Just before I start, I want to be upfront about something: This post could potentially be interpreted as “stepping on some toes”, even though that is not my intent. What I will do below is that I will first highlight a problem that I believe exists in beach volleyball. After that, my wish is to start an “investigative process” into both if the problem is worth solving, and also how to solve it, if solving it is a worthwhile mission. If you decide to read this blog post thoroughly, and consider what it says (and participate in the discussion if you want) you would become a part of this investigative process.
What I do not want is to throw out ideas that would change the nature of the sport too much if implemented. What I do want is to investigate if there are some tweaks we could make to our sport that would make it both more fun to play for the players, as well as more entertaining to watch - which I believe would make a better product for fans to be watch, and therefore attract more money.
If the above was possible, we would all win in the end. We’d all be having even more fun and the sport would grow more/faster. The mere potential that this could become the result sometime in the future, in part because I decide to write and publish this, is what drives me to write this blog post.
Ok, enough of the pre-talk, here we go:
I believe basically all beach volleyball players would like it if we were able to “grow the game”, which to me means more players around the world, more courts, more competitions, and more prize money especially for the top players (so that they can afford to develop/innovate even more so that the rest of the players in the world have even better examples to look at/learn from/get inspired by), simply, a better sport with more people and money involved. I also guess few people would complain if the game became even more fun to watch and play (more about that later!)
Regarding the grow the game part, there are a lot of thoughts around the world on how to make that happen. Kent Steffes (who won the first ever Olympic beach volleyball gold medal together with Karch Kiraly) has recently been writing some Facebook posts around the business of beach volleyball, and I believe that the more beach volleyball players around the world that would read them, consider them, and discuss them with other players, the higher the chances are that someone will do something smart one day that will help us all. Especially this post was very intriguing for me! Check out Kent's profile for the rest of them.
Regardless of how the business behind beach volleyball is run, in this post, I want to focus on something a bit more maybe graspable/closer to the players' experience - how entertaining the sport is to watch.
The backstory and underlying theories to my reimagination of the sport
So a bit over 4 years ago I had a similar flash of inspiration as right now, when I also had thoughts about a more entertaining version of beach volleyball in my mind. That time I didn’t write a blog post but instead recorded a video where I explained my idea (link here for the curious ones.) Regardless, the gist of it was to create a form of volleyball that somehow rewards players for entertaining playing styles/moves.. Let me explain a bit more:
One podcast episode with a man named Mika Hunkin that I have recorded but not yet released (sorry to all interviewed people this has happened to, the episodes will be coming soon enough!) really made me understand something on a deeper level. “Professional beach volleyball player” really means someone who can make a living out of playing beach volleyball…
That, in theory, could mean that you make enough prize money from your winnings to make a living, or you receive enough sponsorship money to make a living, or you have some other type of revenue stream directly related to your playing that allows you to make a living (honestly I can’t come up with an example here, hit me up in the comments section if you have one for me!), or some sort of combination of the above.
So there is a bit of a disconnect though. Sometimes (not always), the best players (in terms of winning points, games, and tournaments) aren’t the most entertaining to watch. At the same time, the brands that want to sponsor players, want to sponsor the players that draw eyeballs - which often means the players who are entertaining to watch.
(One example of a player that pops up in my mind here is Adrian Carambula. At the time of writing this article the Carambula/Rossi team is ranked 17 in the world, all the while many people around the world will argue that Carambula is one of the most entertaining players to watch play.)
This, in theory, means there could in a way be two different strategies for a player to become a professional player - either become the best player around (go for prize money) or become the most entertaining player around (go for sponsorship money.) Of course, the best would be to go for both, which might or might not be possible..
(Currently in 2022 I think the world is watching with curiosity to see how far the Swedes Åhman/Hellvig can take their jumpset game, they have so far for sure gained an entertainment approval stamp from fans around the world.. And this last summer they also, for example, won the European Championships of Beach Volleyball, beating several top-ranked teams in the world on the way to the top of the podium. Will they become a top prize money winning team in the future as well as having a stamp and a fame from having an extraordinarily entertaining way to play..? I guess only the future will tell.)
Regardless, in the end, of course, top-level volleyball is entertaining to watch in itself and will draw sponsorship money, but I still think I have a point when I say that for an individual player to become a professional player, they could in theory sort of choose between the paths of trying to become extraordinarily good, or extraordinarily entertaining.
Now, there is a chance that Åhman/Hellvig, or some other team will one day prove to the world that the extraordinarily entertaining actually is equal to the extraordinarily good.. If this happens, it might be a turning point for our sport of sorts, but I'd say that hasn’t happened quite yet at least.
