This is the Water Football from The Dime Lab, in short, it’s a summer-ready football developed by a former Falcons, Packers, and 49ers quarterback, and it’s become a best-seller largely through word of mouth and social media.
The Water Football is made from a specialized PVC mesh over a rubber bladder, it’s designed to be 100% compatible with both salt water and fresh water, and to be suitable for use in backyard chlorine pools.
The Dime Lab Water Football is a patent-pending design from former NFL quarterback Kurt Benkert’s Florida-based company.
History Speedrun: The Dime Lab
The founder of The Dime Lab, Kurt Benkert was a record-breaking quarterback at the University of Virginia, where he became the first Cavalier in program history to throw for over 3,000 yards in a season, finishing his 2017 senior campaign with 3,207 passing yards, 25 touchdowns, and a 384-yard, four-touchdown performance against No. 2 Miami that stands as one of the best games in UVA football history.
Benkert left Charlottesville ranked in the top five all-time in career passing yards and helped lead the Cavaliers to their first bowl game in six years. That arm earned him an NFL career that included stints with the Falcons, Packers, and 49ers, where he learned behind Matt Ryan and Aaron Rodgers – two of the sharpest quarterbacks of their era.
After stepping away from pro ball, Benkert kept throwing, tossing the football with kids near his home in 30A, Florida. He then turned his frustration with the available ball options into a company that’s now done more than $4 million USD in revenue.
The problem he kept running into was simple but ever-present, cheap backyard footballs felt like toys with bad grip, flimsy laces, no real weight to them. And the retail Wilson “The Duke” NFL football costs $160 USD and requires extensive brushing and conditioning before it feels game-ready. Take one of those to the beach and saltwater will destroy it. There was nothing quality in between, so Benkert decided to make it and see if there was a market for it.
He teamed up with Matt Blakely, a friend in the Florida panhandle who had manufacturing connections. In a stroke of good luck, the factory Blakely already worked with on silicone products turned out to be a ball factory. Benkert designed what he wanted, a ball with an instant-grip surface, raised laces, proper sizing for younger hands, and the factory could build the tooling to produce it. The Dime Lab launched in the summer of 2024 with little fanfare.
The company’s breakthrough idea is what they call DimeTack™ Technology, it’s essentially a tacky composite surface that gives their footballs grip straight out of the box with zero prep work. The flagship ball, “The Dime,” is a composite football that retails for $50. They also make a patent-pending “Water Football” at $30 with silicone grip lines positioned where a quarterback’s fingers naturally sit – designed to actually throw like a real ball in the pool, at the beach, or at the lake. There’s also a pink youth model called “Scout,” named after Benkert’s daughter.
The company’s growth numbers have been remarkable for a bootstrapped company with no outside investors. They moved 17,000+ balls and hit $850,000+ in gross sales within their first year. By late January of 2026, The Dime Lab had generated more than $4 million in revenue. Their balls are now stocked in Scheels stores nationwide and in 40 Dick’s Sporting Goods locations. Benkert even turned down a “Shark Tank” opportunity in early 2026, saying the company wasn’t looking for additional funding.
A big part of that growth comes down to Benkert’s social media presence, he has 1.6+ million followers across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, where he posts football training tips, film breakdowns, and content for EA Madden and the fantasy platform Sleeper. His videos regularly cross 100,000 views, sometimes as many as 200,000+ and the audience often converts into customers.
What started as a ball for backyard catch has now grown into flag football leagues, with bulk orders of 40 to 50 balls coming in twice a week, and Dime Lab balls being thrown around in backyards and on beaches around the country.
The Dime Lab Water Football
The Dime Lab Water Football is a patent-pending design from former NFL quarterback Kurt Benkert’s Florida-based company. It was actually the product that started the whole business. The Water Football is his attempt to build something that handles water use (including full submersion) while still throwing like a real football.
The key defining feature is the silicone tack strips, positioned at specific finger-contact points (where the index finger and thumb sit during a throw) so the grip works for both right and left-handed quarterbacks.
This is the Water Football from The Dime Lab, in short, it’s a summer-ready football developed by a former Falcons, Packers, and 49ers quarterback, and it’s become a best-seller largely through word of mouth.
The exterior is a specialized PVC mesh over a rubber bladder, with raised textured laces rather than the flat plastic lacing found on most water footballs. The construction prevents the ball from absorbing water and gaining weight, which is the main reason cheap water footballs lose their flight characteristics after a few hours of use.
The Water Football is now being offered for sale on Huckberry with an MSRP of $30 USD. They come with free US returns, and you can visit the store listing here.
Images courtesy of Huckberry + The Dime Lab
Articles that Ben Branch has written have been covered on CNN, Popular Mechanics, Smithsonian Magazine, Road & Track Magazine, the official Pinterest blog, the official eBay Motors blog, BuzzFeed, Autoweek Magazine, Wired Magazine, Autoblog, Gear Patrol, Jalopnik, The Verge, and many more.
Silodrome was founded by Ben back in 2010, in the years since the site has grown to become a world leader in the alternative and vintage motoring sector, with well over a million monthly readers from around the world and many hundreds of thousands of followers on social media.
