Bocce may be more than 5,000 years old, but it’s getting new life as meeting activity. Most people think about bocce ball as a game for family picnics (if they think about it at all), but it’s being introduced to the event market by a new company called Bocce Nation, Palm Beach Garden, Fla. Bocce Nation has only been around since August 2010, but founder John Lehmann has already organized about a dozen bocce events for corporate and association groups and is excited about the future.

Why bocce? “It has a unique mixture of competition and camaraderie, and it’s an interesting shared experience,” says Lehmann, a tennis professional turned event planner who has run golf and sports events for groups for 20 years. (He’s also founder of Network Sports Marketing.) Plus, it’s simple and doesn’t require athletic ability or experience. It’s like horseshoes played with 2.2-pound balls. “I’ve never seen anything in all my years of sports that accepts so many different types of people so easily.”

“We did trivia contests, treasure hunts—we even tried horseshoes,” says Lehmann of his efforts to create group activities for event attendees who don’t want to play golf or do something more physical. “Then, a few years ago, we stumbled on bocce and noticed that, even as a relatively unorganized event, everyone seemed to have a lot of fun.”

After doing some research, he decided there was an opportunity to take bocce to a wider audience. He developed a Bocce-in-a-Bag product—complete with balls, a portable court, a measuring device, and a scoreboard—and began marketing the sport to groups.

Bocce can be set up almost anywhere—on the beach, indoors, or on turf. For a corporate event at the Washington, D.C., Convention Center in December, the company set up 40 of the 36-foot-by-7-foot courts. With four players to a court, planners can roll out as many courts as they need. Rounds take about 20 minutes to play, with players rotating each round. Typically, each player (or team) amasses a score based on how many matches he or she won that day. “Rather than golf where you network with three other people for five hours, in bocce you might play 10 different matches and network with 30 people.”

Planners can run their own bocce events or hire Bocce Nation to do it. With the self-service option, groups purchase the bocce sets ($139 each, with discounts for multiple sets). If Bocce Nation runs the event, the cost is about $75 per attendee.