Aug. 7 will see the return of ESPN8: The Ocho Presented by State Farm as ESPN2 transforms for a day flush with events such as The Amazing Games, Premier League Darts, World Sumo Challenge, Burger Eating and Spikeball. Anchoring the action will be The Ocho’s first live event in the 2019: WCO World Cornhole Championship at 8p. A long-time staple of the tailgating experience, cornhole’s emergence as an organized sport has seen the saw the American Cornhole League cement a three-year deal with ESPN, where they were showcased 49 times last year. Ahead of this year’s championship, Cynopsis asked Stacey Moore, the Commissioner and Founder of the American Cornhole League, about the sports rise and building the community.
Moore on the growth of the ACL: There are several trends and activities working in our favor to accelerate the growth of the ACL. People of all ages have being playing the game for a while in their backyard or at a bar or at a tailgate party. I don’t think there is a single craft brewery that does not have people playing cornhole. Our is motto “anyone can play and anyone can win.” That familiarity makes people want to check out our ESPN broadcast to see what it is all about and once they tune in the first time. They are hooked. We have seen celebrities such as Jake Owen and Jason Aldean tweet at us telling us they have their eyes glued to cornhole. Chrissy Teigen even tweeted at us a few weeks ago letting us know she has a new addiction. It’s a sport that truly reaches everyone.
On ACL’s appearance on the Ocho: We are honored to be the ONLY live content on the Ocho August 7. We have a great 8p time slot and hope everyone tunes in and joins in the social media conversation. We are showcasing the WCO World Championship. We will be showing the finals of the ACL Pro American Event and the finals of the International Event. Then those two teams will square off to determine the World Champion. This will be the largest international field of players to date at a cornhole event. We view this as a milestone event to advance conversations of cornhole becoming an Olympic Sport which has been my dream.
On building communities: Without players, you don’t have a league and you don’t have a sport. Starting out we wanted to give existing cornhole players a reason to play with us and give us a shot. We did not want to be a league that just caters to the top players in the game, we wanted to be able to segment players and create skill level based events. We created our own software to power this segmentation along with the scores, stats and the database for the sport. We consider anything and everything when we look at making rule changes to evolve the sport. The introduction of the BYOB – Bring Your Own Bag Policy was an important innovation that spurred new companies to start making bags and along with a lot of conversation within our community. I think it was the single best rule decision made to date that brought the community a lot closer together through positive and negative conversations about the policy. Our goal is to provide a great experience for our players, great tools and support to our 300+ directors across the US that run events with the ACL, and a great broadcast to showcase the ACL Pros and our league. We have to be great at all of those things so that whether you a player, or director or fan, if you are wearing ACL gear or taking part in a event, you are proud to be a part of the ACL community.
On the league in five years: In five years, I hope that most if not all of our ACL Pros will be able to focus on cornhole full time as their profession if they choose to do so. We have a well defined path for players to become pros. Anyone can play their way into becoming an ACL Pro. We are leading the organization of cornhole as a college sport with the National College Cornhole Championship that is for students and alumni. Within the next five years we hope that high schools have started cornhole teams to compete against other high schools. We see team and club competitions developing rapidly over the next five years.
