July 11, 2006

P. O. BOX
343292, BARTLETT, TN 38184   USA

ATTENTION:  NEWS, EVENTS, SPORTS
EDITORS

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

TABLE SOCCER SEES
SIGNIFICANT WORLDWIDE GROWTH

- World Cup of Soccer Re-ignites Enthusiasm for “Foosball” -

Memphis, TN - In parallel with the four-year long
build up to this year’s FIFA World Cup of Soccer, the International Table
Soccer Federation (ITSF) has aggressively been working with over 35 member
national federations and associations around the world to maximize exposure for
the game commonly known as “foosball,” seeking to gain greater
recognition as a sport by the public, news media, national sports ministries
and worldwide sports organizations. The results have been impressive, with the
total number of local, national and international tournaments and leagues
growing significantly, right along with media and sponsor interest (not to
mention manufacturer sales)!

For example, the ITSF’s World Cup of Table
Soccer tournament recently came to a close on Sunday, May 28, 2006 after a four
day roller coaster of intensely competitive and emotional match play. Held at
the famed Fischauktionshalle in Hamburg,
Germany, about
200 of the world’s most elite “foosball” players competed as
part of a 20-nation team playoff for the World Cup title. Each nation, having
selected eight to ten of their country’s best players, competed in a
combination of doubles and singles events for both men and women. With media
promotions tied directly into FIFA’s World Cup of Soccer, also hosted in Germany, over
60 television and other news media covered the tournament throughout the
weekend. In all, over a thousand spectators and millions of TV viewers
witnessed a weekend full of twists, surprises and upsets as each of the
world’s top-ranked teams fell to highly charged and aggressive
challengers.

Sponsors of the event included Carlsberg Brewery,
Argo Personal, Sportstadt Hamburg, Fabula-Film and the DEHOGA Hamburg hotel and
restaurant association, while sponsors of the U.S. National Foosball Team,
among others, included Nike™, Brunswick’s Tornado Table
Soccer™, Bonzini™ USA, Tornello Enterprises, Foosball.com,
Rod-lock.com and TTR MasterWraps.

In a true test of all around foosball skills, the
competition took place on five different ITSF “Official” styles of
tables: Tornado Table Soccer™, Bonzini™, Garlando, EuroSoccer, and
Roberto-Sport. Often regarded as the “big five” of foosball
manufacturing, these traditional home recreation and coin-industry companies
have been riding the wave of re-surging sales growth, each with their own
“ITSF Official” models built to conform to new international
tournament standards. Said Dave Courington, of Brunswick’s Tornado Table Soccer,
“The work of the ITSF is potentially of great benefit to our worldwide
sales. Our table has been considered as the industry standard in the USA for thirty
years, so we were pleased to find that though we don’t even have a
European table soccer distributor, our table was selected as the
“home” table by the majority of nations competing at the World Cup.
I’d say the added exposure from ITSF’s promotions and sanctioned
tournaments has been a huge plus for us, and we fully support their continued
efforts.” Other manufacturers echoed similar supportive sentiments,
noting upsurges in sales to more and more new countries where the ITSF had
established ties.

The ITSF, based in Nantes, France
and run by its President, Farid Lounas, has further extensively worked to
regulate the sport in accordance with international Olympic standards. ITSF has
established a single codified set of playing rules for all tables, quality
standards and measurements criteria for participating manufacturers, a
worldwide player ranking system and a development fund to help establish and
guide organizations in new member countries.

“ITSF is a non-profit, all volunteer ruling
body and organization, but the active work of Farid, his staff and the ITSF
Executive Commission has meant a whole lot more than that to the game and the
sport,” said Larry Davis, Executive Director of the United States Table
Soccer Federation (USTSF). “We’ve witnessed growing excitement all
the way from the grass-roots video arcade, youth center or sports pub levels up
to professional competition for hundreds of thousands of dollars in a
tournament.”

“Indeed,” Davis continued, “over
the last four years we’ve seen a massive increase in the number of
foosball websites, bulletin boards and ‘blogs,’ TV spots (such as
on ESPN, Fox Sports, popular TV shows and commercials for Pepsi, MTV, and Right
Guard) and charity involvement via benefit tournaments. There are even a number
of films and documentaries filmed around the sport, either in the works or
pending release, while according to the USTSF’s tracking service our last
four tournament press releases alone have received nearly a million hits and
been picked up by over 2,000 media outlets worldwide. And now more than ever
before you can see a huge variety foosball tables for sale at places like Sears,
WalMart, Sportmart and even on eBay, so there must be a corresponding and
significant increase in market demand.”

The enthusiasm doesn’t stop there -- more of
ITSF’s sanctioned World Tour events are scheduled to take place in
Austria, Canada, Costa Rica, Germany, Japan, Mexico, Poland, South Africa,
United States (including Kentucky, Minnesota, and Texas), the UK and more.
Having already finished the World Cup in Germany and “World Series”
events in Belgium and France, the 2006 tour will culminate this summer and fall
with additional World Series events in Austria, Italy, and the $100,000 Tornado
World Championships Series tournament at the Riviera Hotel in Las Vegas
(September 20-24). The traditional season-end finale will then be the ITSF
World Championships Masters Playoff in St. Vincent, Italy (November 4-8), a
“best of the best” playoff of all the year’s top male and
female tour champions in singles and doubles. All told, this year’s tour
will be the largest worldwide table soccer pro tour ever!!

For additional details about these events and the sport of table soccer,
please see the following websites:

www.tischfussball-wm-2006.de/eng_teams.html
- Official World Cup of Table Soccer results

www.table-soccer.org - Official ITSF
web site, international rankings and tour schedule

www.foosball.com/ustsf - Official U.S.
Table Soccer Federation website and tour schedule

www.foosball.com - General information
about the sport of table soccer

www.vifa.com - U.S. Tournament and
International League information

For
more information, photos, or for an electronic version of this release, please
contact:

Larry
Davis, Executive Director, USTSF

Tel:
1-563-580-9485; Email: [email-masked]

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