Lausanne, Switzerland, November 30, 2016 - One of several returning venues on the 2017 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar, Iran’s Kish Island will host the men’s only FIVB Kish Island 3-Star event to be held February 15-18. It will mark the second straight time and year that an FIVB World Tour event will have been held in the Persian Gulf nation.
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Latest VideosFacebookTwitterInstagramMedia GuidesThe 2017 FIVB World Tour schedule lists only one other men’s only event scheduled to be a return to Espinho, Portugal (July 27-30).
The five-star structure instituted starting with the 2017 FIVB World Tour is one of the many steps taken by the FIVB to modernise and streamline its competitions in a golden period for beach volleyball on the heels of the Rio 2016 Olympic Games and on the road to the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games.
FIVB President Dr. Ary S. Graça F° said, “The aim of the new structure is to provide a platform and formation of events that increase the number of competitions in a growing number of hosting countries and create a sustainable business model while providing additional commercial flexibility and opportunities.”
In last year’s inaugural event on Kish Island held in mid-February, Qatar’s Jefferson Santos Pereira/Cherif Younousse won the first gold medal for their country with Russia’s Oleg Stoyanovskiy/Artem Yarzutkin earning silver, Poland’s Piotr Kantor/Bartosz Losiak claiming the bronze medal over their Polish compatriots Michal Kadziola/Jakub Szalankiewicz.
Kish Island is a 91.5-square-kilometer (35.3 square miles) resort island in the Persian Gulf. It is part of the Hormozgan Province of Iran. Due to its free trade zone status it is touted as a consumer's paradise, with numerous malls, shopping centers, tourist attractions, and resort hotels. It has an estimated population of 26,000 residents and about 1 million people visit the island annually. Kish Island was ranked among the world’s 10 most beautiful islands by The New York Times in 2010, and is the fourth most visited vacation destination in Southwest Asia after Dubai, the United Arab Emirates and Sharm el-Sheikh.
Since the mid-1990s the Iranian government has embarked on an aggressive promotional and developmental campaign to tailor Kish as a rival to Dubai but mainly a big rival to Doha. Steps taken in order to accomplish this include launching massive construction projects and programmes designed to attract foreign investment and trade.
The highlight of the 2017 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Tour calendar will be the 2017 FIVB Beach Volleyball World Championships, a 48-team (per gender) event to be held July 28-August 6 in Vienna, Austria.
In addition to Austria and Iran, 15 other countries will host competitions with Malaysia hosting an international beach volleyball event for the first time in mid-April.
The 2017 FIVB World Ranking system will include FIVB Beach Volleyball Major Series, 4-star, 3-star, 2-star and 1-star 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 are the same, featuring pool play followed by single elimination knockout rounds.
Country quota playoffs are also held, as needed, to determine the final teams for qualification tournaments.
The first men’s FIVB World Tour event was played February 17-22, 1987 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil while the first women’s FIVB World Tour event in Brazil was played in 1993 in Rio de Janeiro. The women’s FIVB World Tour held its first tournament in Spain in 1992.