With Teqball the world is curved

• Author: Catherine Jewell
• Position: Publications Division, WIPO

Teqball, a new, ingeniously simple and fun ball game, is taking the world of football by storm. Football stars, top football clubs and national teams have all caught the teqball bug. Teqball’s Gergely Muranyi, talks about the challenges associated with developing this new sport, the role played by intellectual property (IP) in furthering the company’s ambitions to promote the sport globally and, ultimately, for it to become an Olympic sport.

What was the inspiration for Teqball?

Teqball, the company, was founded by Gábor Borsányi, Gyuri Gattyán and Viktor Huszár. Gábor, the creative force in the team, came up with the idea when he was a young professional soccer player. When he couldn’t get access to a football pitch, he would practice with a friend passing a football across one of the many concrete ping-pong tables found outside residential buildings in Budapest. In later life, he realized that by simply adding a curve to the top of a table, you can create a far more enjoyable game, which we call teqball.

So what exactly is Teqball?

Teqball is the company responsible for developing an innovative sports product that is used for an emerging football-based sport, which professionals and amateurs, including people with disabilities, can play. The game combines the fast pace of table tennis with the skill and excitement of football. One of the great advantages of teqball is that you don’t need a team of people to play, you only need a friend. We called it teqball because you need technique to play the game and you play it with a regular soccer ball.

The company was established in 2014 and is based in Budapest, Hungary, where our R&D center is located. We employ around 130 people, up from 38 last year, many of whom are under 30. The company’s overriding aim is to create value through the power of sports. That’s what drives us.

So is teqball exclusively for soccer?

When we started developing teqball, we were very soccer focused, but in fact, you can play five different games on a Teqball table, namely, teqball, teqis, teqpong, qatch, and teqvoly. For the moment, teqball is the most developed. For example, the different teqball cups we organize are football-focused. In future, we plan to develop the other games into individual sports disciplines and to organize Teq Games where athletes can compete in all Teq sports. That would be a huge event.

Tell us more about the apparatus

The Teqball table is about the size of a table tennis table but has a curved surface and a...