An upbeat Palou
HIGHLIGHTED by a record crowd of close to 25,000 fans at the Araneta Coliseum in Game 3 of the finals between Creamline and Choco Mucho, PVL head honcho Ricky Palou is certainly upbeat for this new year for the league.
And he has reasons to be as all the teams have and are undergoing major player changes, including key players in the other teams’ bids to challenge the uncontested superteam status of Creamline that won the two All Filipino conferences last year.
To think Creamline even absorbed veterans Bea de Leon and Denden Revilla from sister team Choco Mucho with the two seeing very limited action with their previous team.
Ricky says fans have been following the player movements and are eager to see how these will affect the teams’ performances, me, I agree with Ricky’s assessment that all the teams will be competitive, and there will be a higher level of parity ,well except the new teams coming in maybe, depending on their lineups.
But then with all the established players practically signed up, I do not see how new teams can compete with the veteran teams, even with newer teams like Akari and NxLED.
F2 Logistics’ disbandment late last year saddened Ricky, the team being one of the more popular and competitive squads in the league but he feels it will not really affect them as new teams are coming in.
What he is concerned with though is the ever increasing salary demands of players, “getting out of hand” was how he described the situation.
Especially when one hears or reads in social media that a superstar player was offered a million pesos a month, which personally I doubt, then the league really has to do something about it.
On his part, Ricky shared that the PVL is carefully studying the matter and in all probabilities, a salary cap will be put in place , I believe the teams will support this move to protect the league , thus even as drafting rules will already be implemented starting this year.
It is the men’s side of the game that for me might be a harder nut to crack for Ricky, the gap in popularity with fans between men’s and women’s volleyball remains as is, really big.
But Ricky is optimistic that with a concerted effort they can make the Spikers Turf as popular as the distaff side, a very tall order but then he says they are already taking serious steps to address to address this concern.
He adds that what they need on this side are more stable teams that will stay longer and not just on a per conference or per season basis.
Key here is how popular can Ricky make the male stars of the league with the fans, and we do have very good male players, even being imported abroad.
How big a fan base it has will always be crucial to any sport’s success.
But since I have shifted to women’s volleyball as far as watching games personally, I think I might as well include men’s volleyball in my must- watch list in 2024.
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