Born in the depression days of the 1920s on the sandy beaches of Santa Monica, California, Beach Volleyball has become a multi million-dollar extravaganza and an Olympic sport that has captivated players in more than 90 countries. From those first matches, the game caught on 10 years later in France, Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Latvia before slotting perfectly into the Californian lifestyle in the 1950s and the pulsating 1960s, taking its place alongside surfing. The United States and Brazil played a major role in transforming «Beach» into a professional sport in the1970s and 1980s, but it was the hard work of the FIVB President Dr. Ruben Acosta and Beach Volleyball stars such as Sinjin Smith, Karch Kiraly and Randy Stoklos that helped establish Beach Volleyball internationally in the 1980s and 1990s and become a full medal sport at the Atlanta 1996 Olympic Games. At the same time the FIVB Beach Volleyball International Circuit evolved from the World Series to the World Tour and exploded in popularity in Europe, Latin America and Asia.

The 2004 SWATCH-FIVB World Tour boasted 27 major events encompassing Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas in an Olympic year with over US $5-million in prize money.

• 1920s — The birth of Beach Volleyball on the beaches of Santa Monica, California.
• 1947 — The first official two-man Beach Volleyball tournament held at State Beach, California with no prize money.
• 1948 — The first tournament with prizes was played at State Beach were the top teams were rewarded crates of Pepsi.
• 1974 — The first money tournament was held where the US$1,500 San Diego Open was held with 250 spectators.
• 1987 — The first FIVB international competition started called «The World Championship» in Rio de Janeiro. It later changes its name to the World Series in 1989-90 and the World Tour in 1996.
• 1993 — The International Olympic Committee recognizes Beach Volleyball as an Olympic Games discipline.
• 1996 — First appearance (and sold out) at the Atlanta Olympic Games.
• 2000 — Beach Volleyball at the Sydney Olympic Games attracts 180,000 spectators and billions of TV viewers.
• 2001 — More and 120,000 spectators attend five days of competition at the World Championship in Austria.
• 2003 — The World Tour includes a four-leg «Grand Slam» integrated tournament within a tournament, challenging the top teams to win «The Slam» and go down in history as truly great players. Berlin, Marseille, Klagenfurt and Los Angles host Grand Slams with US$300,000 in prize money for each tournament
• 2004 — A record 27 tournaments, including a three-leg Grand Slam (Berlin, Marseille and Klagenfurt) of which 22 are included in the Olympic qualifying process, with record prize money of US$5,480,000.

2005 SWATCH-FIVB World Tour Fact Sheet

SWATCH-FIVB World Tour — From 1989 when the first international Beach Volleyball Tour called the World Series was unleashed in Rio de Janeiro, the circuit has undergone two name changes and a makeover to become a series of «dynamic» global sporting events each year. From the beginning in 1989 of three legs of men’s competition in Brazil, Italy and Japan involving 40 athletes from seven countries, the international Beach Volleyball Tour introduced women’s play three years later before the world-wide circuit was revitalized and the World Championship Series was born in 1995. At that point legs and prize money stood at 17 and US$2.4-million, respectively thus prompting the transformation into the now famous World Tour. The SWATCH-FIVB

World Tour embraced 22 stops split between men and women in 2003 with over 700 athletes from more than 50 countries and a record prize money pool nearing US$5-million, including Grand Slam stops in Berlin, Marseille, Klagenfurt and Los Angeles. The 2004 season featured 27 «major» tournaments (15 men and 12 women), with US$5.48-million in prize money, a three-leg Grand Slam (Berlin, Marseille and Klagenfurt), plus the Athens 2004 Olympics Games where 24 men's and 24 women's teams competed for the gold medals won by Emanuel Rego/Ricardo Santos of Brazil and Misty May/Kerri Walsh of the United States.

OLYMPIC BEACH VOLLEYBALL — The SWATCH-FIVB World Tour during the 1992 and 1993 season was, in a way, the beginning of the sports' Olympic era. After the 1992 Barcelona Games, a beach volleyball event was played in Almeria, Spain, as post-Olympic demonstration sport. In addition to being the first-ever women's international event, the tournament was the first step in getting the sport entered in the Olympics. The United States won both men's (Sinjin Smith/Randy Stoklos) and women's (Karolyn Kirby/Nancy Reno) titles. In February, 1993, International Olympic Committee (IOC) President Juan Antonio Samarach, along with Atlanta Committee Olympic Games President Billy Payne and other IOC members attended the FIVB Beach Volleyball

Finals in Rio de Janeiro. There they saw the excitement that the sport could generate as over 140,000 fans jammed the stadium for the one week tournament. As a result, the most important event in the history of beach volleyball occurred on September 24, 1993. On that day, at the 101st IOC session in Monte Carlo, the sport of beach volleyball was admitted as a medal discipline for the 1996 Summer Olympics in Atlanta, Georgia. The sport had reached its Olympic era.