Presentation
USA to host inaugural Swatch FIVB Beach Volleyball Season Final
Continuing to introduce innovations and dynamic expression into the framework of professional beach volleyball, the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB), international governing body for the Olympic sport of beach volleyball, will present the inaugural double-gender Swatch FIVB Beach Volleyball Season Final in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., USA to be held from September 29 to October 4.
With a $500,000 total purse for the spectacular, the sport’s newest event will feature the top eight point leaders plus two wild cards in each gender. The tournament will have a special format with the winning team in each gender taking home a $100,000 gold medal prize.
The Fort Lauderdale event will be one of three scheduled double-gender FIVB international tournaments to be held in the United States in 2015. The other two stops in the United States in 2015 will be the FIVB St. Petersburg Grand Slam in Florida (from June 17 to 21) and the Long Beach Grand Slam in Southern California (from August 18 to 23).
After 11 FIVB World Tour women’s events held in the United States through 2014, Brazil leads the medal parade with 15 total medals followed by the US with 13, Australia with three and with one women’s medal each are Germany and the Slovak Republic.
The FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour 2015 calendar will include five FIVB Grand Slams, a new FIVB Swatch Beach Volleyball Major Series of three events, six FIVB Opens and a special FIVB Swatch Beach Volleyball Season Final in the United States.
The showcase event will be the $1 million FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships The Netherlands 2015.
A total of 14 countries will host events this year as the FIVB World Tour 2015 also begins the Olympic qualification process with all FIVB World Tour events (except the World Tour Finals) in 2015 up until June 13, 2016 counting towards the Olympic Ranking in order to determine the 15 vacancies for each gender that will take part in the 2016 Rio Olympic Games.
The 2015 FIVB World Ranking system will again include FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam and Open events along with additional pre-approved events at the inter-continental, continental and national levels.
Implemented in 2013, the format of all the FIVB Beach Volleyball international tournaments – whether FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, FIVB Beach Volleyball Grand Slam or FIVB Beach Volleyball Open – are the same, featuring pool play followed by single elimination knockout rounds.
The 2014-2016 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Continental Cup also returns this year as it starts its portion of the qualification process for the 2016 Rio Olympic Games in Brazil.
Fort Lauderdale is a US city in the state of Florida in the Southeastern part of the country. It is located on the Atlantic coast, 23 miles (37 km) north of Miami. As of the 2010 census, the city had a population of 165,521. It is a principal city of the South Florida metropolitan area, which is home to 5,564,635 people.
The city is a popular tourist destination, with an average year-round temperature of 24.2 C (75.5 F), and 3,000 hours of sunshine per year. Greater Fort Lauderdale which takes in all of Broward County hosted 12 million visitors in 2012, including 2.8 million international visitors. The district has 561 hotels and motels comprising nearly 35,000 rooms. Forty six cruise ships sailed from Port Everglades in 2012. Greater Fort Lauderdale has over 4,000 restaurants, 63 golf courses, 12 shopping malls, 16 museums, 132 nightclubs, 278 parkland campsites, and 100 marinas housing 45,000 resident yachts.