The AVP Beach Volleyball Tour now has a team game. But will it be the (Dallas) Dream or the (Miami) Chaos?

When Chase Budinger played in the NBA, he had a locker room full of teammates who worked together to win and support each other off the court.

Ever since he switched to beach volleyball, it was always just him and one partner.

That changed this season on the AVP Tour with a new league format that brings a team concept to the two-player game, along with hometown, nickname and all the other trappings of more traditional team sports.

“It just creates that team atmosphere, that team cohesion that I’ve been missing from my basketball days,” Budinger said in a recent phone interview as he moved from the Paris Olympics to the new AVP league.

“It’s something that I kind of feel again, when you’re rooting for your teammates and really rooting for the other team,” said Budinger, who played seven years in the NBA before reaching the Olympics in beach volleyball. “It’s really cool because it’s something completely different than normal beach volleyball.”

Although it has long been the most prestigious beach volleyball tour in the United States, the AVP has struggled to find its footing on the sand as it tries to shift the sport’s four-year focus on the Summer Games to non-Olympic years.

The new format is an attempt to address some of the issues that can hamper the sport’s growth, including shorter, more television-friendly matches and more predictable pairings to capitalize on the name recognition of the biggest stars.

Most notably, the AVP league departs from traditional beach volleyball, where the two traveled and competed on their own, pairing a men’s pair with a women’s pair and assigning them a city in hopes of boosting hometown support. The teams are not playing for championship titles, but to climb the season standings and reach the final championship in Los Angeles on November 9-10.

“It’s a complete shakeup compared to what’s been going on for the last couple of decades,” said Brandi Wilkerson, Canada’s silver medalist at the Paris Olympics with Melissa Humana-Paredes; the pair now play for the AVP Palm Beach Passion, teaming up with 2008 gold medalist Phil Dalhauser and Avery Drost.

“Team camaraderie is fun,” Wilkerson said. “I never had to think about another teammate other than Melissa. So it’s been fun and we’re starting to do that, we’re getting to know these players better. We have to support each other.”

Other teams include the San Diego Smash, New York Nitro, Dallas Dream, Austin Aces, Miami Mayhem, LA Launch and Brooklyn Blaze. The league has now moved from Los Angeles, where it played at the UCLA Tennis Center, to Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.

“Playing in cities like other professional teams do and having big crowds in stadiums – what’s not to like about that?” – said Olympic gold medalist Alix Kleinman, who plays for Miami.

“It takes time. “I don’t think all people became Laker fans right away,” she said. “We learned to love the organization and the players, and as they got better, more people became fans. Hopefully the format has the power that everyone is hoping for and then I think the fans will come on board.”

The competition will take place this weekend at the Honda Center, home of the NHL’s Anaheim Ducks. Although beach volleyball competitions are often played far from shore on truckloads of sand, including the Champ de Mars under the Eiffel Tower during the 2024 Paris Olympics, existing stadiums offer amenities not always possible in Manhattan Beach or Copacabana

“It looks professional,” said April Ross, a three-time Olympic medalist who won gold in 2021 with Kleinman in Tokyo. “We have air-conditioned changing rooms, players’ rooms. I really like these places.”

Things are also different on the court, with the number of sets reaching 15 (instead of 21). The fast pace of the game arouses the interest of the fans, and it does not hurt that the matches can be more reliably placed in the TV window. (A traditional beach volleyball match can last anywhere from 30 minutes to more than an hour, meaning two matches will be broadcast outside the two-hour television window right when things are most interesting.)

“It’s definitely a big sprint,” Ross said. “It’s intense, I will say that. I think it’s fun to watch and every point counts. Strategically, it’s difficult: if you have a slow start, there’s not much opportunity to change strategy and come back.”

This year’s season was planned for the fall to build the Olympic cone; in 2025, a return to summer is expected. There are three women’s teams from Paris: Kelly Cheng and Sarah Hughes, Taryn Clot and Kristen Nuss, and the Canadians. The men’s side features both U.S. pairs from recent Olympics: Budinger and Miles Evans, Andy Benes and Miles Partain, as well as former Olympians such as Dahlhauser and Alison of Brazil.

An AVP spokesman declined to provide attendance figures, saying only that they had increased each week for the first six events of the season. The players — many of them Southern Californians — say they hope the format will help grow beach volleyball as the home of the sport prepares to return to the Olympics in 2028.

“Los Angeles has a lot of work to do to try to surpass Paris,” Kleinman said. “I’m excited about Los Angeles, I think our city has a lot to offer. But we also have to step it up to do something like Paris.”