By: Matt Richert
NEWBERG, Ore. --- At the turn of the millennium, cornhole was a game not widely known outside of a couple of Midwest states. Now, the game is inescapable at restaurants, barbecues, and social gatherings nationwide, with championship tournaments broadcast worldwide on ESPN.
There is a new pastime gaining steam and a George Fox student has played a central part in its fast-rising popularity.
Antonio Arredondo, 21, is a senior broadcast journalism major at George Fox. Arredondo has lent his talents to the Bruins' athletic department as a student assistant since his sophomore year, writing game recaps and previews and doing public address announcing for various sports throughout the school year. Arredondo and his younger siblings--brother Diego, 18, and sister Isabel, 15--all competed in athletics growing up in a rural area south of Canby, about 30 minutes from the George Fox campus.
As anyone who was raised among athletes can attest, even the most mundane activities can quickly escalate into intense competitions. Thus was born the sport of "Keep-Up Balloon."
"We've all played 'Don't Let the Balloon Touch the Ground' as kids," said Arredondo. "One time we had a balloon left over from a party and we were just hitting it around. The rules are simple: you just don't let the balloon touch the ground. Simple and easy to do. When we started playing it, our upstairs was just perfect for it. We were hitting and having to jump over stuff and dive. That's how it got started. Just us playing for fun."
The competitive nature of the Arredondo family dynamic formed the foundation for a video that would soon go viral. As the rounds of Keep-Up Balloon became more competitive, a video camera was implemented to help mediate disputes, giving the siblings access to instant replay review. As the Arredondos began recording more sessions and pandemic boredom set in, Antonio had the notion to post highlight reels on the social networking service TikTok. One million likes later, a viral phenomenon was born.
"I had been posting random videos from my camera roll," said Antonio. "I went to bed after posting a video of me and my sister playing. When I woke up, it had thousands of views. My other videos had, like 12 views. So we posted another one and that one got 100,000 likes. Our first eight posts of just balloons each got at least 10,000 likes. It skyrocketed after that."
Was there any inkling of the kind of response these videos would receive?
"It was a complete surprise because it's balloons," he laughed. "I just posted it because I thought it was cool. Every time I think it can't get bigger, something else comes along."
Following the initial viral video stage on TikTok, Antonio's balloon videos crossed over into additional mainstream media platforms.
"We got on SportsCenter. Sports Illustrated posted us. Our most viral video was recorded in August and had 1.7 million likes or something ridiculous. That one went everywhere. I was scrolling on Twitter and I just saw myself playing the game. It was on Instagram. It was on Facebook. My uncle was on Reddit and saw it was the top trending thing. It just went everywhere."
It was that video which caught the attention of some enterprising people in Spain, who noticed it on a Spanish Twitter account. They picked up the balloon and ran with it, as it were. Thus was born the Balloon World Cup.
Ibai Llanos is a Spanish celebrity Twitch-streamer and eSports commentator, who fell in love with the Arredondos' videos and tweeted that there should be a tournament like the World Cup. Llanos' comment caught the attention of famed FC Barcelona defender Gerard Pique, who vowed to make it a reality if enough people showed interest. After tens of thousands of retweets, it became clear that there was a wide enough interest in such an event. In short order, Llanos reached out directly to Antonio.
"They contacted me through Instagram," he said. "We get a lot of DMs from people who just want to play balloons with us, like random kids in Minnesota who want us to come out there to play with them. When I saw 'Balloon World Cup' and a message saying 'would I like to come to Barcelona to play,' I'm like, this is just some middle school Spanish kid who just wants to play with us."
Antonio noticed the 25,000 followers and was admittedly intrigued, but responded that there was no way they could afford to just go to Barcelona, not realizing that Llanos intended to pay his freight.
"We all thought it was some sort of scam," he said. "We did more research and saw that it had funding and sponsors and it was a real event."
What followed was an all-expenses-paid trip to Barcelona, with transport provided to PortAventura World, a Mediterranean entertainment resort about an hour and a half away in Tarragona on the Catalonia coast, where the actual event was held on October 14.
