For decades in the US, table tennis has lived a double life: one of the most widely played sports in the country, yet still dismissed by many as a basement pursuit. Now, unexpectedly, it is having a cultural moment.

The release of Marty Supreme, a film steeped in obsession and myth, and loosely based on postwar American table tennis champion Marty Reisman, has pushed ping-pong into the pop-culture mainstream – just as US Major League Table Tennis sells out matches, clubs report growing interest, and younger players pick up paddles for the first time.

“The movie has been a catalyst,” says David Silberman, cofounder of PingPod, which operates table tennis venues across the US northeast. “We’re starting to see it in the data of our business.”

In 2022, Silberman started playing table tennis regularly with Marty Supreme director Josh Safdie – whom he describes as “a solid beginner player” by competitive standards – at Pingpod’s Midtown, New York location. “He’s fascinated by the sport … and how it’s always been considered a second-rate sport,” says Silberman.

“When Christmas Day came along and the movie premiered we pretty much immediately saw a 20-40% spike in year-on-year new customer reservations, and existing customer utilisation went up 10-15%. Clearly a wave of new people are picking up the paddle.”

Major League Table Tennis (MLTT), the first professional table tennis league in the US, established in 2023, just set an all-time regular season ticket sales record, according to founder Flint Lane. “No doubt some of that is Marty related.”

The sport already had momentum, adds MLTT senior vice-president for marketing, Matt Parker, “but the film has helped reintroduce it to a younger, culture-driven audience that’s now showing up at matches and engaging with our content.”

MLTT’s first event since the release of Marty Supreme sold out in Portland, Oregon, at the beginning of the month – marking the first sellout and the highest regular-season attendance weekend in league history, with more than 2,000 tickets sold.

“Table tennis is definitely having a moment right now, and I love to see it,” says Lily Zhang, a six-time US national champion in women’s singles who in November became the first woman to rank No 1 on MLTT’s power rankings list. “It’s been a long time coming. Marty Supreme has definitely launched table tennis into the pop culture mainstream, but I would love to see more of that interest translate over to the professional side and in supporting current professional players, because we could really use it.”

A 2024 Wall Street Journal profile on Zhang, a four-time Olympian who reached the round of 16 at the Paris Olympics, highlighted how difficult it is for even the best table tennis players to make a living in the sport in the US. Estimates have long placed US participation in table tennis at about 16 million Americans per year, though it is a casual pursuit for most.

“People are often surprised when they hear that I’m a professional player – ‘ping pong is an Olympic sport?’ – and a lot of them like to tell me they could ‘probably beat’ me in a match just because they’ve played a lot in their basement,” adds Zhang. “I laugh it off, but it’s really because there is such a lack of understanding of how intense, technical and challenging the professional game is.”

The lack of appreciation of the skills of table tennis Olympians was perhaps on show in a recent BBC interview with Timothée Chalamet, who played the titular Marty in Marty Supreme, winning the Golden Globe for best actor ahead of the Oscars in March. The interviewer asked him if he may be able to make the team for the LA Olympics in 2028. Chalamet humbly responded there was less than a one-a-million chance despite having begun training for the role in 2018.

On Instagram, a series of clips from professional table tennis matches feature surreal replays of intense rallies of such a velocity which almost defy belief. It appears to be a matter of time before the American public gets hooked on the drama, and the MLTT says that “wagering is set to launch in the coming months, further expanding fan engagement opportunities.”

But while the film has helped spark curiosity, it has also exposed a deeper tension between the chaotic fantasy on screen and the quieter reality of a sport that, for millions of players, is less about rage and lone-wolf genius than focus, discipline, longevity and mental health.“The film has created a cultural ripple,” says Luba Sadovska, co-owner of North Shore Table Tennis Club in Vancouver, Canada, and a former Czechoslovakian national representative player. “We’re seeing new people coming forward who want to join the club as members. A lot of them played years ago, so it really feels like they’re reconnecting with their younger selves.”

Her club hosted a hardbat paddle doubles tournament after the movie’s release, since part of the Marty Supreme tale is his frustration at being beaten by a Japanese player who was an early adopter of the spongier bat that helped foster the modern game. “It was an absolute blast – great energy, lots of laughter, and a really strong sense of community,” says Sadovska.

But inside the sport, “it’s also prompted a kind of reckoning – about what gets mythologized, what gets left out, and what table tennis actually offers in real life.” Anger doesn’t have a place in real table tennis, she says, since it is considered a weakness “and professional players don’t show their weaknesses that easily.”

At Vitality Pong Neuro Active Clinic, which Sadovska co-founded, table tennis is played as a neuroactive training tool for people with Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, attention deficit hyperactivity disorder, and following strokes. “They’re looking [to attune their] focus and resilience, without burning out or breaking down.”

The rapidity of table tennis, with the required quick reflexes, the spin of the ball and the instantaneous processing and coordination demanded of even amateur players, underpins its “profound” set of mental health benefits, adds Silberman, whose company hit a $50m valuation in 2024. “It staves off neurodegenerative diseases,” he says. “It’s just unequivocally a good thing in our society.”