VNL to be moved to winter period?

This year might be the year of big changes in competition’s formats of the two most important competitions under the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB).

Following unofficial news of moving the next editions of the World Championship to odd years and increasing the number of participants, one more change allegedly comes from the FIVB’s (and their major partner Volleyball World) ’kitchen’.

According to Gian Luca Pasini, these two bodies (this refers more to the latter) insist on having the Volleyball Nations League in the winter. As for the specific months for competition, Volleyball World has the time between December and January in mind, thus wanting to create another TV product for its market. VNL (as well as its predecessors World League and Grand Prix) has always been held annually in the period between May and July.

There have already been negative opinions of many federations, which in that period usually have no scheduled activities. Not to mention that such a decision would end up imposing a long winter break, not exactly a good thing though, on the national championships across the globe.