SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter21 Feb 2018

Can p1440 change the landscape of beach volleyball?

It’s not a tour.

That’s the first thing that Dave Mays, this week’s guest on SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, wants you to know about p1440, of which he is a founding partner.

It is many different things with many different meanings. Take, for example, the name itself. The 1440 is assured: It represents the 1,440 minutes we all have per day. But the p? Platform seems to be the most popular word for it, though, as Mays says, it’s up to your own interpretation. It could be purpose. Or power. Or people. Or whatever word that starts with ‘p’ you’d like to use to represent how you’d like to use your 1,440 minutes in a day.

Would you like to use it to strengthen your relationship with people? People it is. Or strengthening your mind, body and soul? Power it is.

That sort of the point: p1440, and how you spend your minutes, is up to you.

To some, yes, that means it’s a beach volleyball tour or league, and currently, there are eight events on the schedule, which bridges 2018 and 2019. The first four are set – Chicago in September, with Huntington Beach, San Diego and San Jose to follow – while the next four, which will be held in early 2019, are in limbo, though the sites have been whittled down to a few catchy options. There’s Vegas – Vegas! – a major city in Texas (Dallas and Houston, namely), Miami, Hawaii.

An ambitious start. An exciting start. And that hardly scratches the surface, for each event is not just a beach volleyball tournament.

It is, as Kerri Walsh-Jennings, a co-founder along with her husband, Casey Jennings, and Mays, has taken to saying: “Part Wanderlust, part Coachella, part beach volleyball league.”

Each event, tantamount to the World Series of Beach Volleyball, will feature a tournament, but it will also serve as a music festival of sorts, replete with concerts and fanfare and everything you’d expect of the triumvirate Walsh-Jennings mentioned.

How, you may be wondering, can an upstart tour fund eight events while also doubling as a music festival? Beach volleyball has been a notoriously volatile space in the market, in spite of the sport itself growing every year, to the point that more girls play volleyball than soccer or track and field or basketball.

For females, it’s the most popular sport in the country. And yet nobody has been able to monetize the market in a sustainable enough fashion for it to work. The business model has remained the same since a company named Event Concepts began putting on professional events in 1976.

They’d find a sponsor – Schlitz Beer was the first – or many sponsors, to throw in money, and that money would then be translated into prize money, which would draw talent and a crowd to watch that talent. Sponsors would be happy because they got the eyeballs they wanted, players would be happy because they got the prize money they wanted.

And so it went.

Until, of course, the tabs being run up by the tour were too hefty for the sponsors to cover, and one gigantic failure led to the next. Event Concepts was booted in 1984, thanks to a player protest at the World Championships of Beach Volleyball, and in came the AVP, an organization led by the players and a young, savvy agent named Leonard Armato. The AVP changed hands in 1990, when Armato was replaced by Jeff Dankworth, who in 1994 was replaced by Jerry Solomon, whose gross mishandling of the finances led to a bankruptcy, only for the AVP to be revived by – who else? – Armato in 2001.

Nine years later it was bankrupt again, and in 2012, Donald Sun took over and put on a pair of events, and since then he has done a fine job of steadying the frighteningly tenuous heartbeat of beach volleyball, increasing prize money and events and introducing a “Gold Series” and putting the sport back on television.

And yet the business model remains relatively the same, though there are certainly various nuances, as 1976: sponsor-driven.

“If we were to start a new pro beach volleyball tour tomorrow, we would fail,” Mays says on SANDCAST. “So that’s why we’re not starting a pro beach volleyball tour. We’re taking the sport of volleyball and we’re celebrating it, what works and what doesn’t. We’re applying some principles of what have worked and what do work, to this.”

And here is where the differentiation between p1440 and the AVP Tour begins.

p1440 will charge a $40 gate fee, every tournament. The AVP allows its fans, which pack stadiums, for free, though there are paid box seats. But the entry gate will hardly be the chief source of revenue for p1440.

That’s where the “platform” comes in.

Above all else, above volleyball and music and entertainment, p1440 is built upon four pillars: competition, development, health and wellness, entertainment.

The platform, an online resource featuring myriad digital media, will host webinars, coaching, nutrition, live clinics – any type of wellness resource you might need, be it mental, spiritual or physical. It’s not live yet – it is scheduled to launch in July – and until 2021, it will not be monetized. The content will be entirely free, with the goal of reaching 4 million subscribers by 2021, by which point a subscription fee will be required. No numbers are for sure in terms of the subscription fee, but on SANDCAST, there was a $5 estimate. If p1440 hits its goal of 4 million subscribers at $5 a month, you can do the math – $20 million in revenue per month from the platform alone.

If successful – an admittedly large “if” in this sport – the subscription model answers, in part, where the prize money and funding for the tour will stem from. Which leads to the next inevitable question: Who will be receiving those paychecks?

