Beach in USA needs Volleyball World, USAV, AVP to go big before L.A. 2028

Finn Taylor.

Sean Scott.

Bobby Corvino.

Please remember these names, beach volleyball fans.

They are the power brokers behind the scenes, men who will ultimately set the course of beach volleyball for the next four-plus years in the United States, with the 2028 Los Angeles Olympics looming large.

If beach volleyball does not plan effectively for 2028 beginning NOW, another opportunity like this may never happen again, not likely in my lifetime and probably yours, too.

Taylor/Scott/Corvino might sound like a white shoe law firm. None of the three are current players or coaches, although Scott was one of the best technical blockers in the history of the sand game. Yet this big three, in their respective roles with Volleyball World, USA Volleyball and the AVP, will, in different ways, set the direction of the sport for the foreseeable future.

Finn Taylor, Volleyball World

Volleyball World does not (yet) conduct tournaments in the United States.

Taylor, a Canadian who lives in Lausanne, Switzerland, has been the Volleyball World CEO for the past three years. Before his foray into the tangled landscape of beach volleyball, he was with another sort of circus, Cirque de Soleil, where he remained with the organization for almost 20 years, ending up as SVP of Touring Shows.

Taylor said he would like nothing more than to stage tournaments in the U.S., the world’s No. 1 market.

“We continue to look for promoters to work with in the U.S.. We have other events in North America (notably Montreal, Canada as well as several events in Mexico) each year, but are still looking for partners in the U.S.,” Taylor told us in an email interview.

“It’s a big priority for us to bring the Beach Pro Tour to the USA in the coming years.”

The problem, of course, is that no promoter in their right mind would put on a U.S. event. Unless, of course, they don’t mind hemorrhaging money.

Trust me: No U.S. promoter has EVER made money putting on an FIVB event.

And given the structures in place, it is almost impossible to do so.

In 1997, I was the director for NIKE of the first ever “true” World Championships of Beach Volleyball. And despite seven-figure sponsorship deals with Ericsson and NIKE, and a live television window on NBC, we still lost a boat load of money.

Similarly, I worked with both Leonard Armato (World Series of Beach Volleyball) and Kerri Walsh Jennings (p1440), and despite their best intentions to grab an international beach head with their events, they, too, were money losers.

Part of the problem for a local promoter is the onerous requirements placed on organizers by the FIVB. At least in the past, handcuffs were put on everything from the kind and quality of the playing sand, to the number of officials and “dignitaries” that had to be flown in from all corners of the world.

There are/were sponsorship category exclusivities that locked a promoter out of cutting his/her own deals. And, by the way, the local promoter still had to service those global sponsors without receiving a dime.

If that were not enough, there were extensive/expensive world feed requirements for broadcasts. And not only did the local promoter have to pay for the world feed, but also had to assume production costs of the domestic broadcast AND the time buy on network television. That could run north of $300,000 total.

Need more? In the U.S., municipalities are charging a lot of money to use public beaches for professional events. So if there is not a Chamber of Commerce or a major city tourism organization willing to underwrite the whole operation … well, the overall price tag of probably the far side of $3 million is quite an obstacle.

All that being said, the good news is that something will HAVE to give within the next four years. There is absolutely no way there will NOT be an international tournament of some sort on U.S. soil leading up to one of history’s biggest global marketing events ever, the 2028 Olympics. Moreover, with the competition itself to be played 150 or so meters north of the iconic Santa Monica pier in a purpose-built stadium, the beach volleyball competition in 2028 will be among the most sought-after tickets at the L.A. Games.

Even more so if the presumed four teams representing Team USA all have chances for medals.

Sean Scott, USA Volleyball

Which brings us to Sean Scott.

Scott’s biggest task as director of beach national teams for USA Volleyball is to get the pairs prepared for major global competitions like the World Championships and Olympic Games.

The great news for Scott is that there are now a whopping 97 NCAA women’s beach programs, which is the best feeder system of any kind in the world. In addition, the USA’s current top two women’s pairs — Sara Hughes and Kelly Cheng and Kristen Nuss and Taryn Kloth — as young and as good as they are now, could be just at the beginning of a multi-Olympics trajectory.

The real heavy lifting for Scott comes with the USA men. The top team at the moment, Miles Partain and Andy Benesh, could possibly be a factor for years to come. Partain grew up about five miles from the Santa Monica Pier, in Pacific Palisades, and it would be a transcendent story if he is a medal contender in 2028.

That’s the good news.

Every other quasi-successful USA men’s pair on the circuit now will age out by 2028, not that any of them project as medal contenders as it is.

So who’s next?

In the past, some of the USA’s top players came from the indoor side and made their way to the beach after exhausting their money-earning potential internationally.

So Scott has what amounts to a two-pronged plan.

“We have a decentralized national team structure. At the highest level, if they meet minimum performance standards the players become part of our beach national team and they can decide how they want to engage with us, sort of like a steakhouse where a player can choose what they want from the menu,” Scott said.

“It is more of a collaborative relationship, meeting each team where they are at and seeing how we can best support them. How we can help make them the best version of themselves?”

At the most recent Elite16 two week ago in Tepic, Mexico, Scott said that the national-team players “got a travel stipend, their coach also got a travel stipend, there was medical support, sports psychologists, a sports dietician, an athletic performance coach, a performance analyst, all there to support the athletes.”

