PNVF bids for FIVB tourney
The Philippine National Volleyball Federation (PNVF) is looking forward to a promising development as it wrapped up its active bidding to host the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB) 2025 Men’s Volleyball World Championships.
From 31 initial countries expressing interest to host the grandest volleyball showpiece, the FIVB is now down to its final few candidates with the Philippines hoping to give life to the event next year for the first time.
“We’ve had the bidding process going for many months now. We actually had 31 initial countries that expressed interest in this process. So we’ve spent a number of months now meeting with these countries and discussing the process. We’re not 31 anymore, we are down to the final few now. But we’ve been quite overwhelmed to be honest at the interest that we’ve had for such an event,” said Finn Taylor, CEO of Volleyball World on Thursday, Feb. 29, at the Grand Hyatt Manila during its bid meeting with the PNVF led by its President Ramon “Tats” Suzara.
The Philippines officially submitted its bid to the FIVB last year in July ahead of the country’s hosting of the Volleyball Nations League (VNL) third leg which featured eight countries including world’s best Poland, Italy (No. 3), Japan (No. 4), Brazil (No. 5), Slovenia (No. 7), Canada (No. 12), Netherlands (No. 13) and China (No. 31) which competed during the group phase of the tournament.
While the FIVB and Volleyball World have broken the status quo by awarding a portion of the VNL hosting to the Philippines which was the only host country with no competing team in the tournament, the volleyballcrazed nation definitely came through with a huge turnout.
The best players in the world have been coming to Manila since 2022 as part of the PNVF’S threeyear contract with the volleyball governing bodies.