So my argument is that it is a problem for the sport that the most entertaining doesn’t equal the best player/team (in terms of winning), or at least that there maybe is too big of a separation between the best players (in terms of winning) and the most entertaining players.
After all, I believe that the more entertaining the sport is, the more fans will watch the sport, and the more people will get inspired to try the sport themselves (and we all know how “hooked” many people get to our sport once they try it!)
Both of these factors together simply lead to more people being interested in the sport, and a bigger percentage of these people actually watching the top events… This means overall more eyeballs watching the top events which means sponsors will want to sponsor the players and the events themselves to a bigger extent. (Does this start to sound like “growing the game”?)
This is completely anecdotal, but I have unfortunately experienced the complete opposite happen - I won’t disclose the competition, country, or players to not step on any toes, but here we go:
I attended a “big beach volleyball competition” that was hosted on a temporary court in the “city square” of a city, of course partially with the intention to draw interest from random people happening to stroll through the city on that day (potential future players?)
Anyway, I was there watching a game when a non beach volleyball playing friend of mine happened to “stroll by” and ended up watching the game with me. Always fun to watch a game with someone “uninitiated” so you can explain the sport to them etc, but, after a while my friend burst out:
“Honestly, this is.. Not so impressing? Like is this supposed to be top-level beach volleyball? I don’t know much about beach volleyball but I know other sports, and these players neither look very athletic nor very good at what they are doing on the court! Am I wrong here or what is up?”
I ended up having to explain to him that his timing was actually quite bad as we were watching maybe the lowest-level players of this particular tournament and that various things had happened that made top players not be able to attend so that the field had to be filled from below with lower ranked teams etc.. Regardless, this is not so important, the important point is this:
When we run tournaments in public places, this could work as “good advertisement”, “bad advertisement” or something in between for the sport. If we are really unlucky, like in the case of my story, non-volleyball people might stroll past and have a look and actually come to the conclusion that “this sport doesn’t seem too exciting, players seem slow and unskilled and I probably don’t want to try it myself or send away my kids to try it”, either consciously or unconsciously.
In a luckier case, the non-volleyball people will see a sport that really impresses them in terms of skill and athleticism and seems like a lot of fun, and they can’t wait to try it out themselves, as well as invite their friends to try, and sign up their kids to practices.
I hope my point is starting to come through here.. The more entertaining, impressive, and fun-looking our sport is, the more it will probably grow.
This is why I find it a bit problematic that with the current rules of the game, there is a separation between the extraordinarily good players and the extraordinarily entertaining players.
So what is actually entertaining?
Now that all my background theories are out of the way, we can continue the journey to the next point.
I simply believe that if we either changed the rules of the sport (or started a parallel sport with different rules) into something that makes the top level (in terms of winning) look like something more similar to the top level of entertainment, the sport might start growing way faster.
In order to do that, we should first investigate what types of plays are exciting to watch, and then afterward see if we can create rules that without being too complicated can reward those actions.
Here is my current list of “exciting to watch” actions, feel free to submit additions or disagreements in the comments field below the post!
Impressive spikes subcategory 1: “Bounce spikes”. Basically the harder and steeper the hit is, and the emptier the net is (no blocker), the better. Even better if the ball gets buried in the sand while the player is still clearly in the air..! It is no surprise that some fans think hitting warmups are more fun to watch than the actual game. Example. Example. Example. And one more example.
Impressive spikes subcategory 2: Successful spikes from challenging situations/sets. Example.
Difficult sets subcategory 1: A beautifully delivered set from a more or less shanked pass/defensive move. Example.
Difficult sets subcategory 2: Jumpsets. The extra uncertainty of not knowing whether the player will hit the second ball or end up jumpsetting while possibly fooling the blocker and creating a no-block situation (bounce spike time?) for their partner makes the sport more athletic, impressive, and unpredictable. Example.
Defensive moves subcategory 1: Unbelievable touches. Simply running up the crazy line shot, or why not defend the hard-hit spike with your foot?
Defensive moves subcategory 2: When you are playing defender and setter at the same time, having enough ball control to set up your partner for an “on 2” hit even though the opponents are giving you the most difficult ball they can deliver in the given situation. Example.
Unexpected blocking outcomes - I believe stuff blocks are exciting to watch, but I’d want to argue that if the ball for example deflects up from the blocker's hands and then either the blocker hits the ball straight afterward, or the defender hits it straight from the deflected block, or the defender sets the blocker who then kills the ball, this might be even more entertaining to watch than stuff blocks. Example.
