Asian Beach Volleyball on the rise with FIVB support
After the South East Asian Beach Volleyball Championships that took place end of September in Singapore, the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) is continuing its efforts to increase the popularity of beach volleyball in Asia. Aiming at the 2020 Olympics in Tokyo (Japan), the FIVB and the Asian Volleyball Confederation (AVC) are joining forces to promote beach volleyball throughout Asia. At a meeting in Bangkok (Thailand), both parties aligned their efforts that are directed at organizing more beach volleyball events in Asia and professionalising marketing activties.
More World Tour events in Asia
On the event side, the main goal is to convert current AVC events to World Tour events following the new FIVB event structure. Besides organizing a range of 1- and 2-star events across Asia, the AVC is also planning to stage a 3-star event from 2018. This event could possibly be upgraded to a 4-star double gender event that might take place in Thailand in November 2018. Having in mind Tokyo 2020, the FIVB and AVC also agreed to stage both World Tour events and the Asian Championships in Japan. To support these efforts in the future, the AVC will organize Asian Championships every year instead of every two years.
Additionally, both FIVB and AVC will also try to lobby beach volleyball as part of multi-sport competitions. The inclusion of beach volleyball in the South East Asian (SEA) Games could be one the major outcomes of these lobbying activities.
Commercial rights split between local promoters and FIVB
In terms of marketing and sponsoring, the FIVB is willing to extend the range of potential sponsors for World Tour events. An ongoing discussion is the question on how to distribute commercial space and TV rights between the FIVB and the promoter. The FIVB claims 30% of the commercial space. For TV and digital rights, the solution could be to exploit local TV rights locally while the FIVB will exploit TV rights outside the event territory.
For more details refer to AVC’s official website.
