While both CBS and Fox have counterprogrammed the NFL this season to great effect, it was ESPN and ABC’s turn on Sunday.
The Texas-Nebraska women’s volleyball national championship game on Sunday averaged 1.69 million viewers on ABC, a record high for any women’s volleyball match.
Sunday's @NCAAVolleyball National Championship was the most-watched #NCAAWVB match in HISTORY
🏐 Averaged 1.7M viewers, up 115% from '22
🏐 Peaked with 2.1M viewers
🏐 Female viewership up 151% from '22 pic.twitter.com/zJ3lYAf8ST— ESPN PR (@ESPNPR) December 19, 2023
In October, Fox aired women’s volleyball in NFL-adjacent windows, topping out at 1.66 million viewers on October 29. And while Nebraska fell to Texas in Sunday’s national championship, the Huskers have been a top volleyball draw this season. In October, a match against Wisconsin on Big Ten Network averaged 612,000 viewers, outdrawing the Nebraska-Northwestern football game that led into it. Nebraska also averaged 518,000 viewers for a Wednesday night match at Memorial Stadium that aired on BTN at the end of August.
The volleyball national championship is part of the NCAA’s championship bundle, which ESPN pays $40 million annually for. The long-running championship bundle deal runs through the 2023-24 season, and the NCAA seems likely to split certain sports out of the bundle. The most notable of these is the women’s basketball tournament, which saw record viewership this spring and would likely exceed the $40 million being paid annually for the whole bundle on its own.
While the volleyball championship didn’t reach the heights of the women’s basketball tournament, could it also be split out? It doesn’t seem likely to me. The entire first two rounds of the 64 school tournament were exclusively streamed on ESPN+. While the regional semis and finals moved to cable, eight of the 12 matches aired on ESPNU, with the other four airing on ESPN2. None of the eight regional semifinals topped 300,000 viewers and none of the four regional finals topped 400,000 (though it needs to be said that all four of those aired on ESPNU and there was a significant time slot overflow for those four matches). Both of the national semifinals crossed one million viewers on ESPN Thursday night.
Former ESPN executive Carol Stiff made the point in October that splitting too many sports out of the bundle would devalue whatever championships are left. That’s a fair point, and volleyball might be one of those sports that can bring in more revenue for the bundle (assuming women’s basketball is split out). If too many sports are split out, the championship bundle itself is left with less appealing sports that might not receive much interest from media outlets.
Regardless of whether or not volleyball is also split out, the sport had a great year across multiple networks this fall and has inserted itself into the conversation about whether or not it should be in the bundle going forward.
