Get local news delivered to your inbox!
Cornhole courts and play were part of last June’s annual Beachstock party on the Margate beach. This month an indoor cornhole tournament will be held at the Showboat Atlantic City.
Atlantic City is all about games and now sports, too. All the casino games anyone would want have been offered for more than 40 years. To that has been added betting on major sports.
In the tourism industry, there is always room for more. This year, the resort is being invaded by two decidedly non-native sports, pickleball and cornhole.
Sports fans and athletes might look down on these popular recreations, but no one questions their continuing growth and ever-higher profile. They can only be good for the local economy. The American Cornhole League will hold a tournament at Showboat Atlantic City from March 18 to 20. Then in September, the Atlantic City Indoor Open Pickleball Championship will be held at the city’s Convention Center.
Each will bring substantial good publicity, always a plus for a tourism destination.
The cornhole tournament will be nationally televised, and the audience for such a competition might be larger than Jersey Shore residents would suspect.
When the American Cornhole League was founded five years ago, it held a few hundred tournaments with total prize money of $50,000. Now it holds more than 20,000 tournaments a year and prize payouts are half a million dollars.
Cornhole tournaments are shown on ESPN. In August, the ACL world championship in Rock Hill, South Carolina, was shown live in prime time on ESPN2.
The tournament at Showboat, also on ESPN, will be the second of four 2022 ACL Cornhole Mania national tournaments for professional cornholers. Players will compete for $65,000 in payouts.
Pickleball has been one of the fastest growing sports the past five years, according to the Sports and Fitness Industry Association. From 3.4 million players in 2019, it jumped to 4.2 million the following year, the first of the pandemic. That year, CBS was to provide the first live telecast of the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships, but the event was canceled due to COVID.
The pickleball indoor championship will be sanctioned by the USA Pickleball Association and organized by Pickleball Entertainment Consultants, which has directed the U.S. Open Pickleball Championships since 2016. It is expected to attract about 6,000 players and 4,000 spectators. Prize money will be at least $50,000. The best pickleball pros can make $200,000 a year.
Pickleball already is very popular at the Jersey Shore. In recent years, many municipalities have added courts to accommodate increasing demand. Many local players may attend the championship to see the pros in action on at least 46 courts in the convention center.
Cornhole, so-called because the beanbags tossed into a hole in a board originally were filled with corn, is played just about everywhere. It should fit right into the state’s casino gambling city. DraftKings, one of the major sports betting companies, posts live gambling lines on cornhole matches.
Get local news delivered to your inbox!
ATLANTIC CITY — Professional sports will return to the resort when the American Cornhole League comes to Showboat Atlantic City for a national…
ATLANTIC CITY — Could one of the city’s new slogans be “Indoor Pickleball Capital of the World?”
Sign up for a digital subscription to The Press of Atlantic City now and take advantage of a great offer.
Keep it Clean. Please avoid obscene, vulgar, lewd, racist or sexually-oriented language.
PLEASE TURN OFF YOUR CAPS LOCK.
Don’t Threaten. Threats of harming another person will not be tolerated.
Be Truthful. Don’t knowingly lie about anyone or anything.
Be Nice. No racism, sexism or any sort of -ism that is degrading to another person.
Be Proactive. Use the ‘Report’ link on each comment to let us know of abusive posts.
Share with Us. We’d love to hear eyewitness accounts, the history behind an article.
PLEASE BE ADVISED: Soon we will no longer integrate with Facebook for story comments. The commenting option is not going away, however, readers will need to register for a FREE site account to continue sharing their thoughts and feedback on stories. If you already have an account (i.e. current subscribers, posting in obituary guestbooks, for submitting community events), you may use that login, otherwise, you will be prompted to create a new account.
Cornhole courts and play were part of last June’s annual Beachstock party on the Margate beach. This month an indoor cornhole tournament will be held at the Showboat Atlantic City.
Get up-to-the-minute news sent straight to your device.
