Quidditch
Canon discussion / Harry Potter Lexicon Minute

The Changing Quidditch World Cup Schedule

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“Ladies and gentlemen . . . welcome! Welcome to the final of the four hundred and twenty-second Quidditch World Cup!”

-- Ludo Bagman (GF8)

The Changing Quidditch World Cup Schedule

Following up on the earlier release of Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them in audiobook form, Pottermore and Audible are releasing a Quidditch Through the Ages audiobook tomorrow. In addition to a reading of the book itself, 2 voice actresses will take on the roles of Ginny Potter and Rita Skeeter in a dramatic reading of the 427th Quidditch World Cup Final commentary that has been recently re-posted to Pottermore.

Did you know that there have been far more Quidditch World Cups than can possibly fit the criteria we are given in canon. We are told that the Quidditch World Cup was founded in 1473 and happens every 4 years, but that would make the 2014 Quidditch World Cup the 135th cup, not the 427th. We need to account for far more Quidditch World Cup championships.

The easiest way to solve this is to assume that at some point in the past the cup was held more often than every 4 years. We know that the 1877 world cup was re-staged in 1878 meaning that in 1878 the world cup was not expected to happen normally, so we assume that from 1877 onward the 4 year standard must be true.

Unfortunately going bi-annually before 1877 would result in far too few Quidditch World Cups, and going annually would result in far too many, so the easiest thing to do is assume that the schedule changed twice. If we go with the belief that the Quidditch World Cup was held annually until the 382nd cup in 1855, after which the growing difficulty of holding an annual cup resulted in a change to a biannual cup instead. We can then assume that the 1878 redo of the 393rd cup was then the start of doing it every 4 years to bring us to the 427th cup in 2014 and the 428th cup this year.

Of course, the number could just be a random number picked out by someone who “hates math” but I think the rescheduling is much more fun.

Either way, reading the “live” commentary back in 2014 was a fantastic experience, and getting a dramatized reading of this is something I’m very much looking forward to listening to. The audiobook comes out tomorrow and you can order it now on Audible.com or Audible.co.uk.

Commentary

Notes

In the Harry Potter Lexicon Minute podcast you’ll hear the voices of our editors sharing some of the many little things which delight us about the Wizarding World. In each podcast, one to two minutes in length, we’ll talk about anything from cool trivia and interesting canon passages to the latest Wizarding World news. We hope you’ll join us! And we’d love to hear from you as well. Feel free to use the comment section on the blogpost for each podcast to post your thoughts.

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