Leading up to the 2012 London Olympics, a new observation system was developed for the German National beach volleyball team. The observation system describes rallies not only by conventional performance indicators, but also by using positional data of the side-out for key events (e.g. serve, pass, set, approach, take-off, block and dig). The nature of the observation serves to reduce the amount of data collection required by a scout. For example, the performance indicators: approach direction, pass quality, take-off zone and set direction are calculated from the positional data. This method relies on the data collection tool (BeachScout) and the analysis software (BeachViewer) custom developed for this purpose. Data collection is performed with a touch screen tablet, other descriptive information about the match are then derived from what is manually collected. The analysis software provides situation specific statistics and structured video for qualitative analysis. Additionally, the positional data are reconstructed to a useful visualization, for example, of the distribution of service and attack directions.