Under Scott’s stewardship, USA Volleyball has hired one of the best coaches in the world in Scott Davenport, who helmed the Canadian team of Melissa Humana-Paredes and Sarah Pavan, who won the 2019 World Championship.

Davenport oversees the A2 program, which identifies and nurtures talent as best it can within a limited budget. The objective is simple: Make an athlete “the best version of themselves.”

That concept seems to resonate throughout the USAV beach programs.

Bobby Corvino, AVP

The third leg in the power structure is the AVP.

For that we turn to the newest member of the volleyball influencers club, Bobby Corvino. Corvino is the new COO of the AVP, which conducts professional beach volleyball tournaments in America.

I had an “off the record” conversation with Corvino in which he didn’t reveal much.

Perhaps for good reason. He will talk when he is good and ready and has his ducks in a row. Without violating confidences, one can read between the lines on what the AVP’s plans are.

And whether fans like it or not, the immediate future will be a league-based platform.

The hardest part about starting a new league is investor patience. It takes a long time to make a league successful. Consider that the WNBA (1997) and MLS (1996), both of which were very well-funded at launch, took YEARS to inspire a passionate fan base in many of their markets. That sort of tribal connection/building of rivalries does not occur overnight. It took even longer for those leagues to achieve profitability and without the support of the NBA it’s not likely the WNBA would be above water.

At the same time, from a business standpoint, league-play may be the sound way for the AVP to go. Just look at the last Netflix earnings report for a sneak peek of what the future holds. The executives at the world’s largest streamer will no longer report subscriber numbers. Instead, their focus is on consumer engagement, retention and reducing churn.

The reason I suspect Volleyball World has tournaments 12 months a year is so that subscribers PAY 12 months a year for Volleyball TV, rather than stopping their subscriptions after six months, only to renew again when competition starts in another six months.

All subscriber-based companies want predictability. In sports that means providing relevant content ALL months of the year. It is too easy in the streaming ecosystem to cancel and re-start a subscription. As a consequence, live events are critical for customer retention. Docuseries, documentaries, talk shows and other such content, not so much.

So, while the AVP will probably return to primarily a summer season in 2025, I would bet that to become valuable to some streamer out there who will ultimately pay for the production and content, the AVP will need to operate events of some kind most every month of the year to avoid subscriber churn.

One of the inherent problems of the AVP, which is not unlike other Olympic sports with high participation rates, is that beach volleyball’s superstars are invisible to most of the people who actually play the game recreationally.

That bridge somehow needs to be fostered.

Scott mentioned above that USAV “meets each team where they are at.” Similarly, I would think outside of the NBC marketing apparatus for the Olympics, the best way to get people to know players like Cheng, Nuss and Partain is to get them in front of the recreational players at the biggest events out there, like Seaside and Motherlode. They can mingle, sign autographs, be interviewed on center stage.

Social media is great, but it’s not pressing the flesh with with in-person accessibility. You know, the real thing.

I don’t know much about Corvino. He is a Jersey guy, who went to an elite prep school, Pingrey Academy, and later to that basketball powerhouse Villanova. Presumably he has some bona fides in the investor world and has partners with a long view. Corvino has no beach volleyball background, not necessarily a negative.

If anything this sport needs someone with fresh ideas and a different perspective.

I will say what is a bit head scratching is that he has retained, at least for now, former AVP CEO Al Lau. Under Lau’s “stewardship” the last decade or so as either COO or CEO, the number of events, prize money and exposure have plummeted. Those are facts. Added on to that is a culture that can be kindly called “insular.”

Listen, be transparent, move and shake

What the various stakeholders need to absolutely do is listen. To perceived friends and enemies as well. Haven’t these guys watched the “Godfather” before? You know, “keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.”

Kerri Walsh Jennings needs to be invited into the tent.

How about a listening tour with Mike Dodd, Tim Hovland, Sinjin Smith, Karch Kiraly, Kent Steffes, Matt Gage, Holly McPeak, Leonard Armato, and a great marketer like former Miller Lite doyen Kevin Wulff.

All have great ideas about where the sport should go. Invite ‘em all in.

LISTEN.

What separates the great leaders (think Adam Silver and Sebastian Coe) is their desire to be TRANSPARENT. The NBA routinely sends out press releases accepting culpability when their officials make errors in the last two minutes of a game. Coe had the courage to just recently announce that World Athletics (aka track and field) will pay prize money in Paris this summer and become the first Olympic federation ever to do so. He drew slings and arrows from most of the other international federations, and also from IOC President Thomas Bach. And ultimately the prize money move may cost Coe the chance to succeed Bach at the IOC.

The best leagues also don’t muzzle their broadcast talent and ask them to engage in happy talk. If everything you watch is great, then nothing really is, right? I don’t think Charles Barkley would fit in too well with Volleyball World or the AVP.

When the naysayers point out that beach volleyball cannot succeed as a profitable endeavor in the USA, I point to the example of what Steve Obradovich is doing as a side gig.

OB is a senior vice president of national commercial sales for Chicago Title.

Please note the word “sales” in OB’s title. Last year he put on a phenomenally successful four-person beach volleyball event, in October, of all months, in Newport Beach. He did this via a couple of calls and power lunches.

Now that is a REAL power broker.

This year his tournament has only gotten bigger and better. He will have a significant one-day prize purse of $200,000 for his event on October 19. Not only that, he wants all of that money to go to AVP players.

We need a few more movers and shakers like that in our sport. And we need them now with L.A. 2028 looming large.

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