Is Heyball Heading to the Olympics? Inside the Case For and Against

Kelly Fisher just won her Heyball world title for the fourth year running, and instead of talking about her final against Waratthanun Sukritthanes, she was talking about something bigger. "Heyball has the potential to be in the Olympics." Nine words, said in Pune, and they've been doing the rounds in cue sports circles ever since.

She's not the only one saying it. The World Confederation of Billiards Sports has formally floated billiards for the Brisbane 2032 programme. That's not a throwaway line from a governing body — it's the first real signal in decades that cue sports might have a genuine shot at the biggest stage in world sport. So is it actually happening? Here's the honest version, reasons for, reasons against, and what it might look like if it does.

The Case For

Start with the growth, because it's the hardest thing to argue with. In the space of about eighteen months, Heyball has run continental opens in Europe (Kielce, Poland), Africa (Harare, Zimbabwe), and Asia (just launched in Malaysia), plus a dedicated Junior and Parasport World Championship in Oslo. That's not a niche pub game picking up sponsorship — that's a sport actively building the continental federation structure the IOC looks for before it takes anyone seriously.

Then there's the money, which genuinely surprised people outside the sport: prize funds at major Heyball events have overtaken the World Snooker Championship, historically cue sports' biggest payday. That matters to broadcasters and sponsors in a way rule changes never do.

Gender parity is the angle that gets undersold. Heyball is the only cue sport discipline where men and women compete for equal prestige, equal prize money, and equal billing at the same event. In a sporting landscape where the IOC has been actively pushing gender-balanced programming since Tokyo 2020, that's not a minor detail — it's close to a requirement, and Heyball already clears it without having to build anything new.

The broadcast case is strong too. WPALive.tv was just recognised in the Global 100 – 2026 awards as the best cue sports broadcasting and streaming platform in the world, and Heyball's built-in shot clock (45 seconds per shot, with one 30-second extension per rack) keeps matches tight and TV-friendly in a way marathon snooker frames never have been.

And there's already a foot in the door: Heyball was on the programme at The World Games 2025, alongside 10-ball for pool and both 6-red and 15-red formats for snooker. The World Games has a real track record as a proving ground the IOC watches closely — it's often where a sport builds the track record that eventually gets it considered for full Olympic inclusion.

The Case Against

Here's the uncomfortable history: billiards was a demonstration event at the 1900 Paris Olympics. It has not been back since. That's 126 years of cue sports bodies trying, in various forms, to get back onto the programme, without success. Momentum right now feels real, but the base rate on this specific ask is not encouraging.

Part of the problem is structural. "Cue sports" isn't one sport asking for one slot — it's snooker, multiple disciplines of pool (9-ball, 10-ball, Heyball), and carom billiards, all under the WCBS umbrella, all with different rules, different equipment, and in some cases different regional strongholds. The IOC generally prefers a clean, single-discipline pitch. A fragmented "billiards" bid is a harder sell than a focused one.

The IOC's recent additions also tell you something about where its head is at. Skateboarding, sport climbing, breaking, surfing — these have skewed young, urban, and visually explosive, chasing a younger audience the Games have been losing. Heyball is a precision indoor sport played mostly by adults on a table. It's an excellent broadcast product, but it isn't the kind of sport that's been winning recent additions.

There's also a practical venue problem. Skateboarding and climbing need a purpose-built course you set up once. Heyball needs multiple precision tables — the Rasson Sword II N8 and equivalents, built to exact WPA spec, professionally levelled and maintained — which is a genuinely different cost and logistics profile to most of what's been added lately.

And institutionally, Olympic recognition tends to demand years of demonstrated anti-doping compliance and athlete-pathway maturity from a federation. The IHPA, Heyball's governing body, is still a relatively young organisation by Olympic standards — the kind of track record the IOC wants typically takes a decade or more to build, not a couple of strong seasons.

What an Olympic Heyball Event Could Actually Look Like

If it did happen, it almost certainly wouldn't look like the 128-player Pune Worlds. Most single-discipline Olympic events run somewhere in the 24 to 64 athletes per gender range, which fits how most Olympic qualification pathways are structured. Expect singles brackets for men and women, and given Heyball's gender-parity culture, a mixed event wouldn't be a stretch — it would actually play to the sport's biggest selling point.

The existing shot clock does a lot of the format work already. Race-to formats would likely get shortened from the tour's longer sets to fit single-day television windows, the way boxing and fencing compress their formats for the Games without losing the sport's core identity. The World Games version of the event is the most realistic dry run for what this would look like in practice — smaller field, tighter schedule, same rules.

So What Are the Actual Odds?

Here's the part that matters most and gets glossed over the most: Brisbane 2032's core sports programme was already locked in years ago. The IOC does allow host cities to propose additional sports on top of the fixed core, and that's the door WCBS is knocking on — but those additional-sport slots are decided years ahead of the Games and are already being contested by other applicants with longer track records.

Realistically, Brisbane 2032 specifically looks like a stretch. What's actually being built here is the case for the Games after that — a future host, not yet chosen, with a longer runway. Growth trajectory like Pune's, the World Games slot, and this level of public advocacy from the sport's biggest names is exactly what a longer-term Olympic push is built on. It's a genuinely plausible long-term story. It's not an imminent one.

If you want to understand why Heyball is generating this kind of attention in the first place, our breakdown of how it differs from standard pool covers the tactical side, and our foul reference guide covers how the officiating actually works at this level.

For more on the championship itself, the World Pool Association's own release has the full detail on the WCBS's Brisbane 2032 comments, and The World Games' sports page confirms Heyball's current place on that programme.