BSWW

Beach Soccer Worldwide

Abbreviation	BSWW
Formation	1992 (founding partners) 2001 (current status)
Type	International sport federation
Headquarters	Barcelona, Spain
Region served	Worldwide
Membership	209 national associations of FIFA + unofficial
Official languages	English
President	Luis Felipe Tavares
Vice-President	Joan Cuscó
Deputy vice-president	Gabino Renales
Affiliations	FIFA, International Olympic Committee
Staff	<50
Website	www.beachsoccer.com

Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW) is the organisation responsible for the founding and growth of association football's derivative sport of beach soccer. The founding partners of BSWW codified the rules of beach soccer in 1992, with BSWW as it is known today having been officially founded in 2001 as a singular institution to develop the sport and organise international beach soccer competitions across the globe, primarily between national teams. The company is recognised as playing the biggest role in helping to establish the rules of beach soccer, to spread and evolve the sport around the world as cited by FIFA who took on governing body status of the sport from BSWW in 2005. Having established the sport's key regulations, FIFA acknowledged BSWW's framework, making their rules the official laws of beach soccer and now controls them and any modifications.

Today, under the recognition of FIFA, BSWW continues to be main organisation that organises beach soccer tournaments and development (with FIFA's assistance) around the world, mainly in Europe, including the Euro Beach Soccer League, BSWW exhibition tour events and others, having involved over 110 national teams in the sport, as well as newly founded club competitions. Its founders also established the Beach Soccer World Championships; BSWW created a partnership with FIFA, FIFA Beach Soccer S.L., in 2005 to manage the tournament as the newly named FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, the only major international beach soccer tournament that BSWW does not have a hand in organising but which is all the management of FIFA.

Members of the organisation serve on FIFA's Beach Soccer Committee.

BSWW's routes are traced back to 1992 with the establishment of the official rules of the sport by Giancarlo Signorini, the founding partner of Beach Soccer Company (BSC). In 1992, Signorini staged a pilot event in Los Angeles in order to test out and perfect these rules which remain very similar today. In July 1993, with the aid of his own company, BSI, Signorini organised the first professional beach soccer event, held on Miami Beach, Florida. A keen interest was taken by Brazilian sports marketing agency, Koch Tavares, who replicated the event in 1994 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil and Viking Graham Sports Group, a Philadelphia based investment group, acquired BSI's rights to stage professional beach soccer events, forming a partnership with Signorini to create Beach Soccer Company.