2025 AVP Season Announced!
Dear Reader~
It's finally here! As you may be able to tell by the title, the 2025 AVP (Association of Volleyball Professionals) Beach Volleyball season has been announced. For those who aren't familiar with me, I attend the one in Manhattan Beach, California, known as the Manhattan Beach Open or MBO for short, every year and have made a few friends over the years out of some of the players. A few include Travis Mewhirter, Molly Turner, Maddie Anderson, and Melissa Powell. I have gone to the MBO every year since 2021 and I also attended it in 2019. This year I will be attending that same event again so stay tuned for the blog covering that tournament later in the year along with other AVP events this 2025 season.
This year the AVP has 4 Contender events, 2 Heritage events, and 9 League events. The 2024 season had 3 Contender events, 3 Heritage events, and 9 League events. This year places like Huntington Beach and Manhattan Beach stayed as Heritage events, Denver, Waupaca, and Virginia Beach stated as Contender events, and Los Angeles, San Diego, Austin, Palm Beach, and Dallas all stayed as League events.
As for cities changing their events, Chicago went from a Heritage event to a League event, South Florida became Miami but stayed as a League event, New York went from not having any events to having two League events (not to mention not hosting the AVP since 2019 when it was part of the Gold series), and San Diego went from two League events to just one League event. The biggest change is having the League Championships going from Los Angeles, which was the second League event in the city in 2024, to Chicago. That created only one League event for Los Angeles and helped give Chicago a League event instead of a Heritage event compared to 2024. With it being so early in the season, it's hard to know where these League events will be held since they're in arenas instead of on the sand like the Heritage events are.
With the schedule out and the cities explained, it's time to find out what the difference between the three types of events are. For those who don't know, the 2024 season was the first time they tried this league idea out so the explanation will be based on that season.
Prior to 2024, the AVP had three types of events as well, but they were called Tour, Pro, and Gold. The 2023 season had four Tour (Denver, Waupaca, Virginia Beach, and Laguna Beach), four Pro (Miami, New Orleans, Huntington Beach, and Hermosa Beach), and three Gold (Atlanta, Manhattan Beach, and Chicago) events but these were called "series" instead of "events". A big difference between the events and series is that general admission, or GA, for all of the series tournaments were free but only the Heritage events, meaning only Huntington Beach and Manhattan Beach, will have free GA for 2025, and as someone who has been to Manhattan beach for the MBO, it gets very crowded especially on Saturdays even though the finals are on Sundays. Another difference is that the events are built inside of arenas compared to the series that are on the sand whether it be on the beaches of Manhattan, Huntington, or Virginia, Oak Street Beach in Chicago, or South Beach in Miami. A few arenas that had the 2024 events include the UCLA Tennis Center in Los Angeles, the Hard Rock Stadium in Miami, and the Honda Center, where indoor volleyball for the 2028 summer Olympics will be held, in Anaheim.
That concludes the announcement of the 2025 AVP season and stay tuned for the coverage of the 2025 NCAA Division 1 Beach Volleyball season that will come out here shortly followed by my coverage of the 2025 AVP season.
For my New Year's resolution, I would like to work on doing more blogs as well as making them better, since it's something I enjoy doing, so I hope you enjoy watching my blogs progress during the year. Like I mentioned in the beginning, I attend the AVP event in Manhattan Beach, California every August and if you'd like to join me, let me know and I hope you enjoy the special blog for that event later in the year. Until next time, Miller out
~J. Miller
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