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Women’s college basketball has been one of the more surprising sports-growth stories in recent memory, as intense competition and electric atmospheres inside arenas have translated into a burgeoning TV property.
Two years ago, Fox Sports had a wild idea: Air college volleyball in NFL-adjacent windows. Most of the country saw Wisconsin-Minnesota airing with the NFL as its lead-in—where a lot of regions had Packers-Vikings before the match—while others saw Michigan–Ohio State leading into an NFL window.
The aggregate result? 1.7 million viewers, the most-watched regular-season volleyball window of all time.
“We’ve seen with other properties where obviously you can use the strength of the NFL lead-in to really expose new viewers to sports that are growing—like women’s volleyball,” Fox Sports VP Derek Crocker told Front Office Sports. “Seeing those numbers and how well it did really showcased the power of what women’s volleyball could be. We were really encouraged by it.”
Last year, Fox aired 18 matches across Fox (2), FS1 (12), and FS2 (4), up from 12 the previous season. This included the State Farm Showcase at Fiserv Forum in Milwaukee featuring four games including Texas, Wisconsin, Stanford, and Minnesota.
Big Ten Network (which is majority-owned by Fox) aired 68 matches last year, its most ever. In 2023, Wisconsin-Nebraska drew 612,000 viewers to BTN, and the matchup garnered 591,000 viewers last year. This week, BTN is airing spring volleyball coverage for its first time. Demographically, volleyball has the youngest audience and most female viewers of any sport for the network.
Other networks are also airing more volleyball. Last year, NBC Sports featured four Big Ten women’s volleyball games for the first time, including three on the NBC broadcast network (simulcast on Peacock) and one exclusively on Peacock. The latter, an Oregon-UCLA game, was part of a Black Friday tripleheader that also featured Pitt–Ohio State in men’s basketball and a Nebraska-Iowa football game.
There’s also been a considerable uptick in college volleyball as a live event, as was evidenced when Nebraska filled its football stadium with more than 92,000 fans in August 2023 for a match against Omaha.
“A lot of credit goes to the coaches and the cultures they’ve created, especially in the Big Ten,” Crocker said.
ESPN has also been pouring considerable resources into volleyball. More than 2,600 matches in the 2024 season aired on ESPN platforms (including linear TV and the ESPN+ streaming service). The network recently announced a “Block Party” in Nashville for this upcoming season that will feature a tripleheader of SEC vs. Big Ten games—Nebraska-Kentucky, Purdue-Tennessee, and Illinois-Vanderbilt—on ESPN2 on Aug. 31.
The network has seen large numbers for volleyball, particularly in the NCAA tournament. In 2023, the Texas-Nebraska championship game drew 1.7 million viewers on ABC, and last year’s Louisville–Penn State final had 1.3 million viewers, peaking at 1.9 million. The semifinals (Penn State–Nebraska and Louisville-Pittsburgh) averaged 1.1 million viewers.
