PORTLAND, Ore. — Six months after a run of viral videos emptied the nation's shelves of crocheted footbags, members of Generation Z confirmed Wednesday that they had fully discovered hacky sack, a game in which friends stand in a circle and keep a small beanbag off the ground for no reason, and had immediately put it behind a monthly paywall.
The service, Circl, launched in 41 states with four tiers, a leased beanbag and a $29 ankle sensor sold separately. "We spelled it without the 'e,'" said co-founder and Chief Circle Officer Maddox Prewitt-Hale, 20, who left college to "focus on kicking" and raised a $38 million Series A on a pitch deck consisting of one photo of five people in a parking lot and the word "unmonetized" circled in red. "The 'e' was a legacy cost."
"For 54 years, people have just been standing around kicking this thing for free," Prewitt-Hale said. "That's not a game. That's leakage."
The demand is real. Google Trends searches for hacky sack rose more than 5,000% in a single month this spring, and TikTok reported a 7,000% year-over-year jump in searches, NPR reported in May, describing sellers who could not keep up because even the cheap bags are handmade, crocheted in Guatemala or hand-sewn in Pakistan or the U.S. Some observers credited school phone bans, which left a generation standing in hallways with its hands empty and its feet available. Circl's investors saw the opportunity at once: a generation had found the one activity left on Earth without an app, and an app could fix that.
The tiers are simple. Circl Free lets users stand within six feet of an active circle and "vibe." Circl Plus, at $4.99 a month, includes five kicks a day, with an unskippable 30-second ad after every third touch, read aloud by the circle's newest member. Circl Pro, at $11.99, unlocks unlimited kicks, the "around the world" and the right to say "my bad." Circl Founders, at $49.99, guarantees that the sack is passed to the subscriber first and that nobody makes eye contact while it is dropped.
🧶 The Circl Kick Meter
Pick a tier and keep the sack up. Every foot contact is metered by your ankle sensor, which you have now purchased.
Ads are shortened to 3 seconds for your convenience and billed at 30. Kick credits do not roll over, roll under or roll. Prices shown do not include the ankle sensor, which you have already been charged for by reading this.
Kicks are counted by the ankle sensor, which logs any foot contact, including stepping on the sack, as a billable touch. A "hacky," the traditional term for a round in which every player touches the bag before it hits the ground, is now a premium event that triggers a $1.99 Circle Completion Fee, split evenly among participants whether or not they kicked.
The sack itself is not sold. It is leased. "Ownership is a boomer concept," Prewitt-Hale said. "The sack is a relationship." Subscribers who let a plan lapse are notified that the bag in their pocket has been "remotely deauthorized," which the company acknowledges does nothing to the bag but "changes how it feels." The bags are still crocheted by hand in Guatemala by artisans who were paid the same as before and were not offered equity.
Young users have so far welcomed the model. Students who spent the spring posting mock varsity rankings and fictional college "commitments" to hacky sack programs now list their Circl tier on the graphics. "I've never done anything that didn't have a Plus version," said Ava Lindqvist, 19, a sophomore at a community college outside Beaverton, who is on the Circl Pro annual plan. "When my friends just kicked it around for nothing, it felt kind of illegal. Like, who's getting paid?"
The average American now spends $111 a month on subscriptions, up 23% from last year, according to CNET's annual survey. Circl has told investors it intends to be the 112th dollar.
Older players have been accommodated. Dale Fenwick, 53, who says he has kicked in the same Oregon City parking lot since 1989, a short drive from where Mike Marshall and John Stalberger began kicking a homemade footbag in 1972, was offered a "Legacy Kicker" plan grandfathering his free play. Circl sunsetted the plan after 11 days. "I don't even have a phone," Fenwick said. Circl has since geofenced the parking lot.
Dr. Helen Matsuda, whose 40-year Stanford longitudinal footbag study found this February that the circle was "the last time Americans gathered in a group without anyone trying to sell anything," said she learned this week that the study is available only to Circl Pro members. "They put my sentence on the onboarding screen," Matsuda said. "It's right above the payment field."
Leaving is a little harder. To cancel, members open the app, complete a "Circle Exit Interview," decline three retention offers and then keep the sack aloft for 47 consecutive kicks while on hold with a retention specialist. The Federal Trade Commission's "click-to-cancel" rule, which would have required canceling to be as easy as signing up, was vacated by the Eighth Circuit in July 2025, and the agency restarted the process in March with an advance notice of proposed rulemaking. Prewitt-Hale said Circl "fully supports" that process and has filed a public comment, which can be read with Circl Plus.
🚪 Cancel Your Circle
We're sorry to see you go. We are also not going to let you. Try anyway.
Cancellation takes effect at the end of the current billing cycle. The current billing cycle begins when you cancel. Drops caused by the hold music are the member's responsibility.
"Every generation gets the hacky sack it deserves," said Dr. Renata Oduya, who studies the subscription economy at the Institute for Things That Used To Be Free. "Boomers got it for nothing. Millennials got it ironically. Gen Z got it with a retention team." Oduya added that her own research has a free tier, which consists of the first sentence.
At press time, a group of eighth-graders had been seen behind a strip mall in Gresham, standing in a circle and kicking a sock full of rice for nothing. Circl confirmed it had sent the group a cease-and-desist letter and a promo code for one free month, after which it renews automatically.
Reader Comments (2,471)