How Cornhole Went Pro

This same night, at the Smoothie King Center across the Mississippi River, the hometown Pelicans were playing the Sacramento Kings for one of the N.B.A.’s last playoff spots, and about 2.6 million viewers tuned in to the broadcast on TNT and truTV. Meanwhile, the live audience for the American Cornhole League’s 2024 Kickoff Battle, Shootout Singles division, was far smaller — but credit each of those fans for being determined to find it. They either had to visit the A.C.L. website, IPlayCornhole.com, and open the Cornhole TV livestream; or follow along at one of the A.C.L.’s social media channels; or subscribe to ESPN+, scroll down on the app to “Also Live,” then slide past more than a dozen N.C.A.A. baseball and softball games to the next-to-last tile. Over the course of the tournament, across six ESPN telecasts, the A.C.L. drew an average of just over 50,000 viewers. If you were one of them, though, you got treated to some epic, nail-biting action. That’s the other fun part about watching pro cornhole on TV: These players are incredible.