The Sport of Tag

Christian Devaux, founder and CEO of World Chase Tag (WCT), discusses this international phenomenon where teams compete in a heart-pumping version of the classic kids’ game.

What inspired you to turn tag into a sport?

My son, Orlando, never liked conventional sports—all he wanted to do was play tag, or as we call it in England, “it.” We developed obstacles in our garden to make the game more exciting and started timing the chases to see who could tag the other faster.

I started thinking it’d be cool to see elite athletes playing this game. So when the company I worked for was sold, I decided to pursue creating a competitive tag league rather than another career. Orlando and I started a meetup group in Hyde Park using barrier tape wrapped around trees as obstacles. From there, we moved it into a nearby parkour gym, which had better obstacles.

But it still wasn’t quite right. My brother, Damien, joined in, and we bought some scaffolding and built our first tag arena, or “quad.” We then rented a venue, got cameras and lighting, booked two dates in May 2015, and invited players from a well-known parkour team called Storror to test it out. We agreed that if these run-throughs weren’t entertaining, we’d just give up.

The players immediately got it. It was amazing. We made some adjustments to the quad based on their feedback and decided to have only one-on-one competitions with teams, which made it easier to rule on the winner. We also worked to get the pace and scoring in a good place: we wanted scoring to be between basketball, where it’s too easy, and soccer, where it’s too difficult. I was convinced that if we had a good quad and audience, made the sport look professional, and showcased stellar athletes, it would catch on.

How did it go viral?

We put out a video right after Boxing Day in 2016, and it got about 20,000 views that week; our videos would usually only get about 500. Our next video—which involved a chase between Sacha Powell from Storror and legendary parkour athlete Daniel Ilabaca—was released on January 1, 2017. That video got 1.8 million views on Facebook. As soon as that happened, we were on the radar of places like LADbible. As a result, that year we got approximately 80–90 million views. It’s helped us expand around the world very quickly. Today, we hold national, continental, and world championships from the Americas to Asia. (Orlando is also now a WCT athlete!)

What are the basics of WCT?

There are two teams of up to six athletes. Each match is the best of sixteen chases, and each chase is twenty seconds long. A team is awarded a point only when their evader lasts the entire chase without getting caught. Tags must be made with the hand (not the foot), and if an athlete steps out of bounds, they lose that chase. The winning athlete then stays on as the evader for the next chase. If a match ends in a draw, it is settled by a sudden death chase-off, which consists of two chases where the teams alternate between chaser and evader. The team with the longest evasion time wins.

The game’s fast pace, flashing lights, and music seem geared toward a twenty-first-century audience. Is that intentional?

Yes. A lot of thought went into that. It was actually somewhat inspired by Orlando’s friend, Raza. I heard him playing a computer game one day. When I asked him about the weird noise in the background, he said he was also listening to a YouTube video—and that it was at double speed because it was boring otherwise. I was astonished by the information overload. When Damien and I created the chase cycle, we remembered that.

We’re also both musicians, so we relied on our musical backgrounds. With music, you add layer upon layer of instruments and singing to make a song. When we finalized the chase cycle, we created that same effect to get the perfect rhythm.

So before the chase, a drill-sergeant-type voice shouts, “Ten seconds!” After that, the chase announcer, who has a very smooth, rich voice, announces the teams. Then our “ready man” shouts, “Athletes, ready!” a few seconds before the buzzer sounds. During play, you hear a play-by-play commentator, who’s more excited, paired with an analyst with a calmer tone. Between chases, a DJ plays music for about fifteen seconds and fades, and the whole cycle continues.

Essentially, we want the athletes to compete like their lives depend on it. It’s like this: If you’re at a basketball game and a fight breaks out, everyone will watch the fight. But if someone then sprints by with another guy chasing after him, you’d turn your attention to them because you want to know whether the first guy will be caught. There’s something intriguing about a chase—but only if it’s full-out. We progressively shortened the chase times to foster this. The athletes have only twenty-five seconds between chases, so it’s brutal on the cardio.

Do the athletes tend to have thinner or bulked-up physiques?

In most sports, bulk is good because it provides power. In the 100-meter dash, your bulk gives you power for momentum, but you don’t need to control it because you can just gradually slow down after finishing. In sports like rugby and American football, bulk and power enable you to gain yardage, a territorial advantage.

In WCT, it’s an interesting balance. You need power for explosive speed, but you must control it because of the obstacles and compact space. That said, some great WCT players are light while others are bulked up; it all depends on the player. For example, one of our most dominant athletes is Kyle Soderman from Hollywood Freerunners. He’s around 6’2” and has great cardio and power. His size gives him the strength to chase you down. But if you’re going against him, you can use obstacles and tiny gaps to your advantage. So it’s a constant battle between power and agility.

We designed the quad to accommodate different body types, sizes, and movements: it doesn’t favor a tall player or a small athlete. At a recent event, our shortest was around 5’4” and the tallest was Brian Prince, who’s 6’10”—he played the Predator in the movie The Predator.

Why is World Chase Tag so popular?

Tag is perhaps the most fundamental of all sports—anyone can identify with it. The world over, generation after generation, it starts on the playground. So it’s not surprising that, if it’s entertaining, people everywhere would want to watch it.

For more info, visit worldchasetag.com or watch on YouTube @worldchasetag