Association of Volleyball Professionals Beach, California in October 2011. In April 2012, the AVP was bought over by Donald Sun and two tournaments, the Cincinnati Open and the 2012 AVP Championships, were held later that year. The first full AVP season under Sun began in 2013. Facing competition from the NVL, the AVP required players competing on the 2017 AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour to sign a four-year exclusivity contract. Since its re-emergence in 2013, the AVP Pro Beach Volleyball Tour has once again established itself as the biggest professional beach volleyball tour in the United States, with most of the top American players
Beach volleyball In the 1960s, an attempt to start a professional volleyball league was made in Santa Monica. It failed, but a professional tournament was held in France for 30,000 French francs. In the 1950s, the first Brazilian beach volleyball tournament was held, sponsored by a newspaper publishing company. The first Manhattan Beach Open was held in 1960, a tournament which grew in prestige to become, in the eyes of some, the "Wimbledon of Beach Volleyball". In the meantime, beach volleyball gained popularity: in the 1960s The Beatles tried playing in Los Angeles and US president John F. Kennedy was seen attending