This post is motivated on an article on the WorldofVolleyball site.
That article’s title is Volleyball – Entertainment or Business? My immediate response to seeing it was, “Yes.” The two are intertwined. Volleyball is an entertainment business. It’s just as the NFL is an entertainment business and the English Premier League is an entertainment business.
Obviously, I’m talking primarily about the professional and international level of the sport here. That is the main focus of the WoV article. That isn’t to say, though, that lower levels of the sport aren’t about entertainment either. The waters just get a bit muddied when talking about something like high school or Juniors. You could also add marketing into the mix when it comes to colleges and universities. Clearly, sports impact applications and attendance at schools.
Professional teams
The primary focus of the WoV article is on teams, specifically teams from Poland, excluding themselves from competing in the following season’s CEV club competitions – Champions League, Cup, etc. The reporting goes that the clubs were doing so because they don’t feel like they will be strong enough to legitimately challenge to win. As a result, they would rather save themselves the expense. This is a similar sort of discussion to the one I brought up in Properly professional or just participating?
When I coached in Sweden, this sort of decision-making was very much going on for the clubs there. No doubt it will continue to be the case. For the most part they did not see enough value being derived from taking part in CEV competition (or NEVZA) to justify the expense involved.
Non-Professional organizations
And it’s not like professional clubs are the only one making these sorts of choices.
Clubs and teams at all levels make decisions all the time about whether certain competitions or matches makes sense. At the college level coaches make choices about pre-conference tournaments. They may be based on likely recruiting potential. They have an eye toward the level of competition and how it will help them achieve their season objective (e.g. helping their RPI for NCAA tournament inclusion/seeding). Juniors clubs evaluate tournaments to play in with regards to the level of recruiting exposure they will provide, among other factors.
It all comes down to a cost vs. benefit (at least perceived) analysis.
Make it make sense to stay in
My view with regards to CEV and the like is that they should be doing everything they can to bring the clubs from the lower level countries into their competitions. You want to make the sport more relevant and financially stronger? Then you need to expand its popularity in places where it doesn’t get the exposure you’d like.
Find ways to incentivize clubs to take part in your competition. The NCAA pays travel expenses for teams playing in its tournament. It also does things to try to minimize those costs and travel times through how it structures its tournaments. The CEV needs to look at the reality of the sport at the lower levels and find ways to make their competitions more inclusive.
And this obviously isn’t something for just the less competitive countries and leagues, as the Polish clubs seem to be demonstrating.
I’ll return to the point I made above. Volleyball is an entertainment business. A major part of any business is ensuring that is will be able to continue operating – which means this applies to non-profit organizations as well as for-profit ones. This is something every confederation, league, and club needs to understand.
6 Steps to Better Practices - Free Guide
Subscribe to my weekly newsletter today and get this free guide to making your practices the best, along with loads more coaching tips and information.
