It was formed in 2011 by brothers Christian and Damien Devaux, after a game of Tag between Christian and his son, Orlando, in their back garden. The guys set to work on designing the ultimate course dimensions & scale of obstacles in order to perfectly balance the chase between the Evader & Chaser. This playing arena is known as The Quad. The Devaux Brothers staged extensive test sessions to experiment with the effect of changing small elements of each Quad design to measure how it impacted an athlete’s ability to evade a tag. In doing so they were able to develop an ‘EQ’ calculation (a term coined by Jason Matten) which, by adding or removing certain elements of any Quad design, could tweak the level of difficulty. This has enabled them to create multiple Quad designs at a variety of sizes which can be adapted easily to switch between a professional competition standard, or to accommodate lesser abilities of amateurs & children while still delivering an evenly balanced chase.
The league has travelled around the world and has featured on television networks such as ESPN, BBC and Fox Sports. It also gained huge popularity on the internet after the high-flug, high-octane action seen on YouTube more than 350 million times.
So, what’s this sport actually about?
Although the fundamentals of tag stay the same — a person chases an enemy to touch him or her with the hand or "tag" them — the league has added certain rules to make it more competitive. The "Chase Off" format – the most common sports format – is played by two teams with a limit of five competitors. A match is made up of a predetermined number of chases, typically between 10 and 16, that last 20 seconds.
A Chaser and Evader — one of each team — race with the victorious competitors as the Evader. A teammate who becomes the chaser replaces the loser. A team gets one point as its athlete succeeds in escaping its opponent in the chase and the team with the most points after the match wins.
Official rules from World Chase Tag
CHASE TAG™ - CHASE-OFF™
This is our most popular format and is used at our main events (e.g. WCT2, WCT3 etc.)
It is a team format that is played by two teams and each team has a maximum of five athletes.
Each match consists of a pre-determined number of chases (usually 16 chases).
Each chase is twenty seconds long and has one athlete from each team - one is the Chaser and one is the Evader.
The winning athlete in each chase stays on as the evader and the losing athlete comes off and is replaced by a teammate who becomes the Chaser in the next Chase.
A team is awarded one point when their athlete successfully evades their opponent for the entire duration of the chase (i.e. 20 seconds).
The team with the most points after of the pre-determined number of chases wins the match.
Tags must be made with the hand (i.e. NOT your foot).
If an athlete steps out of bounds, they lose that chase.
You can view more rules here https://www.worldchasetag.com/rules