No rivalry between Shakey’s V League, TV5 tourney

MANILA, Philippines — Shakey’s V-League hardly sees the new women’s volleyball tournament set to fire off next year as competition.

TV5 recently announced it will launch the Premier Volleyball League, a professional volleyball tournament slated for January, in a bid to promote the sport.

“At this point, we don’t see them as competition,” said Ricky Palou, president of organizer Sports Vision, which made V-League as the country’s top women’s volleyball competition. “We’re still collegiate-based, while they’re a professional league.”

Palou said both leagues don’t see themselves going the route where TV5 positioned the NCAA men’s basketball tournament in collision with the UAAP, which is aired by ABS-CBN Sports.

“We’ve actually given our schedule to TV5 to make sure they know our schedule and don’t come to conflict with us,” said Palou.

V-League had been aired livestream online and on various television channels on a delayed basis.

Palou said, though, that the invitational tournament—the third conference of Season 9 slated late this year—got scrapped due to the unavailability of several foreign teams.

Just like last year, the league had hoped to invite several Southeast Asian club teams to boost the competition.

“Some of the foreign teams had commitments with other tournaments so we decided to cancel this one for this year,” said Palou. “We’ll study it more so we won’t have conflict with other tournaments in the region.”