about the ruleset.
Table tennis does not have this aura. It's not a sport of power. Even in China, it does not have this aura. Believe it or not, American football will likely eclipse table tennis in China at some point. To normies, it is a parlor sport of speed and trickery. You can try to fight this image, but I think it can only be won by a deeper integration into childrens programs like in Asia. But even then, the appeal of things like Basketball is very hard to compete with.
And the "understanding" part is not about viewership for table tennis either. It's the first time a normie gets "served" on in table tennis. They don't think "wow I want to understand more". They think "wow, that's a cool trick", and it goes into the list of all other tricks they don't have time to learn.
EDIT
And btw, I don't think the "Trickery" label is bad. Pongfinity and Bobrow literally take this angle to promote the sport and I think it's amazing. The issue two front, viewership is only 20% about understanding, and the second is clubs. Clubs are usually a disaster for casuals and no one will admit it. The only ones I feel are a nice gateway are like senior center clubs.
There are even usually some friendly players in many clubs willing to teach. No one has bad intentions, but this ambience is created from multiple things like limit of tables, cliques within the club, inability to bridge skill gap without coaching, and just some weird characters.
I've been to table tennis clubs in 4 countries now, and it's always like this.
> Believe it or not, American football will likely eclipse table tennis in China at some point.
Wait what? Since when is american football popular in China to the point that it will likely eclipse tt at some point ?
Basketball or football, why not, these are already huge in China- but american football?
Yes, I was surprised too, but a lot of people have started to dabble in American football. I have many family there and a lot of classmates. It might have been brought back by people who studied overseas, some college students dive into American culture. I don't know.
But the NFL also sees now that there is some kind of market in China. If they will follow through, I don't know.
>It's growing every year at the recreational level.
Source on that?
>Everyone already loves ping pong the moment they try it.
On the flip side of it, its incredibly complex and not beginner friendly at all once you make the jump from recreational to beginning competitive player. Seen lots of people quit within the first year of this transition
I heard that fact from Matt Hetherington and Max Kogler (one of the founders of ping pod). They were talking about it in an interview. I don't know what data they're coming from but I felt they're credible being in their positions in the sport. They mentioned ping pong is growing in the US overall, but only the recreational market, and basically stagnant at the sport level.
well of course the founder of a startup business predicated on recreational ping pong play is gonna say that, and likely an employee of a table tennis company. but yea wondering what that is based on. i have no doubt that Joola sold more tables during the pandemic but i am curious whether that is sustainable and will continue now that we are done with covid.
its interesting they say that because i would expect the opposite. full time/serious clubs are without a doubt growing in the US and have been for the last decade or so. but at the recreational level, anecdotally i don't see any increase in ping pong tables in parks, gyms, community centers, casual players mentioning that they are playing ping pong recreationally etc. where as for pickleball you see all of the above everywhere across the country.
There is no Sport thats Beginner friendly after some time of playin the level increases and noobs get absolutly washed by veterans no matter which sport.
getting washed by veterans and being non-beginner friendly don't mean the same thing.
pickleball is incredibly beginner friendly (even though a beginner will of course get "washed" by a veteran) and it also happens to be the most rapidly growing sport, likely in large part because of how beginner friendly it is
so...you're wrong lol
One easy solution that I believe can improve viewership is if they made using double sided 2 colored balls the standard competition balls. I think this would really help newbies understand spin a lot better while watching events on TV.
Hey that sounds like a good idea! I'd honestly like that for the sport too. Different spins would still break patterns as much as different placements but it would probably make the serve just slightly less advantageous, which imo it's a little overpowered in this sport. It also would alleviate some of the pressure on accurately calling ball hiding. I feel like it would help new players at the club level too. Service receive when you first start playing at a club is really frustrating and a difficult hump to surmount.
Maybe in the next 10-20 years or so but I think professional tt has other issues that need attention over the topspin meta minmaxxing the current equipment ruling
The problem with TT is very obviously not the equipment. You can change it over and over again (as they already have) and the sport hasn't getting any more popular over the years. In fact, it's maybe *less* popular than it previously was despite the changes.
