Marble racing isn’t something that a lot of people around the globe would’ve been familiar with a few years back, but, as of recently, the hype for marble racing has gone up tremendously. Ever since the pandemic hit, almost every single sport had to be canceled due to obvious reasons, and this left many passionate fans without anything to watch since their favorite clubs and teams were all in lockdown.

Since there weren’t many competitive sports events to watch over the past year, this led to a meteoric rise of marble racing videos, and this particular ‘sport’ quickly became viral over the internet. The best thing about marble racing at the moment is, of course, the fact that it doesn’t require people to be up close to one another, so it’s essentially the perfect social distancing event.

The lack of any real-world sports happening paved the way for marble racing to steal the spotlight, and the driving wheel of all this have been a variety of YouTube channels and other content producers that have given viewers a variety of intense marble races to watch as they bide their time at home waiting for the lockdown to end. At the driving seat of all this hype is the viral YouTube channel Jelle’s Marble Runs.

The aforementioned YouTube channel wasn’t all that relevant a few years ago, but the past year has definitely been huge for it as the channel has now skyrocketed past a million viewers, and there are dedicated viewers that tune into it on a regular basis to watch the latest marble racing videos.

One of the most impressive things about channels like Jelle’s Marble Runs is the fact that they actually operate with a great deal of professionalism. Their videos aren’t just random marbles making their way to the end of a simple track. Instead, there are actually lots of different events, such as the Sand Marble Rally or the Marbula One event. Each of these events has multiple stages ranging from the qualifiers to the finals, much like an actual sport, and this professional setup has definitely played a huge part in making them feel like actual ‘sports’ instead of a trend that’ll end up dying after a while.

Alongside these professional events on the internet, there are various other things that definitely act as a testament to the fact that marble racing is a real sport. The very presence of the World Marbles Foundation which is a regulating body that holds championships every two years demonstrates that this is very much a real sport, even though it might not be as popular as some other mainstream sports that have been around for many years.

All things considered, while marble racing might not have been particularly well known a few years back, it’s definitely fair to say that it’s a real sport now, considering how popular it has become and, of course, because there’s a regulatory body that manages it.