Floorball

Floorball (also known by other names) is an indoor team sport. It is played on a 40 by 20-meter court enclosed by boards, using a plastic ball and two goals. During standard gameplay, each team has five outfield players and one goalkeeper on the court at any given time. The objective is to score more goals than the opposing team. Players use specialized floorball sticks during play. A standard match consists of three twenty-minute periods. The game was invented in Sweden in the late 1960s. The basic rules were established in 1979 in Sweden. Official rules for matches were first written down in 1981. The sport is organized internationally by the International Floorball Federation (IFF). As of 2022, there were about 330,000 registered floorball players worldwide. Events include an annual Champions Cup, EuroFloorball Cup and EuroFloorball Challenge for club teams and the biennial World Floorball Championships with separate divisions for men and women. Men's semi-professional club leagues include Finland's F-liiga, Sweden's Svenska Superligan, Switzerland's Unihockey Prime League, and the Czech Republic's Superliga florbalu. Women's semi-professional leagues from the same countries are F-liiga, Svenska Superligan, Unihockey Prime League and Extraliga žen. While the IFF has 80 members, floorball is most popular where it has been developed the longest, such as the Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, Finland, Latvia, Norway, Sweden, and Switzerland. It is gaining popularity in Slovakia, Australia, New Zealand, India, Canada, Germany, Ireland, Japan, Singapore, Malaysia, the United States, and the United Kingdom. Floorball has been included in the World Games since 2017 edition in Wrocław.