The Premier Volleyball League is opening its doors for one more team that will hike the current membership to 12 squads.
PVL president Ricky Palou bared that some parties have already expressed their intention to join the country’s first and only women’s professional volleyball league.
In fact, the official is looking at a possible 12-club field for the season-ending All-Filipino Conference slated to begin in October.
“It’s not yet clear but I think we’ll have 12 teams in total for the third conference,” Palou said.
He, however, cleared that an interested club must still meet the league’s criteria to be admitted.
“We are still trying to find out which team it will be but they have already sent fillers expressing intention to join. I told them yes they can join but it all depends on what their long-term plan is,” Palou said.
The PVL would only accept a club if it is willing to commit for the long haul.
“Our condition for the teams who want to join is they’re supposed to stay with us for the long term, we don’t want teams that will just come and go,” Palou said.
“We want a team that would come in and play with us for years. You stay with us for years. You play in all conferences.”
Three additional teams – Farm Fresh, Foton and Gerflor – made their debut in the recently concluded Invitational Conference. Their arrival came at the heels of the Philippine Army’s leave of absence.
They joined powerhouse teams Creamline, Petro Gazz, F2 Logistics, Cignal, PLDT, Choco Mucho, Chery Tiggo and Akari, which was admitted to the league last year.
The PVL will stage a second serving of the All-Filipino Conference this year after being barred from tapping foreign guest players for the Reinforced Conference, which was supposed to be the season-ending tournament.
The league received a memo from Philippine National Volleyball Federation last June stating that requests for international transfer certificates originating from PVL clubs will not be processed.
The sanction came up following the league’s alleged violation of Article 6.1.1.b of the Fédération Internationale de Volleyball Sports Regulations 2022 for holding a tournament during the national team period from 16 May to 15 October.
