To ensure parity and level competition, the Premier Volleyball League will stage its first-ever rookie draft next year.
The league is looking to maintain a balance where small-market teams will have a chance to pick and secure top-caliber recruits who will enter the draft.
“We’re definitely going to have a draft system next year. So that the lowest ranked teams will be able to get the better players that are coming into the league,” league organizer Sports Vision president Ricky Palou said in a recent Radyo5 Power and Play interview.
Teams have been making moves to beef up their respective rosters ahead of each conference. However, it also exposes a glaring disparity where big clubs hoard skilled players coming from the collegiate ranks if not poaching from smaller teams by dangling lucrative offers.
This is what the league wants to prevent in the future and to make the country’s first and only professional women’s volleyball league more competitive.
“As the years go by, we see all the teams improving, up their playing level, and be competitive against each other. These are the things we’re looking at right now,” he said.
For this season’s Invitational Conference alone, clubs with deep pockets had a recruiting spree of players mostly coming from the University Athletic Association of the Philippines.
With three more clubs — Foton, Gerflor and Farm Fresh — entering the picture that hiked the number of teams to 11, player recruitment became even tougher with those with money to spare signing prime names.
Palou also shared that there will be parameters and rules to be followed in drafting players including a two-year bond for each pick.
“We don’t want teams drafting players and just letting them off or trading them off to another team that’s willing to pay. We want to try and maintain balanced competition,” he said.
The PVL will begin its mid-season conference on 27 June.