There are probably more of them, but I think this is a pretty good list to start with.
So what am I actually proposing?
If we could create rules that made the above actions happen more often in the game, I believe the sport would be more fun to watch.
In my Youtube video from 4 years ago, I proposed some rules that I believed could achieve this. However, from the feedback I received thanks to the video, I realized that my rule proposals were a bit problematic, they for example would have required slow-motion cameras for certain calls to be made, as well as 5 extra referees for each game, adding a lot of logistical hurdles. Also, the rules I proposed might have changed the spirit of the game too much.
So now a few years later, I have a new idea:
Award 2 points to a team that kills the ball with a minimum of 2 touches (out of 3 possible) but where maximum one of the touches can be made with ground contact as the player is contacting the ball. Award 1 point for everything else that normally awards a point.
I’ll have to explain a bit more later about what I mean by “kill the ball”, but in terms of what the offensive team does, this means that for example, these combinations can potentially award them 2 points for a won rally:
Pass (ground contact) + jumping 2nd ball attack (no ground contact.) 2 touches, one with ground contact.
Pass (ground contact) + jumpset (no ground contact) + jumping 3rd ball attack (no ground contact.) 3 touches, one with ground contact.
Block deflection (no ground contact) + jumping attack by either player (no ground contact.) 2 touches, none with ground contact.
Block deflection (no ground contact) + standing set by either player (ground contact) + jumping 3rd ball attack (no ground contact.) 3 touches, 1 with ground contact.
Block deflection (no ground contact) + standing overset (ground contact.) 2 touches, 1 with ground contact.
“Flying” line shot defense (no ground contact) + standing set (ground contact) + jumping 3rd ball attack (no ground contact.) 3 touches, one with ground contact.
“Flying” shot defense or block deflection (no ground contact) + jumpset (no ground contact) + jumping 3rd ball attack (no ground contact.) 3 touches, none with ground contact. (Should this even be worth 3 points?! I don’t know.)
If you start comparing the list above, with my list of the “most exciting to watch actions”-list, I believe you will start to see a lot of similarities between them.
Before I talk about what I believe should be counted as a “kill”, here are a few comments regarding the rule and what I believe is exciting to watch:
1. One might wonder why no “1st ball over” attacks are rewarded, surely it is exciting to watch Laura Ludwig do her famous first over bump, or Anders Mol stuff block just about everyone? Of course, the rule could be rewritten so that 1st ball attacks (with or without ground contact?) would give a reward also, but I decided to not propose that because these actions already give “quick points” in the game - in a sense, you get a point with less work than normally, and mostly when your team has served which means the point in a way is worth more than if you were receiving serve.. So I thought that double rewarding something that is already better than many other points would be a bit too much.
2. One might think it is interesting that a blocker cannot get a double point from a stuff block, but if the blocker learned to “control block” and then attack the ball coming out of the control block themselves it would be worth 2 points. Will this make blockers change their strategy and attempt to learn to control block instead..? I personally don’t believe this will happen, at least when the attacker is in a good situation, simply because it will be too difficult. So I am not worried about this detail changing the game to something unrecognizable. Maybe someone will try to learn to do it when the attacker for example shoots, and maybe someone will attempt to learn it even in all situations? If that happens, I don’t think it would change the game too much, but just add an interesting twist to it.. But yeah, in that case, I’ll be watching very curiously what comes out of it, so yes, I did intend to write the rule that way.
3. The way I wrote the rule means you can get the bonus reward if you are in the air while taking the first ball, then your partner sets with ground contact and you attack with a jumping attack like normal. This is all good and natural if the first touch is either a block deflect, or a “full layout” defensive move (example) where you have to run and jump after the ball. But as probably many coaches who have tried to run games with modified rules (in order to encourage some wished-for behavior) have noticed, players like to find loopholes in your made-up rules. This means I think there is a decent chance that players receiving a freeball for example will learn to “jump bump” this ball on the first touch so that the set can be run normally with feet on the ground and still be eligible for the bonus reward point. What to do with this? I am actually a bit unsure here. One alternative is to let it be like that, and allow for the quirk that there will be a reward for learning to “jump bump” freeballs, maybe it is fun to watch and makes the game more interesting in general? The other alternative would be to add onto the rule that if the first touch “required” the player to be in the air then all is good (like when blocking or when running up crazy defensive balls), but if the first ball is playable without jumping then adding a jump will not reward the player. It would of course create another judgment call for the referees to handle, but it would at least remove the very obvious “jump bump” actions on freeballs. On “borderline defensive balls” where the player could reach the ball by running through the ball but could also decide to jump to the ball without it looking completely fake, maybe some referee mistakes would be done, but anyway it is more difficult/energy consuming to attack the ball after getting up from the ground (jumping after a defensive ball most every time means you end up laying down in the sand afterward), so maybe it is not so bad if someone in some cases gets the bonus reward wrongly for this action? My guess is that it will happen very rarely anyway. EDIT: When looking closer, I realized that even during “full layout” defensive moves the players often have at least some body part in the sand.. So maybe all first ball contact except blocks should be counted as “having ground contact”… I guess this would remove the “jump bump” quirk on freeballs also.
