Jelle’s Marble Runs: The Best (and Only) Sport of the Summer!

Jelle’s Marble Runs is the most exciting sport going on right now, but that isn’t because of a lack of other sports. No, Jelle’s Marble Runs is simply spectacular. This isn’t a dork playing with marbles in a basement, this is a high production value, intensely competitive sport, with over 1 million subscribers on Youtube. It comes to us from two brothers in The Netherlands, Jelle and Dion Bakker.

The basis of it is that there are teams of marbles that compete in various events. There is Marbula1, a marble version of Formula 1, Marble League, formerly MarbleLympics, Marble Rafting and much more. There are even fans in the marble stands rooting for their respective teams. All this with brilliant play-by-play commentary provided by Greg Woods. 

Here is a qualifying event for Marble League from 2019

Their story gets even more interesting this year, as they were in need of a new sponsor to keep going. Upon hearing of this, HBO’s Last Week Tonight with John Oliver stepped in and gave them all the sponsorship they needed. Oliver loves the content and cheerfully endorses it. He knows sports are important right now, but he wants them to come back safely. This sport contains no human contact whatsoever, except for the two brothers who engineer it, making it completely pandemic safe.

Clearly this is no joke. Jelle’s Marble Runs is a complete package of team and individual sports, that gets increasingly interesting every year, and now with more sponsorship than ever nothing can stop this sport from expanding. Who knew marbles could be so competitive?

Photo: (Jelle’s Marble Runs)