page_title: FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup
section_title: Growth worldwide
hierarchical_section_title: FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup / History / Growth worldwide
caption_attribution_description: Photo from the friendly match (called the Solidarity Cup) between the Israeli and the Brazilian beach soccer teams, that occured on 11 July 2008, at the Poleg beach in Netanya. The game was played to note 60 years of Israeli independence.
context_page_description: The FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup is an international beach soccer competition contested by the men's national teams of the member associations of FIFA, the sport's global governing body.
  The tournament was established in 1995 as the Beach Soccer World Championship, taking place every year for the next decade under the supervision of Beach Soccer Worldwide and its predecessors. Due to the sport's rapid growth, FIFA took an interest in the sport, and as the main tournament in world beach soccer, it joined hands with BSWW in 2005 to take over the organization of the competition, re-branding it as an official FIFA tournament. Since 2009, the tournament has taken place every two years to allow continental tournaments to flourish without the burden of the World Cup qualifiers crowding the schedule every 12 months. The growing global popularity of beach soccer resulted in FIFA's decision to move the stage of the World Cup from its native home in Brazil to other parts of the globe to capitalise on and continue to stimulate global interest. The first edition held outside Brazil was in 2008 in Marseille, France.
context_section_description: By 1997, more teams had already stated their interest in participating and therefore BSWW extended their selection to 10 teams for 1998. Brazil continued to dominate, despite this change. Immediately, BSWW extended to 12 teams for 1999, spreading their selection across five continents, introducing more new teams to the tournament.
  However, with all these changes it still took until the 2001 World Cup for Brazil to lose the title after winning the competition six years on the run since the establishment. It was Portugal who won the tournament, with Brazil finishing in a disappointing fourth place.
  With this change of champions, more countries thought there was a chance for themselves to win the tournament and this sparked more interest worldwide. Not surprisingly, Brazil reclaimed their title in 2002, when BSWW reduced the number of contestants back to eight.
  The last Beach Soccer World Championship to be organised purely by BSWW was in 2004 when twelve teams played, seven from Europe.
caption: Brazil national beach soccer team: 14 times winners
exif: {"Image Make": "Canon", "Image Model": "Canon EOS 20D", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS3 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2008:07:11 20:37:15", "Image YCbCrPositioning": "Co-sited", "Image ExifOffset": "220", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "1046", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7104", "EXIF ExposureTime": "1/250", "EXIF FNumber": "9", "EXIF ExposureProgram": "Program Normal", "EXIF ISOSpeedRatings": "400", "EXIF ExifVersion": "0221", "EXIF DateTimeOriginal": "2008:07:11 18:08:55", "EXIF DateTimeDigitized": "2008:07:11 18:08:55", "EXIF ComponentsConfiguration": "YCbCr", "EXIF ShutterSpeedValue": "261023/32768", "EXIF ApertureValue": "1623/256", "EXIF ExposureBiasValue": "0", "EXIF MeteringMode": "Pattern", "EXIF Flash": "Flash fired, compulsory flash mode, red-eye reduction mode", "EXIF FocalLength": "16", "EXIF FlashPixVersion": "0100", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "3395", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2224", "Interoperability InteroperabilityIndex": "R98", "Interoperability InteroperabilityVersion": "[48, 49, 48, 48]", "EXIF InteroperabilityOffset": "920", "EXIF FocalPlaneXResolution": "233600/59", "EXIF FocalPlaneYResolution": "233600/59", "EXIF FocalPlaneResolutionUnit": "2", "EXIF CustomRendered": "Normal", "EXIF ExposureMode": "Auto Exposure", "EXIF WhiteBalance": "Auto", "EXIF SceneCaptureType": "Standard"}