[1] The tournament took place annually in Brazil under the supervision of Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW) and its predecessors, crowning the world champions of the sport.

[2] Due to the sport's rapid growth, FIFA took an interest in it, 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.

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.

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.

European teams dominated in unique appearances by continent, since half of all countries were from Europe.