Slamball 2024: Trampolines Meet Basketball & Football
What do you get when you combine trampolines with basketball, hockey, and football? A high-action, bone-crushing game that’s bound to crack some skulls is back for the Slamball 2024 season.
SlamBall is a sport you’ve probably never heard of, but might just be one of the wildest games of all time. It returns on ESPN for the 2024 season this smmer and some Florida natives are hopeful to make the teams.
SlamBall takes us back to the days of playing the classic NBA Street or NFL Blitz on the Nintendo 64. Hard-hitting, fast-paced games that faintly resembled real life. That’s what made them so great.
What to Expect for Slamball 2024
Florida is no stranger to the sport of SlamBall. There were 6 Florida Natives in the league last season and even a couple from the Tampa Bay area. Bryce Moragne from Tampa, FL. Faysal Shafaat from Orlando, FL. Bryan Bell-Anderson from Sarasota, FL. Dionte Byrd and Donavin Boumann from Gainesville and Matthew Wilkerson from Citra, FL.
Players go head-to-head in padded helmets, elbow pads, and knee pads. The game shares many of the same rules as basketball but with a twist. Full waist-up contact is allowed in the center court once the ball is dribbled. There are fouls, but no free throws so players go into a one-on-one showdown.
There are 4, 5-minute quarters in the game and players change on the fly drawing inspiration from hockey. Slam dunks and shots inside the arc are 3 points, shots outside the arc are 4 points and any slams that don’t pass through the rim directly with hand contact are 2 points.
The History of SlamBall
It all started with a sketch on a napkin. In the late 1990s, Mason Gordon set out to create a game where everyone felt like superheroes and that’s when SlamBall was born. The SlamBall court has 4 built-in trampoline spring beds at both ends of the court with a spring floor at the center court.
Gordon explains, “The fluidity of basketball, the aggressiveness and physicality of football … and also this idea that video games kind of unleash your imagination in the sport.”
Shortly after its creation, SlamBall inked a deal with Spike TV to broadcast to every TV in America for two seasons from 2002 to 2003 before getting canceled.
SlamBall returned to Versus and CBS in 2008 and folded again after only one season, but on July 21, 2023, everything changed. SlamBall returned Live on ESPN and came back better than ever. They signed a deal for the 2023 and 2024 seasons.
SlamBall made its triumphant return in the summer of 2023 with some crazy highlights. You can catch the SlamBall 2024 season this summer on ESPN and ESPN+. Will you be watching?
