Pro Volleyball’s Secret Weapon: College Stars Who Have Big Fan Bases

Imagine a league structure in which incoming rookies who have massive clout coming out of school join the pro team closest to their college town. Cooper Flagg would head to Charlotte to play for the Hornets, Jayden Daniels would have joined the New Orleans Saints, and Caleb Williams would have stayed in L.A. with the Rams or Chargers. College sports fans would keep their stars close, and pro teams would automatically feel that love through ticket sales.

It’s a model being tested by League One Volleyball (LOVB), one of several new women’s professional volleyball leagues popping up in the U.S. In addition to signing a slew of Olympians from Team USA and beyond, the league tried to tap into the momentum of college volleyball by picking up six players who competed for the national title this past fall. The league then signed three of those players to the closest LOVB team—former Badger Sarah Franklin to Madison, former Cornhusker Lexi Rodriguez to Nebraska, and former Longhorn Madisen Skinner to Austin.

Influencing Off the Court

Those three players have the most Instagram followers of the six, and Rodriguez and Skinner also have big TikTok audiences. On the two platforms combined, Rodriguez has more than 540,000 followers, and Skinner has more than 335,000. For context, the official league accounts have just 276,100 followers on Instagram and TikTok combined. One video of Rodriguez on the LOVB TikTok account has nearly 2 million views.

Creating a new league requires lots of talent to fill the rosters, and LOVB has plenty of veteran players. But just like other growing or debuting leagues, some of LOVB’s biggest names are young players who became popular in college and capitalized on their on-court success through social media and NIL (name, image, and likeness) deals. The WNBA knows firsthand how a talented rookie class can skyrocket a league to new business heights, and the new Women’s Lacrosse League primarily leaned on its younger stars like Charlotte North and Izzy Scane for its biggest media hits.