4. The number one exciting play to watch in my list was “Impressive spikes subcategory 1: Bounce spikes”, yet the rule doesn’t directly reward for that.. One could wonder why. So the Youtube video I made a few years ago (with a different rule proposition also with the intention of making the game more interesting to watch) was actually proposing a reward extra point from this perspective instead. Bounce spikes (especially the ones where the ball touches the ground before the attacking player lands on the ground again) were supposed to be rewarded with a bonus point - something that I thought would encourage players both to learn techniques of fooling the block (like jumpsetting and other types of deceptive setting) as well as the most “fun to watch” spike techniques that create impressive bounces (that actually many coaches discourage players from learning with the argument that “these balls get blocked too easily”.) There is still a part of me that hopes I would be able to write a rule change proposal that would make this happen without the refereeing becoming too difficult. However, even though in my current rule change proposal the bounce spikes in themselves are not directly rewarded, the jumpsetting (that often creates situations where bouncing the ball actually becomes the best move even strategically rather than being a risky ball in terms of getting blocked) that is rewarded I believe would lead to more balls bounced. Also, second-ball attacks are rewarded which I believe would over time lead to more technically sound attackers that will be more capable of bouncing balls when the opportunity is given. But if anyone can come up with a rule proposal that would allow for the bounce spikes to be rewarded without making the referee's job significantly more difficult or requiring more technology, I’m all ears. I guess one middle way would be to combine my current proposal with the part about rewarding bonus points if the ball touches the sand before the attacking player lands - in professional games, the slow-motion cameras are there already anyway to clarify any borderline decisions, and in non-professional games, it could be a referee call to be made only if it is very clear that the ball hit the ground before the player landed… This probably wouldn’t happen too often in games below the professional level anyway.
5. It is clear that the rule will award a playing style that actually is more technically and physically difficult to “perform” - first ball control needs to be more precise if you want to set your partner up for the jumpset/2nd ball attack choice, jumpsetting is a technical skill that most players nowadays don’t learn, and attacking 2nd balls is in general more difficult than attacking 3rd balls. This reward I believe in the long run would create more curiosity around optimal attacking biomechanics (learning to put proper pace on the ball in all sorts of angles from all sorts of positions), jumpsetting ability, ball control, and overall athleticism, which would make the game more “sophisticated” in terms of skills but also more impressive to watch. The game would get more “depth” which I believe would also make it more fun to play as there is even more stuff to learn and different combinations to explore. Ultimately I believe all of this would have a net benefit for the sport (again though, I’d love to hear counterarguments in the comments section because I could be mistaken!)
What should count as “killing the ball”?
At this point, I think my proposed idea is quite clear with what it means on the side of the net where the attacking team is. However, for the “bonus reward point” to kick in, one also has to define what has to happen on the other side of the net or in the rest of the rally. As far as I see it, here are the options:
1. Reward the bonus point only if the ball goes straight into the sand without an opposing team player touching it.
2. Reward the bonus point if the opposing team manages to get maximum 1 touch on the ball after the attack. (Defender shanking it or blocker getting tooled.)
3. Reward the bonus point if the opposing team manages to get maximum 2 touches on the ball after the attack. (Transition setter touches the ball but can’t deliver an attackable set.)
4. Reward the bonus point if the opposing team manages to get maximum 3 touches on the ball without delivering a legal ball. (Transition attacker makes an attacking mistake.)
5. Reward the bonus point if the attacking team wins the rally regardless of how long the rally goes on for. (This means that if in the beginning of the rally both teams had done a jumping 2nd ball for example, then the winning team of the rally would get 2 points regardless of which team wins.)
Since I am literally making up rules here, one could of course choose any of the above, and maybe some experimentation and evaluation would be good to do.
Regardless, I’m going to propose number 3 - Reward the bonus point if the opposing team manages to get maximum 2 touches on the ball after the attack. (Transition setter touches the ball but can’t deliver an attackable set.)
