Ary Graça, president of FIVB, shared a message on youtube for CEV’s governing body. His address was very forward, boldly calling for the further integration of FIVB’s and CEV’s institutional ties. He cited Europe as the most important continent for the future development of volleyball, and mentions the fact that he would like to see former elite teams from his playing days, like Albania and Romania, once again in the sport’s spotlight.
To achieve this goal, he proposes a more even development of volleyball in the continent as a whole, considering the smaller, less economic powerful countries more carefully, with special focus on those who seceded from former communist blocks. In order to make progress on these goals, he committed to on an open door policy and accessible environment regarding his presidency.
He also shared some exciting news about FIVB’s future plans:
- To make snow volleyball into a Winter Olympic Games sport. He Says much of FIVB’s future success hinders on this initiative, as it will be the only international federation with competitions in both Olympics Games, which will result in very good income. He says that this revolution will start in Europe.
- How he intents to expand FIVB’s media reach. As of today, 90% of the federation’s income stems from television contracts. In his opinion, there is dire need for the federation to spread its market, investing heavily in digital media. He also cites the recent breakthroughs achieved with FIVB’s websites, which streamed a lot of important matches.
- He mentioned changes to the formats and names of the Men’s World League and the Women’s Grand Prix. He says these new ventures will bring forth much better tournaments, which will be far more successful and much cheaper than their predecessors.
- His plans to further integrate the game of volleyball with current technology. In his opinion, technology is the future of volleyball, being the only way to allow the sport to have its players as its protagonists, and not it referees.
- His plans to further expand FIVB’s E-learning initiatives, which greatly reduces education costs for the federation, but vastly improves knowledge outreach in less developed countries.
In all, his address was mostly very pleasant and ambitious. Ary Graça really needs to improve his prestige with volleyball federations all over the world. Recently, he was indicted of bribery in one of Brazil’s biggest corruption scandals. His future as the head of the FIVB hangs in a very delicate thread. Below, you can watch the whole address:
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