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FIVB
President Reflects On Challenging but Productive Year
Dear members of the global Volleyball Family, Dear friends,
As 2020 draws to an end, we can reflect on what has been a very
different year to the one we all imagined.
Together, we have faced significant challenges. Instead of a
year of incredible sporting action, we have seen the necessary
postponement of events worldwide to ensure the health and
wellbeing of our athletes. But despite all of these challenges,
the FIVB’s strong leadership and vision have allowed us to
weather the storm and end 2020 in a strong position. And the
commitment, spirit and unwavering passion of the global
Volleyball Family has helped guide and inspire these efforts
throughout the past year.
On the volleyball court, a team must work as one and focus point
by point to find success. In this spirit, off the court, we have
worked as one team and supported each other as we tackled the
challenges before us to move out sport forward step by step.
As the pandemic significantly disrupted the global sporting
calendar, we created the FIVB Athletes' Relief Support fund to
support our incredible volleyball and beach volleyball athletes.
This fund assisted 80 players worldwide for basic needs support,
allowing them to concentrate on their health, wellbeing and
training. We are still processing 45 applications for short-term
beach volleyball team support to assist with coaching, training
and participation in competitions. These applications will be
analysed at a later stage when the international beach
volleyball calendar is finalised.
We also continued to support all 222 of our National Federations
through the FIVB Development Projects Platform, raising the
standard of volleyball across the globe and making the game
accessible to all. All of which would not have been possible
without the strong financial foundation established by the
FIVB’s Leadership over the past few years.
Meanwhile, we strengthened our family and made history with the
election of the first-ever women to lead the African and Asian
Continental Confederations, Bouchra Hajij and Rita Subowo
respectively. Both have extensive experience within volleyball
and sports administration, and I have no doubt that they will
further the development of volleyball and gender equality in
sport.
We have also reinforced our connection with volleyball’s
hundreds of millions of fans worldwide. There is no doubt that
2020 has highlighted just how important digital is in connecting
and engaging with a global audience. For the past four years,
the FIVB had already embraced the digital era with technology at
its core as I promised in my 2016 election campaign.
In 2020, this digital transformation continued to accelerate as
we brought fans across the globe more incredible points, epic
rallies and magical game moments in the absence of live sport.
Our existing social media platforms have continued to see
tremendous growth with more than 8 million followers across the
various platforms, welcoming all of them to enjoy action-packed
content with us.
In addition, we offered fans unlimited access to Volleyball TV
for most of this year, giving fans the chance to enjoy some of
the greatest moments of the game and their favourites stars and
teams in action.
In April, we expanded our digital portfolio and joined the
fast-growing platform, TikTok. In just eight months, our
following has grown to over 600,000, allowing even more fans to
enjoy the unbelievable feats of our athletes through clever use
of archived footage. And we cannot wait to be able to bring
fresh action to this platform in 2021.
So I would like to thank you all for the important role you
played in another successful year for volleyball. I know that we
can all be extremely proud of our united effort to strengthen
our sport and all that we have achieved in the face of
adversity.
I wish you all season’s greetings and a happy new year.
Yours in sport,
FIVB President |
