Volleyball Special: The biggest event of the SWATCH FIVB World Tour 2010 in spotlight
The Phuket Open Tournament has appeared as the biggest tournament on the SWATCH FIVB World Tour Calendar. The tournament is scheduled to complete its run from 2-7 November, 2010 in the city of Phuket, Thailand. It offers prize money of US$190,000 to the
victorious duo. The tournament has attracted the largest ever number of entries from the top beach volleyball contenders from all around the world.
The Phuket Open Tournament is basically a beach extravaganza. It features professional beach volleyball event and also the supporting amateur beach volleyball programs. Besides, the most prominent feature of this event is that anybody can enjoy the game
without paying for the entry. The entry of fans is totally free, the volleyball enthusiasts can enjoy the main event of Phuket Open Tournament and they are also allowed to enjoy other activities on beach.
The event is sponsored by PTT and it is being held for the fifth successive year on Karen Beach. The SWATCH Group, Descente and Mikasa are also on the sponsors’ list. The tournament is sanctioned by the Federation Internationale de Volleyball (FIVB) and
Volleyball Association of Thailand has played an important role to make it happen.
The event has now gained the reputation of the biggest beach volleyball tournament in Asia with over 500 athletes involved. This year, the event welcomed around 100 beach volleyball teams from 30 different countries. Teams from China, USA, Russia, Ukraine,
Slovenia, Thailand, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, France, Latvia, Germany, Kazakhstan, Great Britain, Japan, Greece, Italy, Finland, Australia, Czech Republic, Belgium, Brazil, Venezuela, Mexico, the Netherlands, New Zealand, Norway, Poland, Portugal and Vanuatu
are competing in the tournament.
The 6-day event of Phuket Open Tournament started off with the qualification round and moved into the main-draw stage. Thailand has been automatically allotted 2 teams into the main-draw for being the host nation. The victorious pairs of the pre-qualification
tournament have been give wild card into the main draw. Today (Saturday), the ‘final four’ matches will be televised on different networks to a worldwide audience of over 1,000,000,000 volleyball enthusiasts.
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