Volley for Play

The death of the AVP Tour could bring life to a new Cincinnati company that would build and develop professional beach volleyball venues in multiple cities.

Reach USA founder Bob Slattery, who brought the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour to Cincinnati six years ago, has formed a new venture with several well-known players, including Misty May-Treanor and Karch Kiraly.

The company will try to duplicate in several cities the new volleyball venue that will host the 2010 Volleyball Players Championship event at Hahana Beach, in Ohio, September 3-5.

Slattery said the Hahana Beach venue, built on a 6-acre site, will offer successors to the financially ailing AVP Tour a business model that can survive beyond this year.

“We know the athletes will attend,” Slattery said. “We think someone’s going to pick up the AVP assets. We feel like one of the first things they’ll do is call us.”

Through its 22 years, the AVP Tour became an Olympic favorite on television and a TV staple among niche sports, but it also had to withstand bankruptcies, player revolts and numerous ownership changes.

On Aug. 13, the tour’s majority owners announced they were pulling the plug on the current season with five stops left on the tour.

Slattery responded by raising $80,000 in prize money and staging his own event at Hahana Beach. Instead of relying on large national tour sponsors, Slattery’s Hahana Beach event will generate revenue from multiple sources, including ticket sales and concessions.

“What we’re doing in Cincinnati right now is the future,” he said.

The new model emerges as national sports marketing experts question whether the the tour’s majority owners, RJSM Partners, fatally injured the AVP brand.

“Brand equity in the AVP name has been tarnished,” said Julie Solwold, vice president of global sports marketing at John Paul Mitchell Systems, the AVP’s longest-standing sponsor. “As far as sponsors, it definitely has been damaged. As just a tag for the players, it could endure, because it still means best of the best. But I don’t think sponsors will buy anything owned or managed by the AVP.”

“We would need to see a real professional organization to go back to something called AVP,” said Jon Miller, NBC Sports executive vice president of programming. NBC televised the AVP for years before the league jumped to ESPN/ABC this year. “I can’t see any brand associating themselves with something when there is so much uncertainty.”

For more on the future of pro volleyball, click here for the full story from the Cincinnati Business Courier (subscription required).

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Dan Monk is a senior staff reporter for the Cincinnati Business Courier. Terry Lefton is editor-at-large of SportsBusiness Daily.