Since 2010, the One World Futbol has been marketed as an indestructible soccer ball.
It is made of the same foam as Crocs shoes (PEVA) and re-inflates itself soon after it is punctured or crushed.
Roughly 850,000 of them have been produced, with half of them purchased in the developed world for $40 each and the other half given away to children in the developing world.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/One_World_Futbol
Along with its original blue color, the ball used to be produced in gold, green, and red, but those colors seem to have been discontinued.
The ball is only available now in a relatively somber blue on Amazon.
In fact, the ball seems not to have caught on.
This might be because it serves two different markets, both imperfectly.
Only the wealthy world can afford such a soccer ball, which was meant to replace homemade balls in developing country, often made from trash.
Unfortunately, the ball does not suit an affluent market well.
It does not have the black-and-white patchwork of a traditional soccer ball, which helps to signal the velocity, direction and spin of the ball.
Moreover, the ball is deliberately made “soft” so that it does not have a proper bounce.
The ball was designed this way because in developing countries, kids don’t play soccer on nice, green, grassy field that absorb a ball’s bounce.
Instead, they play on asphalt roads or on hard, rocky barren soil, where regular soccer balls have too much bounce — and where they don’t last too long.
Well, it turns out that Americans and the British still buy the One World Futbol in limited quantities.
They buy them for their pet dogs.
That is an important niche for the ball in the Western market, but the ball is not the go-to ball for Americans who play soccer.
Also, there seems to be an engineering flaw in the ball.
The big round cap on the ball that hides four air-release pockets for self-re-inflation sometimes pops off.
So what can be done?
- The ball needs to be re-engineered to fix or eliminate the big round cap.
- The Western market needs:
- a specially designed ball that has a normal bounce, and
- balls of multiple bright colors, and/or with the customary black and white soccer ball pattern.
- Could it be made of something other than pop foam (polyethylene vinyl acetate), like maybe rubber or silicone? There’s enough plastic in the world already….
If the ball can find a larger market in the West, then its price will fall over time.
Specifically, if it is re-engineered and becomes cheaper, perhaps it would then make for a good training ball that schools and youth soccer leagues in the developed world turn to for its long-term cost savings.
It would then become more plentiful in the developing world.
