The Association of Volleyball Professionals, commonly known as the AVP, is the primary domestic professional beach volleyball tour in the United States, built on the foundation laid by early Southern California tournaments such as the 1976 Olympia World Championship of Beach Volleyball. Through the 1980s and beyond, the AVP developed into an established annual circuit of tournaments held in beach cities across the country, giving American beach volleyball its own dedicated domestic pathway distinct from the FIVB's international circuit.
AVP events typically run through the summer months and combine top American professional pairs with a broader field of competitors working their way up through the tour's ranking system, and the tour has played a central role in developing and showcasing American beach volleyball talent that has gone on to Olympic success, including some of the sport's most decorated Olympic medalists.
A made-for-broadcast rules variation
The AVP has at times used rules variations distinct from strict FIVB standards to heighten drama for a domestic television and live-event audience — for example, adopting a rule sometimes called 'the Freeze,' which changes how the final point of a set can end, adopted after a widely discussed 2016 Olympic gold medal match that finished on a service error rather than a decisively won rally.
A tour built around live event atmosphere
Beyond the competition itself, AVP events are deliberately produced as broader live entertainment experiences — combining beach-side stadium seating, music, contests and other fan activities alongside the matches — reflecting the tour's long-running strategy of marketing beach volleyball as a lifestyle and festival experience as much as a pure athletic competition, an approach that traces directly back to beach volleyball's informal, social Southern California origins in the 1920s.
