Cody Henderson was in the zone and made shot after shot. The packed crowd cheered every time the 26-year-old made a shot. But this didn’t happen at Augusta National during The Masters or at Madison Square Garden during an NBA game. In March, Henderson was shooting bean bags at the Johnsonville Cornhole Championships at The Mirage Hotel & Casino in Las Vegas.
In the end, Henderson got 19 bags in a row during his cornhole match. The warehouse manager from Jackson, Ohio, is the best player of cornhole in the United States.
Yes, cornhole, a popular game at tailgates and in backyards, is now a professional sport with a league (the American Cornhole League), a TV deal (ESPN), prize money (up to $1 million this season), and detailed rankings of players.
On Saturday, Alabama and Clemson won their way to the National Championship game, which was the main event on ESPN. On Sunday, however, ESPN will show the best college cornhole players. The National College Cornhole Championship, which takes place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina, is the main event of four hours of programming on ESPN and ESPN2. It gives awards to the best college team and the best college alumni team from each state. At least $25,000 will be given out in scholarships by the ACL.
ACL CEO Stacey Moore is the man behind the business of cornhole. He got good at cornhole at North Carolina State football tailgates. “I saw tailgating as one of the biggest unofficial businesses out there and thought there must be a way to get in on it and make money,” says Moore, who has been in business before. “I made different brands to try to figure out how to make money off of the tailgating way of life.”
Moore’s tailgating businesses got the most attention from people playing cornhole, so he put all of his money into the game, which has two platforms with a hole in the middle that are 27 feet apart. Players throw bags, which used to be full of corn but are usually now filled with plastic resin, to try to get them on the board or in the hole.
Moore and his business partners put more than $1 million into the back-end technology so they could run tournaments and events for people of all ages and skill levels all over the U.S. Moore says, “You can’t have a sport without scores and stats, so we set out to make cornhole a sport.”
The ACL started three years ago because scoring and statistics could be kept in one place. Last season, there were 5,000 events under the ACL name, and this season, which runs from August to July, could have as many as 10,000.
Last season, pros like Henderson got $250,000 from the ACL, and this season, the total payout could reach $1 million. When payouts from local events are added in, the best players can make up to $60,000.
The ACL gets money from its deal with ESPN, sponsorships, and sales of memorabilia. There are also 300 directors all over the U.S. who use ACL’s infrastructure to run cornhole tournaments. The tournament directors are independent contractors who give the ACL a portion of the money they make from the tournaments. The cost to enter a tournament ranges from $5 to $100. The ACL gets a steady income from the membership fees paid by directors and players.
ESPN’s relationship with professional cornhole gave it a huge boost. In 2016, a digital broadcast of an ACL game was shown on ESPN3, which is owned by Walt Disney. The sport moved to ESPN2 the next year, and in July 2017, it signed a three-year deal with ESPN. This year, 500,000 people watched the ACL Pro Invitational on ESPN on July 4.
Sponsors of the ACL like Dollar Shave Club and Johnsonville get a lot of attention. The main sponsor of the league is Johnsonville, a company that makes and sells sausages. More people searched for the brand on Google in July than in the five years before. The difference is that the ACL event on July 4th got more attention than the annual Nathan’s Hot Dog Eating Contest, which was shown on ESPN.
Moore is taking the ACL outside of the United States. The first broadcast in Canada is planned for June. Moore also wants to use the World Cornhole League to bring the ACL to Australia, Sweden, Germany, and Japan. The idea is for the ACL to share its knowledge and infrastructure so that “like-minded leagues” can be made.
Moore sees the market for young people as another chance. “In high school or middle school, there is no competitive cornhole. He says, “We want to change that.”
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