Despite the quick turnaround, just a month or so from the original spark of inspiration to the actual event, it was an incredibly organized spectacle. Teams from 32 countries were represented with international media coverage, stars of sports and entertainment filling a V.I.P. section, including Pique's wife, international recording star Shakira, who had previously posted a video on Twitter of her playing the balloon game with her children.
A line of paparazzi greeted the Arredondos as they entered the venue, honored as the creators of the game. Llanos and Pique had not been shy in crediting them as the inspiration for the event, and they were received as celebrities as a result, with only the Spanish team lavished with more attention from local media.
"It was very surreal," said Antonio. "The media coverage was very intense."
Even more surreal, the tournament organizers had created a near-exact replica of the Arredondo's upstairs family room to serve as the playing area for the competition, which was held within a giant convention center. Additional obstacles were added for the finals, including a Volkswagen, courtesy of one of the tournament's major sponsors.
The top prize for the inaugural Balloon World Cup was 10,000 euros, the equivalent of approximately $11,500 dollars, along with two airline tickets to any Latin American destination. The runner-up received 3,000 euros and a year's supply of Oreo cookies. Other major sponsors included Doritos and Mentos.
The competition featured single players going head-to-head in a tournament format. The rules were few: alternating contacts with the balloon had to be upward strikes, points awarded whenever an opponent let the balloon touch the ground or incidentally contact the body. Matches were played to a two-minute timer that stopped with each point. The eventual winner was Francesco de la Cruz from Peru, who defeated Germany's Jan Spiess 6-2 in the finals. De La Cruz' victory earned congratulations from the president of Peru and a hero's welcome in his home country.
The guests of honor didn't last long at the tourney. Diego--a Linfield student and college basketball recruit who is the career scoring leader at Canby High School--was eliminated by a Cuban competitor in the first round. As it turns out, many of the participants had professional athletic resumes.
"Diego is a phenomenal athlete," said Antonio of his younger sibling, who is taking a year off from athletics, but may eventually join the Linfield basketball team. "He was playing a New Balance-sponsored Cuban national track runner. There were a couple of professional soccer players, a professional basketball player from Equatorial Guinea. They had a lot of pure athletes that were there to play, so we were a little overmatched."
Due to continuing COVID-19 restrictions abroad, fan seating was limited at the event to 500 tickets, which sold out in an hour. Over 600,000 viewed the final match live on the Twitch stream and there have been 8.5 million total views.
Though the Arredondos failed to bring home prize money at the event they inspired, the sheer volume of interest in their social media posts has put money in their pockets in addition to the free trip to Spain and an adventure of a lifetime.
"There is a TikTok creator fund and we are a big enough account," said Antonio. "We have a couple other sponsorship deals. So far we have made not quite $4000 dollars off of that. We have a sponsorship with a wallet company and a water bottle company and a couple of apps."
The Arredondos' father Sabino, an accountant and local restaurateur, seized upon the business potential of their game once the Balloon World Cup became a reality, registering the name "Keep-Up Balloon League" as a Limited Liability Corporation in Oregon. Mother Kim, an executive pastor at Woodburn Foursquare Church, gave her blessing to the enterprise early on. Despite the chaos and potential damage that ensued during their upstairs balloon battles, she was pleased her children were finding a creative way to stay physically active during the pandemic lockdown, rather than sitting around playing video games all day.
So, what is the next step for Antonio Arredondo and family, now that their innocent pastime has evolved into a worldwide craze? Ibai Llanos and Gerard Pique have certainly not cornered the market on entrepreneurship when it comes to the game of Keep-Up Balloon.
"We want to try to get this to take off in America," said Arredondo. "We want to try to make a partnership with the Balloon World Cup and maybe host a qualifying round to get people to play in the U.S. and the winner will play in the World Cup. The videos have gone viral primarily in America. We have meetings with people who want to try to make a T.V. show and we have a couple other things lined up."
For now, an appearance on a nationally-syndicated television talk show awaits along with a potential show of their own with an associated merchandise line. As the 5th Dimension famously sang, "If you'll hold my hand we'll chase your dream across the sky. For we can fly." For now, Antonio Arredondo's beautiful balloon game is still very much on the rise.
