Lack of funds cause withdrawal of Stavanger Grand Slam from 2012 FIVB SWATCH World Tour
The International Governing Authority of Volleyball, the FIVB, has pulled out one event from its 2012 World Tour Calendar.
The financial predicament in Norway has caused withdrawal of the Stavanger Grand Slam from SWATCH FIVB World Tour. The Norway promoter World Event confirmed on Friday that the Stavanger Grand Slam will not take place this year due to the lack of finances.
The event was scheduled to take place from June 25 to July 1.
The SWATCH FIVB Grand Slam beach volleyball tournament in Norway has been part of the World Tour since 1999. Initially, it was started as an Open event at the iconic venue of the Vaagen Harbour dockside courts and turned out to be huge success in short span
of time. It attracted athletes from around the world and created great awareness among the people of Norway about the wonderful sport of beach volleyball. In a couple of years, it attained such importance that the FIVB gave it the status of Grand Slam in 2004.
The managing director and chairman of World Events, Odd Langhelle commented, “It has been a great pleasure working with the organization in Stavanger, and see how this fantastic tournament turned into one of the biggest sports event in Norway. The World
Tour in Stavanger has been a first class and complex beach volleyball event with a budget of approx. three million Euros. The financial risk for this year's tournament was simply too high.”
The 2012 FIVB SWATCH World Tour will now cover thirteen events in fourteen countries, which will include eight Grand Slam tournaments. In addition, eight Open events will be featured, while six of them will be only single-gender competitions. The tour will
complete its length over a period of seven months.
A total of $6.7 million prize money will be on stake for the winners of 2012 SWATCH FIVB World Tour events. Each of the Grand Slam tournaments will offer $600,000 in total to the victorious duos.
The organisers of Stavanger Grand Slam hope that the event will return to the SWATCH FIVB World Tour in the next year after the financial turmoil ends.
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