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On the world's radar: Adelaide hailed for BV championships
SEN • November 26th, 2025 4:39 pm
For 10 incredible days the centre of Adelaide was transformed into a beach volleyball festival ground which played host to the FIVB world championships as well as some huge names in global music.
Almost 4,000 tonnes of sand were moved to Pinky Flat to play host to Olympians, world champions and stars of the future from around the globe.
Enormous crowds packed in across the event with Latvia’s Tina Graudina and Anastasija Samoilova crowned the new world champions in the women’s competition while Olympic gold medallists from Paris David Ahman and Jonatan Hellvig from Sweden won the men’s.
Hailing the success of the event, FIVB Athletes’ Commission President, Louise Bawden said Adelaide had played the perfect host.
“It was an awesome finish to the event,” she told SEN. “We finished on a high.
“I spent a lot of time with the players, tried to make sure we saw it form all angles and lenses to make sure we’re growing the product and the game. You could not have found a better spot. I hope we get the chance to do this again.
“You don’t get that kind of opportunity to engage quite like that very often.”
Before the championships had even finished, rumours were circulating that Adelaide was inline to become the first host city to go back-to-back.
“I can’t speak to the rumours,” Bawden added. “I wish I had inside track on things like that. World championships are not cheap to host but it would be amazing.
“The Netherlands are the designated hosts for 2027. They go with a multi-city format over there. They do pools across four cities to spread out the opportunity across more markets.”
Before anyone can think about bidding for another major event, Bawden says it is important to take stock of their wins and losses from the last 10 days and all the planning which preceded it.
“What’s on my mind right now are learnings and the way in which we are collaborating across stakeholders is such a challenge,” she continued. “Bringing them all together to get the right message across is hard.
“There were times that is sucked up man hours, I do think that, putting my athlete hat on, there were times when we could have brought all the Aussies together a bit more. We maybe leaned away from that more than we could have.”
And then of course there is the question on everyone’s minds, what do you do with 4,ooo tonnes of sand?
“There's a few different parts to this, we’re working with sustainability partner to return the sand. We want to donate some of it back to beach volleyball as a legacy event.
“Beach Volleyball Australia have been trying to get another city beach. The council have voted in favour to reinstate a city beach court. Some will be used for projects like that.”
