FIVB’s President Ary Graça has recently met with Dutch politicians and volleyball officials to discuss the country’s interest in hosting the 2022 FIVB Women’s World Championship. The president of the Dutch Volleyball Federation, Peter Sprenger, presented the potential bid:
“We are very proud to be here together with our close partners, representatives of the Ministry of Health, Welfare and Sport, province of Gelderland and the cities. All the cities have great hosting credentials and, most importantly, they are also experienced in organizing amazing volleyball events. With this World Championship we would like to promote volleyball as much as we can, attracting fans of all the generations and creating partnerships for the future with the media, fans and partners. We have a world-class volleyball national team that is closely connected with fans. For us, for sure, volleyball is the number one family sport in the world.”
Graça was very impressed with the proposal (FIVB.com):
“We are delighted to receive such strong interest in hosting FIVB events. It is a reflection of volleyball’s global appeal that governments, cities and National Federations want to host our events and that they see the benefits our events will bring. Volleyball and beach volleyball have a great tradition and are very popular in the Netherlands. We all still fondly remember the 2015 FIVB Beach Volleyball Championships which were staged in The Hague, Amsterdam, Apeldoorn and Rotterdam. Over 110,000 fans attended the Championships, with 95,000 local children participating in side events related to the tournament. Fans even set a record for the highest number of people playing volleyball in one location with 2,355 taking part. We also enjoyed the company of the Dutch Royal Family at the Championships who were very pleased with the event and celebrated the great moments with thousands of other volleyball-loving fans. We are fully committed to engaging with our National Federations and partners to ensure the best possible organisation for our top event. The project presented to us today is very interesting and innovative and we look forward to studying it in more detail once the bidding process is open and we receive the official submission to ensure the transparency of the matter.”
If indeed Netherlands’ intentions become true, it would bring an enormous breath of much needed air for the FIVB’s top women’s competition, which has been hosted in Japan in 4 of its last 6 editions (including the 2018 edition). Lately, not many countries had shown interest in dealing with the financial burden of FIVB’s top events. Could this be the signal of a change?
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