Today’s Flyball Finals will likely set a record for attendance, the annual event’s organizers tell The Mammalian Daily.

“The sport’s audience has been growing steadily for years, but since it was finally included in the Ball and Stick events of the 2013 Interspecial Summer Games, it’s attracted a much wider audience,” says Adrià Lebrel, president of the Park Flyball Association (PFA).

Mammalian Daily Balls columnist and Park sports historian, Bailey, agrees.

“In the beginning, flyball had a hard time shedding the stigma of being a domestic sport. Many Park Animals associated it with Human entertainment and felt it had little to do with the natural inclinations of Canines. Now that we have a few decades of zoocracy under our belts, we seem to feel freer to enjoy flyball as the activity it is, and not in association with Humans. It is great exercise and great fun and we’re beginning to see more species getting involved with it, and not just as spectators,” he says.

In fact, Bailey says, he has been asked by The Park Museum to co-curate an exhibit dedicated to the sport. The exhibit is slated for the Spring of 2016.

“I’m very much looking forward to working with [Park Museum curator] Dorika Pumi on this. It will be the first sports-related exhibit at the museum and I was, of course, honoured to be asked to participate. Although we are planning to highlight flyball, it will also be a tribute to the enduring relationship between Animals and balls,” he says.

Today’s Flyball Finals began at 3:00 p.m.

Find more information on the Tennis Ball, the ball used in Flyball,  here.