At some point, fans of TT should be asking themselves why that is the case and that can be fixed first.
Fundamentally the problem is access in my opinion. One reason that PB has grown is its so damn easy to get court time. Lots of open play with lots of people. I can show up at a random park nearly every day of the week and there will be 20 to 40 people playing PB. Now do TT? You usually need a club that requires payment or you play garage games with friends and never learn proper technique.
You can't interest people in a game they have never played. You can't get people to play a game when they have no places to play.
TT is an indoor sport. Playing in a park in windy environment on concrete tables with lots of bumps and unpredictable bounce, been here done that. I don't want to do it again.
Not 0, since it already exists (apparently it's popular among seniors in japan).
I think it's worth trying to get more easy TT exposure, like working it into more school gym curriculum. But the player base and ITTF should also make peace with a reality where the sport never grows beyond current size and possibly even declines.
I agree,
The popularity in certain regions shows that the issue of growth has nothing to do with accessibility or watchability, only perception.
Don't try and "fix" a game that hundreds of millions play and enjoy, just to try and grab a few more million in a country where no one cares! The game itself is not really the issue.
Changes can be made but they should be rational changes that make rules clearer or equipment fairer and easier to understand. Not to cater for a market that just isn't interested at the expense of ones that clearly are.
Idk why we can’t do it like tennis. They have multiple balls for the kids to learn from with different internal pressures. We could do the same with larger balls for developing players and eventually they move to the standard balls.
Unlikely.
The balance between speed/spin and accessibility is about as good as it's going to get. Any larger it's just not quite the same game.
Try using a 44mm ball sometime and you will see what I mean.
If they want to make it more accessible the next place to look at would probably be rubbers.
But that's such a complicated area, where do you even start!
It slows down significantly more well travelling through air and after bouncing. For the same power put into spin you get less actual RPMs as the outside of the ball has a further distance to rotate.
You know when you try and throw something that's simply too light to hold any momentum, that's basically what it feels like to play with.
Anything you do largely dissipates before it reaches the other player.
Yep, I've only tried it a few times.
It basically turns it into what people who have never played table tennis, think table tennis is like.
I guess it might appeal to some very casual players perhaps, say in a pub or something.
But it's not great for competitive players.
Even the current 40+ ball compared to the 44mm ball is basically the table tennis equivalent of comparing a professional grade volleyball with a cheap beach ball.
eventually, the size of the ball will increase until China is not able to dominate this sport.
bigger ball, lesser spin, more rely on power, then it will favor to all non asian.
it will be popular when it become a muscle-smashing-punch sport: simple and easy
People speaking truth often gets down voted. Table tennis rule change in the past few decades was always about putting down China.
Waldner 3-0 every match in that 1 tournament, no one can return his serves effectively and we all watched in admiration and attempt to copy his serves. No service rule change. He retires, here comes Liu Guo Liang with amazing crazy serves. We can't have that, let's change the rules and make it so you cannot hide it anymore. Everyone in China knew why the rule was changed.
Wang liquin was hitting too hard, let's change the ball size to 40mm so we can slow it down some more.
It's so silly. Everyone already loves ping pong the moment they try it. It's a viscerally fun sport even for newbies. It's growing every year at the recreational level. It seems to me like the tournament structure needs to be easier to understand, higher stakes, and we need more personalities and entertainment value in the sport. It's not like the last ball change made rallies longer, or made the service game any less mind boggling to newcomers. I refuse to believe spin and deception is too complicated for new viewers to understand. They don't even need to be able to read the spin themselves to understand it's a factor. American football is infinitely technical with all its formations and play calling, the rules are confounding at first, sometimes there's no scoring for hours. Boxing doesn't even look like they're trying if you don't understand how cardiovascularly demanding the sport is, and how you can lose in seconds if you get wild even for a second. It can be very boring when fights go the distance. But for all these sports, people learn because the commentators explain it, enough viewers have some experience, and people catch on. It feels like people are trying to solve a problem that is not a problem!
