Orlando FootGolf World Cup crowns champions across 39 nations

Bence Bacskaí, Jan Aksel Odden and Lucia Cermakova left Orlando as the individual champions of the 4th FIFG FootGolf World Cup, a tournament that drew 972 athletes from 39 nations across five courses in Central Florida. France, Argentina and Japan took the team titles, giving the 2023 edition a results sheet that matched the event’s biggest claim: FootGolf could stage a true world championship, not a novelty weekend.

The tournament ran from May 27 through June 6 and stretched across five 18-hole FootGolf courses at Walt Disney World Golf and Evermore Orlando Resort. The official tournament guide had framed the field at 1,000 players from 40 countries, with competition in three categories, Men, Senior Men and Women, and two formats, Individual Stroke Play and Team Match Play. That structure mattered because Orlando was built like a full championship calendar, not a single-site exhibition.

The schedule added the kind of finishing polish major sports properties chase. The World Cup opened with a celebration at House of Blues Orlando, included a Players Evening and a Presidents VIP Dinner at EPCOT, and closed with a celebration at Planet Hollywood Orlando. The event also centered its hospitality and staging around the Hilton Orlando Buena Vista Palace Resort near Disney Springs, turning the tournament’s footprint into a recognizable resort corridor that could handle athletes, officials and fans in the same orbit.

Broadcast plans pushed the event further into the mainstream sports model. The American FootGolf League said the World Cup would be carried live by CTV Sports Media Group and Chukker TV, a notable sign that the sport’s biggest stage was being packaged for more than the in-person crowd. That matters for sponsors and national federations because FootGolf’s pitch is no longer only participation, but presentation: live coverage, formal venues and a schedule that looks built for audiences beyond the course.

Orlando also marked a sharp climb from the sport’s early years. FIFG says the federation was founded on June 3, 2012, near Budapest, Hungary, during the first FootGolf World Cup, which featured eight countries and 79 athletes. Argentina 2016 grew to more than 230 players from 26 FIFG member countries, and Morocco 2018 reached 520 players from 33 countries. By the time Orlando closed, FootGolf had expanded from a small international experiment into a 39-nation event with individual champions, team champions and a production scale that gave the sport its clearest proof yet that the World Cup format can hold up on a global stage.