Commentator: Mol's move to indoor volleyball exposes beach volleyball's crisis
Commentator Kaspars Timermanis says Anders Mol's decision to join an Italian club shows beach volleyball's financial and structural problems, despite Pļaviņš/Fokerots' success in Rio.
After Latvian duo Jānis Pļaviņš and Mihails Fokerots won the Elite16 tournament in Rio, earning $40,000, concerns have surfaced about the sport's direction. Volleyball commentator Kaspars Timermanis points to Anders Mol's transfer to Italian A1 side RANA Verona as a sign that beach volleyball has reached a critical point. Although Mol said his heart remains with beach volleyball and he plans to return before the Los Angeles Olympics, Timermanis interprets the announcement as evidence that promises made with the launch of the Beach Pro Tour have not been kept.
Timermanis argues beach volleyball remains dependent on indoor volleyball and the Olympic movement. He notes that VolleyballWorld, a joint venture created by FIVB and CVC Capital Partners in 2021, has failed to deliver. Five years on, the number of top-level tournaments has decreased, prize money has stayed at early-2000s levels, and attempts to monetise beach volleyball using indoor volleyball methods have not worked. Major volleyball markets such as China, Japan, Italy, Poland and Turkey are unwilling to pay for beach volleyball broadcasting rights, and Elite16 events have disappeared from popular venues like Klagenfurt and Vienna. The Beach Series in Dubai has also ended before it truly began due to well-known geopolitical events.
The author acknowledges that Olympic beach volleyball has grown in popularity: attendance rose from 107,785 in Atlanta 1996 to 450,000 in Paris 2024, while average TV viewership increased 30% between 2008 and 2016. Yet this has not translated into stable incomes for players. Timermanis cites world vice-champion Julius Thole, who left the sport in 2021 to become a lawyer, and Lithuanian Olympians Monika Paulikienė and Ainė Raupelytė, who received only €2,000 from their federation for the European Championship.
Timermanis concludes that beach volleyball needs greater financial independence and clarity about its share of revenue. Without that, he says, the sport's biggest stars will continue to look elsewhere.