Mays, who built and sold a shipping business for a not-so-small fortune and was looking for a new project to work on, thinks it’s no question at all: p1440 will feature the finest talent in beach volleyball, and not only because there will be more prize money – he gave no definitive figure on what the breakdown will be, only that it will be more – but there will be more talent.

The failure to retain the game’s highest talent led to the breakdown of the NVL. Players want to play against the best, which was why, when Sun revived the AVP in 2012, and the top players returned, the NVL lost momentum and, eventually, financial backing. The best currently play on the AVP and FIVB tours.

There will be a battle over loyalty, the AVP’s non-compete (p1440 has no exclusivity clause in its contract), and, when it comes down to it, prize money and sponsors.

Mays intends on bringing in the best, not only in this country, but overseas.

Each tournament will feature a 24-team main draw. Sixteen of those teams will be Americans automatically seeded in. Four will come out of the qualifier. And four will be international wild cards.

Want to play against the best? p1440 could have Alison and Bruno, or Evandro and Andre, or Nicolai and Lupo. For the women, it could be Ludwig and Walkenhorst, Agatha and Duda, Talita and Larissa.

Walsh’s reach, even if she has been on the peripherals of the game as a player lately, is still extensive. You don’t win three gold medals and suddenly lose all of your contacts.

Those players mentioned will be available, too, for Mays and Walsh-Jennings and Casey Jennings have made it a point to schedule around the AVP as well as four- and five-star FIVBS.

The plan is to have the best in the world, playing for the best prize money in the game, with some music and entertainment to cap the night.

It’s a lot. It’s big. It’s potentially transformative. It might work, it might not. That’s part of the excitement around this movement. And maybe that all sounds a bit crazy, though it is worth reminding that the most successful ideas and businesses were, at one point or other, invariably labeled “crazy.”

As Walsh-Jennings wrote on Instagram: “It’s go time.”

Upptäck Premium

Prova 14 dagar kostnadsfritt

Skaffa Premium

Avsnitt(479)

Tri Bourne: The Retirement Of The Man Who Was Bourne On The Beach

This episode of SANDCAST is a heartfelt one, one in which Tri Bourne and his wife, Gabby, the Pod Mama herself, chat about Bourne's retirement from the world of professional beach volleyball. It's a reflective episode, as Bourne and Gabby talk about: - Bourne's wild journey, filled with the highest of highs, and perpetual health issues that robbed him of a fully healthy season since 2016 - Why he is deciding to retire now, at still a relatively young age in a sport that allows for longevity - Why he isn't sure, and doesn't need to be sure, about what's next in his life - The emotional weight of the decision to retire when he still has plenty of game left in him And so, so much more SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

23 Juli 1h 22min

Evan Cory: Adapting, Adjusting, THRIVING In 2025

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter features Evan Cory, one of the best players in the United States who alas had his plans aligned, with a full-time partner in Bourne, sites on the AVP League and World Champs -- everything dialed. And then beach volleyball happened. Bourne got hurt. They missed the League. Now Cory is, per usual, scrambling -- and thriving amidst the chaos. Fun episode with one of our favorites. We chat about: - What is was like for Cory to miss the league with Tri Bourne - How he has adjusted, leaning on patience, patience, and more patience, and adaptability, after he thought he broke through - His new partner prospects he's looking at - The importance of the mental side of sports, and how he is teaching it to junior players with his new business And so much more. Gold mine of an episode here! SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

16 Juli 1h 16min

Kent Steffes: What Beach Volleyball (and sports) is Getting Wrong And How to Fix It

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Kent Steffes. Buckle up. Steffes is one of the greatest beach volleyball players of all time, an Olympic gold medalist in 1996 who would win nearly half of the events he played. He has since gone on to become a prolific writer, author, podcaster, and, now, documentarian. He has opinions on the sport, and sports in general, and we get into all of them, including: Why Steffes does not believe the AVP League will work What changes he sees the sport needing to make in order to work Why he writes and podcasts as much as he does, on the topics he does Whether beach volleyball will ever become as big as it was in the 1990s, when he was at his peak And so much more. Get your popcorn ready and strap in. This one is a fun ride. SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

9 Juli 1h 32min

Kylie DeBerg: The Wild Journey From Iowa to the Top of Professional Beach Volleyball

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Kylie DeBerg, one of the top rising blockers for USA Volleyball who is coming off a gold medal at the Xiamen Challenge with Toni Rodriguez. DeBerg’s journey in the sport is a wild one, beginning in Hudson, a tiny town in Iowa with a population of 2,700, to…beach volleyball. How? They got into it and much more, including: DeBerg’s rise through the indoor world, and how she ended up a three-time All-American at Missouri How a season at LSU changed her look on volleyball, and forever changed the trajectory and path of her life The confidence issues that come with attempting to break through the top level in sport Why she’s focused on the Los Angeles Olympics in 2028, and why that’s still so crazy for her to say And much, much more. Fun to have Kylie DeBerg on the show for the first time! SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

