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Why Soccer Balls Used to Be Black and White

The 1970 World Cup had very different viewing demands

By Rain Noe - June 18, 2018

in Games

[This is an excerpt from our History of Soccer Balls post.]

Up until the 1966 World Cup, soccer balls looked like this:

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That bland color was simply the natural color of the leather. Not very telegenic. But as matches increasingly became televised, the telegenic problem was solved in 1970 by Adidas with the advent of a high-contrast black and white design called the Telstar (Television Star).

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First used in the 1970 World Cup, this design was chosen specifically so spectators watching black-and-white televisions could clearly see the ball, with the black accents on a white background revealing the ball's direction of spin. The pentagons-on-hexagons pattern of 32 panels, called an icosahedron by math geeks, would remain part of the design for many years.

Adidas has revived the design, sort of at least, for the 2018 World Cup with their Telstar 18. We'll post about that shortly.

Click here to see how soccer ball designs have evolved over the years.

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Bobtato Smith

6 years ago

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I would assume that it was named "Telstar" after the pioneering, also-spherical communication satellite, which was a household name at the time (there was a fairly successful pop track named after it). Though it might well have been marketed as standing for "television star" too.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telstar

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Anuar Portugal

6 years ago

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*truncated icosahedron

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