Last weekend’s college volleyball showdown between the No. 1 Wisconsin Badgers against the No. 2 Nebraska Cornhuskers not only became the most-watched NCAA women’s volleyball regular-season match in history but also garnered higher ratings than its lead-in, a football game between Nebraska and the Northwestern Wildcats.
The sports world has been taking notice of the interest and excitement around women’s college volleyball in recent weeks. Nebraska set the record for an in-person crowd for a women’s sporting event when 92,003 fans packed Memorial Stadium to watch the volleyball team. The event also garnered ratings that made it the most-watched non-conference volleyball event in Big Ten Network history.
Fox, which owns BTN, clearly sees the potential that exists here. That’s why they’re pairing two Big Ten volleyball matches with the mighty NFL on Sunday in an attempt to see just how high those ratings numbers can go.
🏐With 612,000 viewers, @BadgerVB vs @HuskerVB is the 𝒎𝒐𝒔𝒕-𝒘𝒂𝒕𝒄𝒉𝒆𝒅 regular season volleyball match across any network
🏐The No. 1 volleyball audience in Big Ten Network history
🏐BTN is averaging 142,000 viewers per @B1GVolleyball match this season, up +13% from 2022 pic.twitter.com/dgpos6Fe7V
— Big Ten Network (@BigTenNetwork) October 24, 2023
Fox markets that get a 1:00 p.m. ET NFL broadcast will be able to stick around and watch the Minnesota-Wisconsin match once that game is over. Fox markets that get the 4:00 p.m. NFL game will get the Ohio State-Michigian volleyball match beforehand, starting at 2 p.m. You can see which one you are here.
It’s a huge showcase opportunity for the sport and, perhaps, proof of concept that larger audiences are out there for women’s college sports.
“There’s so much interest in this sport that we’re just kind of scratching the surface. That is really, really exciting. It’s an extremely exciting time for our sport. We’re all feeling it. It’s an earthquake that’s happening,” Wisconsin coach Kelly Sheffield told Fox 11. “To follow a Packers game that gets massive numbers, we know how much people are excited about the Packers, especially that game. It doesn’t matter, you can throw the records out when those teams play. Everybody is watching that game. For that to be the lead in, the warm-up act if you will, for the real show, is really exciting. We’re happy to be the main act.”
Mark Silverman, the president and COO of Fox Sports, told The Athletic that this weekend’s broadcasts are a culmination of something that’s been in the works for almost a decade.
“When I was at the Big Ten Network, and this goes back 8 to 10 years ago, we started really noticing women’s volleyball delivering strong numbers,” Silverman said. “BTN started putting volleyball matches on after Big Ten football because the seasons overlap. When we have singleheaders or we don’t have a true doubleheader, we’re always trying to find what is something we could lead our NFL games into. We had an ALCS game last weekend that did a great number and we had the NFL lead into it. Everyone got really excited once we started really diving into this. The more we investigated it, the more things kind of worked out from the scheduling. The conference and the schools were open and willing to move (volleyball) from a Saturday game to a Sunday.”
BTN averaged 612,000 viewers for Nebraska’s win over Wisconsin last weekend. It’s fair to expect that record to fall one week later.