2 Juli 51min

Taylor Crabb, Taylor Sander: The Ever-Changing Lives and Careers of a Volleyball Player

This episode of SANDCAST features Taylor Crabb and Taylor Sander as they sit down with Tri Bourne, chatting Sander's return from indoor, Crabb's off-season getting into coaching NCAA Beach Volleyball, and them playing together again in 2025. They get into: How Taylor Sander’s return to indoor volleyball in Indonesia went, and why he feels three years younger after playing beach volleyball How Taylor Crabb got into NCAA Beach Volleyball coaching at St. Mary’s, and why he’s going back for a second year Why Taylor Crabb and Trevor Crabb are reuniting on the Beach Pro Tour Why their lack of training is really no hindrance at all, because they’re volleyball players SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

25 Juni 1h 2min

Rob Gray: Unlocking Athlete Potential Through Ecological Dynamics

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Rob Gray, a skill acquisition specialist, professor at Arizona State, sport scientist with the Chicago Cubs, and, simply, the father of the modern coaching movement in sports. His books, podcast, and research have formed the foundation of thousands of coaches’ coaching philosophy, including Mewhirter’s. What a special episode! They chat about: What is ecological dynamics, and what makes it so effective for learning Why the old way of coaching (top-down, repetition-based) is giving way to the modern, ecological way espoused by Gray External vs. internal cues, and why the former is vastly more effective than the latter What the world has gotten wrong with the famous 10,000-hour rule And so, so, so much more. SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

18 Juni 49min

Stefan Boermans: The World Class Ambassador Beach Volleyball Most Needed

Welcome back to SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter where, today, Travis sits down with Stefan Boermans at a restaurant in Ostrava, Czech Republic at the Ostrava Elite. Boermans is currently one of the top blockers in the world, and one of the top teams alongside Yorick de Groot, a tour de force for a deepening Netherlands federation. On this episode, they chat about: How Stefan Boermans’ social media exploded, and why he views that as his tool to be an ambassador to grow the sport His rapid rise through the sport after a late start, and how he was shocked that the Dutch federation picked him to make a run at the Paris Olympics Why, even after a fifth, Stefan Boermans has no regrets whatsoever about his Olympic experience, preparation, and performance His thoughts on the new rules changes in beach volleyball that will allow doubles and coaches in the box And a whole lot more. So, so, so good! SHOOTS! *** WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

11 Juni 1h 6min

Nick Lucena, Brooke Niles, And The Building of An NCAA Coaching Legacy

This episode of SANDCAST: Beach Volleyball with Tri Bourne and Travis Mewhirter, features Nick Lucena and Brooke Niles and the entire FSU Beach Volleyball coaching staff as they reflect on another successful season for the 'Noles. They chat about: - How Brooke Niles and Nick Lucena have managed the husband-wife, coach-coach balance at Florida State - Both of their transitions from elite beach volleyball players to coaches at the NCAA level - How Brooke Niles has seen the landscape of coaching and college sports change - What Travis Mewhirter's first year was like at FSU And a whole lot more! SHOOTS! WE'VE GOT NEW MERCH! Check it out here!! Get 20 PERCENT off all Wilson products with our code, SANDCAST-20. https://www.wilson.com/en-us/volleyball Get 10 PERCENT OFF VBTV using our discount code, SANDCAST10 Want to get better at beach volleyball? Use our discount code, SANDCAST, and get 10 percent off all Better at Beach products! We are FIRED UP to announce that we've signed on for another year with Athletic Greens! Get a FREE year's supply of Vitamin D by purchasing with that link. If you want to receive our SANDCAST weekly newsletter, the Beach Volleyball Digest, which dishes all the biggest news in beach volleyball in one quick newsletter, head over to our website and subscribe! We'd love to have ya! https://www.sandcastvolleyball.com/

4 Juni 1h 11min

Allt en och samma app

Lyssna på dina favoritpoddar och ljudböcker på ett och samma ställe.

Noga utvalt innehåll

Njut av handplockade tips som passar din smak – utan ändlöst scrollande.

Fortsätt när du vill

Fortsätt lyssna där du slutade – även offline.

Premium

99 kr/mån

Tillgång till alla Premium-poddar
Lyssna utan reklam
Avsluta när du vill

Prova 14 dagar gratis

Premium

129 kr/mån

Tillgång till alla Premium-poddar
Lyssna utan reklam
Avsluta när du vill
Ett extra konto

Prova 14 dagar gratis

Populärt inom Politik & nyheter

Berättelserna och rösterna du älskar att lyssna på

Obegränsad lyssning på alla dina favoritpoddar och ljudböcker

Upptäck Premium