The reason for this is that in my list of exciting beach volleyball moves to watch, number 3 was: Difficult sets subcategory 1: A beautifully delivered set from a more or less shanked pass/defensive move.
I simply believe the rule would simply encourage even more hustling from players to run up balls that the defender shanked to various degrees, since as long as you just touch the ball the opposing team might get only 1 point for their attack rather than 2, which is entertaining in itself, but on top of that, I believe that over time, we would also end up seeing more “beautifully delivered set from a more or less shanked pass/defensive move” by providing an even bigger incentive for players to run up balls that their partners shanked on defense.
Again, here also I’d love to hear any counterarguments to my ideas, they help me refine everything further because at times I miss crucial details.
Some final thoughts
So this has been a long blog post with a lot of details (hopefully interesting details that kept you engaged rather than stopping you from reading) and even if I think it could be discussed way further I think it’s about time to round off for this time.. Possibly in the future, I’ll have to rewrite this post into shorter posts for the people with shorter attention spans, or go even deeper into some details. In the comment section below I can clarify things if there is something you (or someone else) are wondering about.
Anyway, I hope that you actually try to open-mindedly picture for yourself what the future of beach volleyball would look like if these rules would actually get implemented. Beach volleyball wouldn’t change that much, there would still be teams playing “traditional beach volleyball” winning tournaments (especially on levels below professional), but it would for sure be a somewhat significant change for the higher levels of the sport. As with any change, there would always be some people who would benefit from the change and some others who would lose out because of it. However, I do believe we should, when taking these types of decisions, try to think about the whole future of the sport more than individual cases.
I am also fully aware that there might be something in this rule proposition that I haven’t thought of that actually would make it a bad proposition. If this is the case, I hope the conversation that will happen thanks to this proposition will still foster some creativity towards maybe another rule proposition (because I still think it is a problem that there is a disconnect between the extraordinarily good players and the extraordinarily entertaining players).. Just like this proposition wouldn’t exist today had I not proposed the other set of rules in my Youtube video a few years ago.
So if these rules would actually be good, how should we proceed? I don’t know exactly. What I do know is that now that I have finally put all these thoughts "onto paper", I will sooner or later get some beach volleyball friends to read them, and hopefully be able to convince them to play some test games with me, in order to evaluate and refine.
What I do know, is that it is fully possible for you also to gather some friends and give these rules a test run. After that, the refining process will start. Maybe we will figure out that the “2 to 1” ratio on the reward points is too steep and changes the game too much and maybe there should be a “1.5 to 1” ratio instead (which maybe in practice would mean 2 points for “normal ways to score” and 3 points for “extra rewarded ways to score”, kinda like in basketball)? Or maybe we will figure out that playing sets to 21 with deciders to 15 makes games too short with the extra reward points and we should instead play 2 sets to 27 (with side switches every 9 points) and a deciding set to 21?
Who knows what the refining process would lead to, but if you would be wishing to embark on this kind of “experimentation and refining” journey with your group of players, please let me know because we could join forces and share ideas and thoughts during the journey!
Over time, if the rules actually would end up being good, I am thinking that like with other major rule changes in the game, some international test events should take place before full implementation…
Of course, I have no authority whatsoever over any of these decisions. I guess I have built myself at least somewhat of an “influencer voice” in the beach volleyball world by creating and growing the “Learn Beach Volleyball Fast”-project over the years, which is fun because nowadays it actually makes it worthwhile to express some of my thoughts that I have in my head (like this blog post) because some people do read them and they could actually have an impact on the volleyball world one day..
But yes, my possibilities and authority stop at the point of deciding to write and post this blog post, and trying to get my friends to try to play with these rules with me.. I guess I could self-organize a tournament with my modified rules, but that’s probably something I won’t have time for for a number of years ahead..!
Anyway, thanks for reading! If you found it even mildly interesting, chances are quite high that you would also find other content in the Learn Beach Volleyball Fast project interesting..! I have everything from Youtube video tutorials that have helped people learn skills in one practice session, that years of coaching from high level coaches hasn’t been able to teach them, podcast episodes where I discuss for example strategies of the game (technical, tactical, and mental) with top-level coaches and some of the best players to ever play the sport and also some more nerdy blog posts if reading is your thing. In the future, I will also create online courses that will break down the whole sport into step-by-step details with a "never seen before" quality and attention to detail as well as write some hopefully interesting books. And oh yeah, I am of course also available for coaching for the absolutely best, personally tailored learning experience I can provide.
All right, that was it for now, have a good one!! // Alex