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
Summer Heat Beach Volleyball were experiencing a period of renewed popularity for the first time in many years, although it received considerably less hype and critical praise than its contemporaries "Beach Spikers", "Dead or Alive Xtreme Beach Volleyball", and "Outlaw Volleyball". It currently has a score of 68.09% on GameRankings and 65 out of 100 on Metacritic. The game was one of several poor-selling titles that would lead to Acclaim's bankruptcy in 2004. In 2006, Canadian game publisher Throwback Entertainment acquired the property rights for "Summer Heat Beach Volleyball" from Acclaim. Throwback had planned on developing another "Summer Heat" volleyball game for release on