Quidditch (real-life sport)

Quidditch, popularly and officially known as quadball since 2022, is a team sport that was created in 2003 at Nimbus 2003, a Harry Potter convention in Orlando, Florida, United States, and was inspired by the fictional game of the same name in the Harry Potter books by the author J. K. Rowling. Two teams of seven players each, astride PVC pipes and opposing each other on a rectangular pitch, compete with the primary objective of passing a ball through the defenders' hoops, while preventing their opponents from passing it through their own hoops. Before being renamed, the real-world sport used to be referred to as "muggle quidditch" to distinguish it from the fictional game of the books, which involves magical elements such as flying broomsticks and enchanted balls—a muggle in the Harry Potter series being a person without magical abilities. The sport is played around the world.

Rules of the sport are governed by the International Quadball Association (IQA), and events are sanctioned by either the IQA or that nation's governing body. A team consists of a minimum of seven (maximum 21) players, of which six are always on the pitch: three chasers, one keeper, and two beaters. The seventh position, known as a seeker, joins each team after a time period known as the "seeker floor" (20 minutes under all three major rulesets). The pitch is rectangular, 66 by 36 yards (60 by 33 m), with three hoops (3, 4.5, and 6 feet (91, 137, and 183 cm)) at either end. Teams are required to be gender-balanced: each team may have a maximum of three non-seeker players who identify as the same gender on the field at one time, making quidditch one of the few sports that not only offers a gender-integrated environment, but an open community to those who identify as nonbinary.

To score points, chasers or keepers must get the quadball—a slightly deflated volleyball—into any of the three opposing hoops, which scores the team 10 points. To impede their opponents, beaters can use dodgeballs to hit opposing players and temporarily remove them from play. Once hit by an opposing dodgeball, that player must dismount their stick, drop any ball being held, and return to touch their own team's hoops before re-entering the game.

The ultimate goal is to have more points than the other team by the time the flag—a tennis ball inside a cloth tube hanging from the shorts of an impartial official dressed in yellow—is caught. After twenty minutes of play, the flag runner moves onto the pitch and tries to evade the two seekers. When one of the seekers catches the flag, that team is awarded 30 points. If this leads to the catching team having more points overall than their opponents, the game ends immediately with the catching team winning. In the event a team catches the snitch but still trails in points (or is tied for points) the game goes into an overtime period, with the target being the score achieved by the non-catching team plus 30 points. The first team to reach the target score wins the game; alternatively, either team may concede at any time during the overtime period. Matches or games often run about 30 to 40 minutes including stoppages, but tend to vary in length due to the unpredictable nature of the flag catch.

Rules vary from the IQA standard in domestic competitions, most notably in the US. In games sanctioned by Major League Quadball (MLQ) and US Quadball (USQ), catching the flag results in 35 points, which help teams reach a set score, 60 (MLQ) points above the score of the leading team before the seeker floor. The first team to reach this set score wins the game.