American Quidditch players choose quadball name to differentiate themselves from JK Rowling

Say no more Quidditch! This activity, inspired by the sport practiced by the sorcerers of Harry Potter, was renamed quadball for US Quidditch and Major League Quidditch, two North American leagues. The declared objective is to stop being affiliated with JK Rowling, the controversial author of the literary saga.

Quidditch, born in the pages of his novels published between 1997 and 2007, is a sport played on flying brooms, with various balls. As CNN reports, two Vermont college students came up with a real-world version in 2005, in which players race across the floor on broomsticks. Since then, the concept has become popular and nearly 600 teams have sprung up around the world, according to the administrations involved.

“A Significant Moment”

The International Quidditch Association, which oversees the various national organizations around the world, intends to follow in the footsteps of US Quadball and Major League Quadball, these two organizations that bring together several teams that have now changed names.

“The IQA is delighted to join USQ and MLQ in changing the name of our sport and encourages this change among its members around the world”, declares one of its representatives in a press release released by variety. “We enter this stage with confidence and look forward to all the new opportunities that quadball will bring. This is an important moment in the history of our sport.”

This name change was announced last December by the USQ and the MLQ. At that time, the new denomination had not been found. JK Rowling “has been increasingly singled out for her anti-trans stances in recent years,” they said in a statement. “Our sport has a reputation for being one of the most progressive in the world in terms of gender equality and inclusion, due to its rule that a team cannot have more than four players of the same sex on the field at the same time. Both of our organizations believe it is essential to live up to that reputation.”

Another reason given

They had also talked about their difficulties in getting sponsors and broadcasts, since the rights to the word “Quidditch” belong to Warner Bros., the producer of the films adapted from the books.

“We wanted to make it clear that (this name change) comes for these two reasons, declares today one of the spokespersons in the New York Times In an article broadcast by the guardian. “We didn’t want to judge which reason was more important.”

Long adored, JK Rowling fell from grace in 2020 by posting a tweet deemed transphobic. The author had broadcast an article evoking “people who have their period”, commenting wryly: “I’m sure we had to have a word for these people. Somebody help me. Feum? Famme? Feemm?” Thus, she provoked the anger of certain Internet users, who reminded her that transgender men can have her period. Since then she has multiplied biased statements on the subject.