How LOVB Is Turning Youth Volleyball Into a Pro Powerhouse

The professional arm of League One Volleyball (or LOVB, pronounced “love”) played its first matches in January, but the organization quietly laid roots in the volleyball world over the past several years.

Founded in 2020, the league bought up and built out a network of thousands of youth teams across the country, which created a natural fan base (and one-day pipeline) for its eventual pro teams.

Omaha, Austin, Madison, Salt Lake City, Houston, and Atlanta are home to the league’s six inaugural teams. The first four cities are women’s college volleyball hotbeds—the University of Nebraska, the University of Texas, the University of Wisconsin, and Brigham Young University all have historic programs and fan bases. And in the 2024 National Volleyball Club Ranking, LOVB’s programs in Houston and suburban Atlanta placed first and second, respectively.

Local Ties

The league didn’t just drop more volleyball into these markets but tapped into the markets even further by filling rosters with hometown players and local college stars. Most of the players on the Austin team’s roster played at the University of Texas, including one of the game’s most recognizable stars, Texas native and former Longhorn Madisen Skinner. Three former Badgers play in Madison, the Salt Lake City team features three BYU and University of Utah alumnae, and one Houston native plays on her hometown team. 

The Omaha team, located in women’s volleyball’s biggest market, has one former Creighton player and five former Cornhuskers, including Lexi Rodriguez, one of the faces of the record-breaking 92,003-fan sellout of Memorial Stadium. For volleyball fanatics, LOVB is kind of like playing Madden Ultimate Team—a roster filled with their favorite team’s stars from different eras.

LOVB teams play in relatively low-capacity arenas. On the smaller end, the Atlanta squad plays in the Gateway Center Arena at College Park—the same roughly 3,500-seat arena as the WNBA’s Atlanta Dream. On the larger side, the Houston team’s Fort Bend County Epicenter can fit 10,000 fans. Social highlight clips from around the league show matches in venues comparable to large high school gyms. The final regular-season matches in Salt Lake, Omaha, and Austin all sold out, according to the league.

That means the league will get a big test this week at its finals tournament in Louisville, which will be played in the 22,090-capacity KFC Yum! Center. The 21,860 fans who packed the same arena for the 2024 NCAA national championship became the second-largest all-time crowd in Division I women’s volleyball history, behind only the Nebraska record-breaker. The get-in price for any individual day of the LOVB tournament is just $15 on April 10, 11, and 13.