The growth of women's college volleyball is no fluke
It’s impossible to argue against the growth of women’s volleyball; from the youth level to professional, volleyball has arrived on the national scene. This explosion has perhaps been most evident at the collegiate level, where attendance and viewership records are now broken not just year after year but almost week after week. To understand just how and why volleyball’s growth has accelerated so rapidly in recent years, it’s important to look at the full picture of the sport.
The NCAA tournament will culminate in Louisville on December 22 after another historic season and more airtime than ever. For the second year in a row, the final match will be broadcast on ABC. The semifinals will be on ESPN, not ESPNU or ESPN2. Folks who are newer to volleyball may be surprised at the attention the sport is receiving. But those who have been following the sport for quite some time knew that this growth – or rather, explosion – was always bound to happen.
At the college level, everyone’s favorite moment in volleyball history was in August 2023, when 92,003 fans gathered at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska, to watch Nebraska sweep their in-state rival, Omaha, breaking the all-time record for attendance at a women’s sporting event.
In 2023, the NCAA semifinals broke an indoor record with 19,598 fans, followed by another record-breaking 19,727 fans at the final. Attendance has grown 44.7% over 16 years.
The sport has never been so popular on television. The 2023 NCAA championship match averaged 1.7 million viewers, a 115% increase from the 786,000 who tuned into the previous year’s final.
Negotiations between conferences and television broadcasters also made a remarkable difference in expanding the accessibility of NCAA volleyball. The Big Ten broadcast 83 matches this season, an increase from 53 in 2021, 55 in 2022, and 64 in 2023. ESPN showed over 2,600 matches on its various channels.
The effort from schools and conferences to get more matches on television paid off. Regular season matches on ESPN’s platforms in 2024 averaged 116,000 viewers, a 58% increase from 2022.
During the 2024 regional finals, the sport saw a 98% year over year increase with an average of 401,000 viewers for five of the most watched regional matches ever.
The growth at the college level is connected to volleyball becoming the fastest growing sport for young women in the United States.
According to Steve Megargee from the AP, the number of female high school volleyball players in 2022-23 “hit an all-time high of 470,488, second only to outdoor track and field.” Additionally, per Megargee, more girls play high school volleyball than basketball in all but nine states.
All this growth has also led to the creation of three professional volleyball leagues in the United States. For years, players traveled to Europe and Asia to play competitively. Now, Olympians are returning to the States to play in cities that have already shown love for volleyball at the college level. These leagues – Athletes Unlimited, the Pro Volleyball Federation, and League One Volleyball – have created new opportunities for so many of the approximately 27,400 college volleyball players in the United States who don’t necessarily want their careers to end but might not make the narrow cut for the national team.
The country and the world are experiencing a true moment of acceleration for women’s sports, and volleyball is emerging as one of this moment’s biggest success stories. The sport has massive youth participation, a solid collegiate foundation, and ample opportunities at the professional level. And these upward trends are likely only to keep soaring.