What Is Water Polo and How Does it Work?

An iconic Olympic event, the Paris 2024 water polo tournament group stages take place at the Paris Aquatic Centre in Saint-Denis, and the latter stages – quarter-finals, semi-finals, bronze medal match, and final – will be held at the Paris La Défense Arena in Nanterre, a western suburb of the French capital.

Water polo is an intensely physical, incredibly exciting sport that can trace its origins back to Victorian Britain where it was called ‘football in the water’ or ‘water rugby’. In this indispensable water polo Olympics guide, we’ll look at the origins, rules, and history of water polo at the Olympics. First off, we’ll answer the question ‘what is Olympic water polo?

The origins of modern water polo can be traced back to local fairs, where it was often depicted as a brutal and demanding test of strength and swimming prowess, held in lakes and rivers. Passing the ball was rare in the early forms of the game, and with no rules, sheer physical power was usually the deciding factor.

In the 1870s, one of the first recorded games took place at the London Swimming Club in Crystal Palace. In 1876, a six-a-side game featuring twelve members of the Premier Rowing Club in Bournemouth lasted just fifteen minutes until the ball burst.

A year later, Scottish journalist and swimming coach William Wilson drew up a set of rules for ‘aquatic football’ using a ball made of Indian rubber, called, in a Tibetic language from India and Pakistan known as Balti, a pulu. This is where the word polo comes from, rather than from any link to the horseback sport of the same name.

The early rules allowed players to wrestle and hold their opponents underwater for as long as it took for them to give up the ball, a far cry from the Olympic rules for water polo as we know them today.

Men’s water polo has appeared at every edition of the Olympic Games aside from the first edition in Athens in 1896, but for reasons unknown, women’s water polo only debuted at Sydney 2000.

At Paris 1900, the tournament was held on the Seine and, while there’s some debate about the make-up of the teams, it most likely consisted of two French teams, one Belgian and one German team, and three or four other teams made up of mixed nationalities including Great Britain and New Zealand, France and Great Britain, and Belgium and France. In the gold medal match, the Osborne Swimming Club of Manchester beat the Brussels Swimming & Water Polo Club by a score of 7-2.

The most successful nation in men’s Olympic water polo history is Hungary, with sixteen medals made up of nine gold, three silver and four bronze. They medalled in every edition from 1928 until 1980 and won three golds in a row from 2000 to 2008.

In the women’s tournament, Australia won the inaugural gold in 2000, followed by Italy in 2004 and The Netherlands in 2008. The USA team has won the last three, in 2012, 2016 and 2020.

In the men’s competition at Paris 2024, the 12 competing nations are split into two groups of six. In the women’s competition, ten teams are split into two groups of five.

Men | Group A – Croatia, Italy, Romania, Greece, USA, Montenegro
Men | Group B – Australia, Serbia, France, Hungary, Japan, Spain

Women | Group A – Hungary, Australia, Canada, China, Netherlands
Women | Group B – France, Greece, Italy, USA, Spain

In a round-robin format, each team plays all opponents in their groups with two points for a win and one for a draw. The top four teams in each group go through to the quarter-finals where it becomes a straight knock-out competition.

If teams are level on points after the round-robin, tiebreakers are applied in the following order – head-to-head points, head-to-head goal difference, head-to-head goals scored, and goal difference​.

The two losing semi-finalists play off in the bronze medal match. The two winning semi-finalists go for gold.

The Olympic rules are the same for all water polo games and the sport is governed by World Aquatics, formerly known as FINA, the Fédération internationale de natation, or the International Swimming Federation. Like in football, each goal is worth one point and the team who scores the most goals at the end of the match is the winner.

The Field of Play

A regulation water polo pool is 30 metres long for men, 25 metres long for women, and 20 metres wide for both. The pools are usually at least three metres deep so the players can’t touch the bottom. The goals are three metres wide and 90 centimetres high. There is a five-metre line from which penalties are taken and a two-metre line inside which players cannot enter unless they have possession of the ball.

The Teams

In Olympic Games water polo, each team consists of seven players – six outfield players and one goalkeeper. Each team can also have up to six substitutes, making a total of thirteen players in a squad.

The Ball

The size and weight of the water polo ball differ slightly between the men’s and women’s game.

• Men’s Game: The ball must have a circumference of between 68 and 71 centimetres and weigh between 400 and 450 grams.
• Women’s Game: The ball must have a circumference of between 65 and 67 centimetres and weigh between 350 and 400 grams.

The Rules

The most recent set of World Aquatics rules were published in 2022. Similar to all team sports, the rules go into minute detail – the official Rules of the Game stretches to almost 50 pages – but in summary –

Possession and Passing: When a player gets the ball, they can pass it to a teammate, retain possession, or shoot.

Goalkeeping: Only the goalkeeper is allowed to touch the ball with both hands, and they can stand or push off from the pool bottom.

Movement: Players are not allowed to stand on the pool floor. They must either swim or tread water – many use a technique called the egg-beater which uses alternate single-legged breaststroke kicks.

Time on the Ball: Each team is allowed to hold onto the ball for a maximum of 30 seconds before shooting. If they haven’t shot at goal, possession passes to the other team.

Fouls: Ordinary fouls include minor infractions such as touching the ball with two hands (except the goalkeeper), pushing off an opponent, or being within two metres of the goal without the ball. Major fouls lead to exclusions between 20 seconds and the rest of the match, depending on the severity of the foul.

Substitutions: Players can be substituted in and out without stopping the game, but they must enter and exit in the re-entry area near their own goal line. Improper entry can result in penalties.

The Duration

A standard game of water polo at the Olympics is divided into four periods of eight minutes each, with two-minute breaks between the periods and a three or five-minute halftime break. If the score is level at the end of the fourth period, the game proceeds to a penalty shootout. Each team takes five penalty shots. If the shootout is still tied, it moves to sudden death where teams continue to shoot until one team misses and the other scores.

We hope you enjoyed reading this water polo Olympics guide and don’t forget, you can catch all the action from Paris 2024 on discovery+!