>I refuse to believe spin and deception is too complicated for new viewers to understand. Not everyone approaches sports the same way, and not every sport can be approached in same way, As you noticed, Boxing and Football are far more complex in ruleset. There are a ton of viewer-only sports where no one participates, e.g. hockey, baseball, MMA, weight lifting). These are all power sports. To 80% of their viewers, they are about a culture, atmosphere, and marketing, not about the ruleset. Table tennis does not have this aura. It's not a sport of power. Even in China, it does not have this aura. Believe it or not, American football will likely eclipse table tennis in China at some point. To normies, it is a parlor sport of speed and trickery. You can try to fight this image, but I think it can only be won by a deeper integration into childrens programs like in Asia. But even then, the appeal of things like Basketball is very hard to compete with. And the "understanding" part is not about viewership for table tennis either. It's the first time a normie gets "served" on in table tennis. They don't think "wow I want to understand more". They think "wow, that's a cool trick", and it goes into the list of all other tricks they don't have time to learn. EDIT And btw, I don't think the "Trickery" label is bad. Pongfinity and Bobrow literally take this angle to promote the sport and I think it's amazing. The issue two front, viewership is only 20% about understanding, and the second is clubs. Clubs are usually a disaster for casuals and no one will admit it. The only ones I feel are a nice gateway are like senior center clubs. There are even usually some friendly players in many clubs willing to teach. No one has bad intentions, but this ambience is created from multiple things like limit of tables, cliques within the club, inability to bridge skill gap without coaching, and just some weird characters. I've been to table tennis clubs in 4 countries now, and it's always like this.
> Believe it or not, American football will likely eclipse table tennis in China at some point. Wait what? Since when is american football popular in China to the point that it will likely eclipse tt at some point ? Basketball or football, why not, these are already huge in China- but american football?
Yes, I was surprised too, but a lot of people have started to dabble in American football. I have many family there and a lot of classmates. It might have been brought back by people who studied overseas, some college students dive into American culture. I don't know. But the NFL also sees now that there is some kind of market in China. If they will follow through, I don't know.
>It's growing every year at the recreational level. Source on that? >Everyone already loves ping pong the moment they try it. On the flip side of it, its incredibly complex and not beginner friendly at all once you make the jump from recreational to beginning competitive player. Seen lots of people quit within the first year of this transition
I heard that fact from Matt Hetherington and Max Kogler (one of the founders of ping pod). They were talking about it in an interview. I don't know what data they're coming from but I felt they're credible being in their positions in the sport. They mentioned ping pong is growing in the US overall, but only the recreational market, and basically stagnant at the sport level.
well of course the founder of a startup business predicated on recreational ping pong play is gonna say that, and likely an employee of a table tennis company. but yea wondering what that is based on. i have no doubt that Joola sold more tables during the pandemic but i am curious whether that is sustainable and will continue now that we are done with covid. its interesting they say that because i would expect the opposite. full time/serious clubs are without a doubt growing in the US and have been for the last decade or so. but at the recreational level, anecdotally i don't see any increase in ping pong tables in parks, gyms, community centers, casual players mentioning that they are playing ping pong recreationally etc. where as for pickleball you see all of the above everywhere across the country.
There is no Sport thats Beginner friendly after some time of playin the level increases and noobs get absolutly washed by veterans no matter which sport.
getting washed by veterans and being non-beginner friendly don't mean the same thing. pickleball is incredibly beginner friendly (even though a beginner will of course get "washed" by a veteran) and it also happens to be the most rapidly growing sport, likely in large part because of how beginner friendly it is so...you're wrong lol
One easy solution that I believe can improve viewership is if they made using double sided 2 colored balls the standard competition balls. I think this would really help newbies understand spin a lot better while watching events on TV.
Hey that sounds like a good idea! I'd honestly like that for the sport too. Different spins would still break patterns as much as different placements but it would probably make the serve just slightly less advantageous, which imo it's a little overpowered in this sport. It also would alleviate some of the pressure on accurately calling ball hiding. I feel like it would help new players at the club level too. Service receive when you first start playing at a club is really frustrating and a difficult hump to surmount.
