Men’s Beach Volleyball
The most watched sport at the summer Olympics was men’s beach volleyball when Todd Rogers and Phil Dalhausser won gold along with women’s beach volleyball players Misty May and Kerri Walsh. Most sports start out by having only the man playing the sport and then women start to play and they end up getting paid less than the men. This is not the case with beach volleyball. Beach volleyball could be considered the most un-biased sport in America with both the women and mens beach volleyball players earning the same amount of money for winning a tournament.
There is total equality when it comes to men and womens beach volleyball. What other sport is there where the women get paid the same amount as the men? What female basketball player has a contract where they make as much as Kobe Bryant?
Let’s go over how the structure of professional beach volleyball in the AVP goes for all of you that don’t know. There are no contracts or teams that you have to qualify for in order to play pro beach volleyball. Instead of qualifying to play on a certain team, you have to personally qualify by playing in the qualifiers. The AVP qualifiers are held at most tournament in California and some other states like Chicago and Florida during the summer months.
What is a qualifier?
A qualifier is where all the beach volleyball players that think they are good enough to hang with the likes of Casey Patterson, Phil Dalhausser, John Mayer, Ty Loomis, Kerri Walsh, Misty May, Nicole Branagh and the rest of the pros, can try to compete. All the people that are not already professional from previous points in the previous season have to make it through the qualifiers in order to win any money or consider themselves pro. All the people that want to make it have to find a partner on their own and enter the competition. They play each team the best 2 out 3 games with the first 2 going to 21 and if it goes to the 3rd game it only goes to 15. You have to beat 4 teams in order to qualify so it’s not exactly the easiest thing to do. Once you qualify you are considered a pro even though you won’t be making enough to pay the bills without some other means of income.
Most pro beach volleyball players have jobs and play professional volleyball as a second income that comes from a hobby they happen to be very good at. But the players in the top 20 devote all of their time to playing volleyball and can support themselves on their earnings.
There has been some talk of having teams that provide set contracts to players and pay a set annual income just like you would see in professional basketball or football. This would allow more athletes to dedicate more time to the sport and could build up fan bases for teams rather than for individuals. In order for this happen there needs to be more coverage of beach volleyball on ESPN and other T.V. stations. It seems odd to me that the most watched sport in the Olympics is not on ESPN every Saturday. It has already proven that people would rather watch it then basketball if given the option.
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