Volleyball TV options “gigantic positive for the collegiate women’s game”

The brain trust that runs ABC-TV and ESPN made moves this summer to help ensure that more casual eyeballs might be tempted to watch the NCAA Division I women’s indoor volleyball national-title match in December when it it moves to over-the-air ABC.

ESPN announced last week that a whopping and unprecedented 2,500-plus matches will be shown across its various linear cable-TV and streaming platforms during the upcoming collegiate season.

It’s not just that more matches will be available to die-hard fans. Significantly, the flagship ESPN channel and cable sibling ESPN2 will play a bigger role in that coverage, meaning that casual viewers in greater numbers have the opportunity to become invested in the sport during the regular season.

This should be seen as a gigantic positive for the collegiate women’s game. ESPN chose to provide more consistent exposure on channels with high visibility, demonstrating a greater confidence that women’s sports in general, and volleyball in particular, can generate viewership in a crowded and highly fractured TV landscape.

The endgame will be the NCAA championship match aired live on ABC on the Sunday afternoon (3 p.m. start time) of December 17 from Tampa, Fla. ABC is rolling the dice that volleyball on broadcast TV might piggyback on the sensational ratings posted in the spring by the NCAA women’s basketball final. The showdown between LSU and Iowa was watched by 9.9 million total-average viewers, a record for a women’s college game.

But before that, the Worldwide Leader in Sports will give viewers a chance to see numerous nationally ranked teams in action in 100 offerings across its cable-TV channels that include ESPN, ESPN2, ESPNU, SEC Network, ACC Network and Longhorn Network (which is in its final season as Texas moves to the SEC for the 2024-25 sports year).

In this era of customers fleeing cable in ever-growing numbers, ESPN (with access in 72.495 million U.S. TV households as of June) and ESPN2 (72.481 million) remain the heaviest hitters on cable, reaching roughly 58% percent of America’s 123.8 million TV homes. College-specific ESPNU, which has been the home for the bulk of ESPN’s volleyball offerings in the past, can be seen in 37.929 million households, so being on the big two, particularly ESPN, is no small deal.

ESPN senior director of programming & acquisitions Dan Margulis acknowledged that the network has placed added emphasis on the regular season.

“We are…