Ping pong is quickly becoming the pastime of hipsters and the elite – and it has a booming business to back it up.
Beginning with the opening of cominbation ping pong venue and bar SPiN in New York City, opened by actress Susan Sarandon, the Olympic sport has taken the world by storm, Bloomberg reports. There are now SPiN clubs in Los Angeles, Toronto and even Dubai featuring ping pong with amenities to get the wealthy to come back for more. SPiN is also set to new locations opening in Chicago and in Belgium in the coming months.
And there are other ways that people in the ping pong world are coaxing the elite to the sport. As Bloomberg notes, players who spend $5,899 on a high-end Killerspin table can get discounts to stay at a high-tend tennis-themed Italian resort, where the company will host a training academy.
Table tennis is also a sport played by hipsters and people within the art world. “It’s become a hip thing,” artist Wing Young Huie told Bloomberg. Huie owns Third Place Photography Gallery in Minneapolis, which has a ping pong table. “I know other artists in the Twin Cities doing ping pong.”
Clubs like SPiN aren’t the only beneficiaries of the ping pong boom: Killerspin, based in Chicago, says sales of its tables and other gear have doubled annually over the last three years. Its tables range from $269 to $4,999.