Alyssa Valdez: Partnerships valuable for team ‘longevity’

Creamline Cool Smashers’ Alyssa Valdez celebrate after winning the 2026 PVL All-Filipino Conference championship. –MARLO CUETO/INQUIRER.net

It needed some explaining, how an insurance company known for its support of another sport, one which its top boss truly loves, has become one of the top backers of three volleyball clubs.

“I’m really a big football fan,” Joseph Gross, the Allianz-PNB Life CEO, said on Tuesday during a thanksgiving event for the Creamline Cool Smashers, the Choco Mucho Flying Titans and the Criss Cross King Crunchers. He then enumerated the shared values that made the partnership sensible.

With the way things have been panning out in the PVL and Spikers’ Turf, that support has become valuable to the local volleyball scene. And Alyssa Valdez hopes that the partnership can be replicated with other clubs.

“I think other teams should [explore corporate partnerships],” the longtime face of women’s volleyball and current Creamline star said. “Teams right now, with all the players, their market value … is also different. I think that’s something that will open doors of opportunities for us.”

Valdez said that corporate support outside of companies that own professional volleyball franchises has been the key to Creamline’s longevity.

“It makes our team more stable,” she said. “[It makes us] more flexible to do other things.”

Over the past year, teams have left the PVL and Spikers’ Turf, with popular clubs like Petro Gazz, Chery Tiggo and Cignal taking leaves of absence purportedly over the rising costs of maintaining a pro club.

“If there’s one thing that’s sad, it’s that we don’t want to have fewer teams in the PVL,” Valdez said. “We want to welcome other teams and clubs.”

There may be benefits to a shrunken field, and even Valdez admits as much.

“The competition is getting bigger and better. All teams are beefed up. So we really need to work as a team to defend [our title].”

And as the sibling teams have shown, opening themselves to corporate partnerships helps build the kind of bigger and better competition pro leagues need to keep teams from leaving.