FIVB President: Volleyball Headed for Golden Era

(ATR) FIVB president Ary Graça says volleyball and beach volleyball are headed to the upper echelon of Olympic sports.

"Now we will have a golden era. Why, because we are going to play in Brazil [for the next Olympics]. The next Olympic Games will be Japan, and volleyball there is very popular. And who knows who will be the next [host] of the Olympics. If it’s Los Angeles, California, it’s the home of beach volleyball! We are living in a golden era for the next 15 years," said Graça Sunday morning in Ft. Lauderdale, Fla. He spoke before thefinals of the FIVB Swatch World Tour in Fort Lauderdale,

Graça wants volleyball to become the number one family entertainment sport in the world. In order to make this dream a reality, Graça laid out nine goals for the federation to accomplish heading into the Rio 2016 Olympics and looking ahead to the Tokyo 2020 Games.

"Some goals are difficult, but it’s just a matter of hard work," Graça emphasized.

The number one goal for Graça is putting volleyball in the same Olympic category as sports such as athletics, gymnastics and swimming by the Tokyo 2020 Games. In order to achieve this Group 1 status, the federation must fulfill 74 criteria established by the IOC. Graça says FIVB has earned satisfactory marks in 90 percent of these criteria already.

Second, the FIVB wants to reach at least two million users on digital and social media platforms to increase the sport’s global reach and youth audience. At the World Tour Finals, FIVB sponsor Red Bull began a number of initiatives on social media, including a beach volleyball player taking over their Snapchat account to deliver real time photos and videos of the event to fans.

On top of increasing social media presence and audience, FIVB realizes the need to increase its global television audience and coverage of events. FIVB is aiming for a 20 percent increase in television audiences by the Games in 2016 and a 100 percent increase before Tokyo 2020. FIVB will also aim to provide television and internet feeds for their events to all 221 of their national federations by 2016.

FIVB hopes the increased exposure for their events can help drive the overall participation in the sport and increase the numbers of both licensed and amateur players. Graça says the federation is investing more in their development programs since he took office in 2012.

"In three years, I’ve invested $40 million all in development. All the money that comes from sport must go to sport. I want to have profits but the profit is to develop the sport more and more to create a much bigger market," says Graça.

On the sponsorship front, FIVB will seek to add four new global partners that will help the federation bring in an additional $10 million every year. The additional sponsorship efforts would help the federation achieve another goal of increasing their annual income from $31 million to $66 million by the 2020 Games.

The federation is also working towards making sponsorships and FIVB events more attractive to companies and bidders. The FIVB is revamping the method of awarding events to host cities by adding much more transparency to the process by 2018. Graça says the credibility of the federation must also be improved by adding experts in the industry to their team.

"Let’s run the FIVB like a company. You must have professionals working with you. The day-by-day must be run by professionals," says Graça.

Last,Graça wants to see the FIVB become the number one federation that humanitarian organizations come to for support.

Written and reported in Fort Lauderdale, Florida by Kevin Nutley.

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