Maybe in the next 10-20 years or so but I think professional tt has other issues that need attention over the topspin meta minmaxxing the current equipment ruling
can you point to some " articles " ? trying to get a handle on table tennis at this state. its hard.
This TTD thread is my main source of info- https://www.tabletennisdaily.com/forum/topics/ittf-wtt-problems-reported-from-players.33539/
The problem with TT is very obviously not the equipment. You can change it over and over again (as they already have) and the sport hasn't getting any more popular over the years. In fact, it's maybe *less* popular than it previously was despite the changes. At some point, fans of TT should be asking themselves why that is the case and that can be fixed first.
Fundamentally the problem is access in my opinion. One reason that PB has grown is its so damn easy to get court time. Lots of open play with lots of people. I can show up at a random park nearly every day of the week and there will be 20 to 40 people playing PB. Now do TT? You usually need a club that requires payment or you play garage games with friends and never learn proper technique. You can't interest people in a game they have never played. You can't get people to play a game when they have no places to play.
TT is an indoor sport. Playing in a park in windy environment on concrete tables with lots of bumps and unpredictable bounce, been here done that. I don't want to do it again.
Not 0, since it already exists (apparently it's popular among seniors in japan). I think it's worth trying to get more easy TT exposure, like working it into more school gym curriculum. But the player base and ITTF should also make peace with a reality where the sport never grows beyond current size and possibly even declines.
I agree, The popularity in certain regions shows that the issue of growth has nothing to do with accessibility or watchability, only perception. Don't try and "fix" a game that hundreds of millions play and enjoy, just to try and grab a few more million in a country where no one cares! The game itself is not really the issue. Changes can be made but they should be rational changes that make rules clearer or equipment fairer and easier to understand. Not to cater for a market that just isn't interested at the expense of ones that clearly are.
Idk why we can’t do it like tennis. They have multiple balls for the kids to learn from with different internal pressures. We could do the same with larger balls for developing players and eventually they move to the standard balls.
Make sense, u1000 tournaments use larger ball
$$$ will draw interest. Last I heard the US Open winner took a prize of 5k, which wont attract talent or competitors.
Unlikely. The balance between speed/spin and accessibility is about as good as it's going to get. Any larger it's just not quite the same game. Try using a 44mm ball sometime and you will see what I mean. If they want to make it more accessible the next place to look at would probably be rubbers. But that's such a complicated area, where do you even start!
what's the difference?
It slows down significantly more well travelling through air and after bouncing. For the same power put into spin you get less actual RPMs as the outside of the ball has a further distance to rotate.
You know when you try and throw something that's simply too light to hold any momentum, that's basically what it feels like to play with. Anything you do largely dissipates before it reaches the other player.
sounds like less fun
Yep, I've only tried it a few times. It basically turns it into what people who have never played table tennis, think table tennis is like. I guess it might appeal to some very casual players perhaps, say in a pub or something. But it's not great for competitive players.
Even the current 40+ ball compared to the 44mm ball is basically the table tennis equivalent of comparing a professional grade volleyball with a cheap beach ball.
They need to make the spin clearer. The spin of the ball is the most crucial and frustrating part of the game
eventually, the size of the ball will increase until China is not able to dominate this sport. bigger ball, lesser spin, more rely on power, then it will favor to all non asian. it will be popular when it become a muscle-smashing-punch sport: simple and easy
China will continue to dominate as long as they continue to be the country with the biggest investment in the sport
People speaking truth often gets down voted. Table tennis rule change in the past few decades was always about putting down China. Waldner 3-0 every match in that 1 tournament, no one can return his serves effectively and we all watched in admiration and attempt to copy his serves. No service rule change. He retires, here comes Liu Guo Liang with amazing crazy serves. We can't have that, let's change the rules and make it so you cannot hide it anymore. Everyone in China knew why the rule was changed. Wang liquin was hitting too hard, let's change the ball size to 40mm so we can slow it down some more.