A massive thank you to all our amazing companies who came out in force to take part in Ping Pong Fight Club London 2019 at Oval Space. The energy, camaraderie and all-round tongue-in-cheekiness, not to mention the fierce ping pong rivalry, made for a memorable night out.

In no particular order, PPFC London super heroes were:

• Funding Circle All Women’s Team – We sent a Table Tennis England coach to Funding Circle offices to get them ‘tournament ready’. They were all magnificent on the night and truly embodied the Ping Pong Fight Club spirit, demonstrating some silky skills, wit and gritty determination!
• Funding Circle A Team – Crowd surging into PPFC for the 6^th successful year, they returned with a new team of smiling assassins and an up for it ping pong party army!
• Tetrad Discovery - Ping Pong Fight Club is in their DNA (after all they are a biotech company).
• Talent Village – PPFC newbies, rowdy, unruly, disruptive…can’t wait to have them back next year!
• Just Eat - Arrived at Fight Club for the first time with two teams and served up a brilliant brand of humour and ping pong prowess, on and off the tables!
• Patient – Fab new addition to the Ping Pong Fight Club family ☺
• Yoyo - A fully integrated ping pong social machine! They move, groove and know how to get the party started (and finished!)
• Ratesetter - Rebellious and unruly and super keen players, we heard they had been training at high altitude before Fight Club!
• Natwest – High-energy fun-loving group of entrepreneurs, movers and shakers with enough energy to light up a small city, we’ll be sure to plug in again with them next year.

During the warm up we suffered a blackout in the arena due to a power cut in the whole street, so we had to keep calm and not panic about the ping pong! Fortunately, we ferried everyone to the outside bar where all our Ping Pong Fight Clubbers enjoyed food and drinks at sunset and LEON our magician, kept everyone entertained while we all prayed for the power to return in time for our tournament to start! Leon would be back to astonish us all later on in the evening!

In what seemed an eternity, Fight Club got underway with as our vibe master-in-chief DJ Thomas playing some serious bass-lined grooves for the players to warm up to and scope out the opposition.

Meanwhile, our ping pong party crowd headed off in packs to the festival of ping pong that awaited including our amazing @PongConnect state of the art, inter-active, beer pong tables, making their PPFC debut.

The Pongbot Challenge, our ping pong robot took on all-comers in a 60 second dual also featured a new edition of doubles involving 2 players squeezing into a two-person jumper! Our game developers had been busy preparing a new version of our VR ping pong challenge (ready for the night) - this time going head to head against a virtual reality ping pong robot in a New York loft! The buddy up doubles and social play also kept the crowd busy and ‘battle scars and butterflies’ from our resident face-painter Anna from Snapdragon ensured everyone had their ‘Fight Club Face’ on ready to do battle.

As the ping pong entertainment brought new friends and ‘frenemies’ together, the tournament continued in the middle of the arena, as the players battled for their company’s honour. Sinews were stretched, matches were hard fought and screams of jubilation and groans of commiseration played out in equal measure. However, like with all great sporting occasions, there were winners and those that did not win (but won anyway!)

Going into the Ping Pong Fight Club London 2019 Hall of Fame:

• Ping Pong Fight Club Championships: Champion Phil Thomas (Funding Circle) / Runner-up – Julien Campen (Funding Circle)
• Chancers Championship: Winner – Hasier Rodriguez (from YoYo) / Runner-up Dan Brown (Tetrad Discovery)
• Team Championships: Winners – Funding Circle (most points scored in tournament)
• @Pong Connect Beer Pong Championships: Winners - Funding Circle
• Buddy -up Doubles Tournament: Tom and Dan from Natwest
• Pongbot Challenge Championships: Funding Circle with a score of 59
• Pongbot Doubles (new challenge) - Arthur & Antoine from Natwest
• VR Ping Pong Champion: Alex Sanje (Funding Circle)
• Loudest Supporters Trophy: Funding Circle
• Social Media Gong (New award given out to the most creative/funny tweet/post): Just Eat

Huge big ups to all our amazing Ping Pong Fight Club crew that brought some order out of the chaos, our partners Table Tennis England for supporting our mission to increase the number of women playing the beautiful game across the UK (well done Funding Circle all-women’s team!) and Oval Space for letting us have their incredible venue to play, party and compete in the only way we know how: with more fun than you can shake a paddle at!

Book your place now for PPFC London 2020 at http://www.pingpongfightclub.co.uk/london and follow all the action from our 2019 Tour via our social media channels: (Twitter) @PingPongFightcl / (Fb) @pingpongfightclubofficial / (Insta) @pingpongfightclub

Next stop Manchester on June 13th www.pingpongfightclub.co.uk/lo…

*All photographs taken by Coco Edwards and Mati Kaim*