Shattered attendance data. Skyrocketing viewership. Exploding income.
There won’t be a warmer sport within the U.S. than NCAA girls’s volleyball, and media companions and types are falling over themselves to take part.
“The toughest half is ensuring we have now room for everyone,” Jacqueline Dobies, vp of income and yield administration at ESPN, instructed Adweek.
To assist make that room, each NCAA volleyball match sport was obtainable on an ESPN platform this yr, giving the Disney firm much more promoting stock than earlier than—in addition to gross sales success.
“A fantastic matchup is simply icing on the cake, however we positively skilled sellouts for this manner sooner than we have now in years prior,” Dobies mentioned.
For example of the bump in manufacturers, this yr’s NCAA girls’s volleyball championship match on ESPN introduced in 76 advertisers, a 69% enhance over final yr’s 45, with the highest spending advertisers together with Volvo, Nissan, Procter & Gamble, Dick’s Sporting Items and Novo Nordisk.
Moreover, these advertisers spanned 51 classes, in comparison with simply 31 final yr, with the highest spending classes together with autos, pharma, mobile radio programs and equipment, family cleaners and athletic put on.
And companions are getting their cash’s value.
Total, ESPN noticed its most-watched girls’s faculty volleyball common season ever, averaging 116,000 viewers on its networks—up 58% year-over-year.
These numbers prompted the corporate to maneuver the NCAA choice present to ESPN (from ESPNU) and broadcast the ultimate on ABC for the primary time final Sunday.
“We see this as a sport the place we have now quite a bit invested in. It resonates with folks, and we get a fantastic response,” Dan Margulis, ESPN’s senior director of programming and acquisitions, instructed Adweek forward of the championship. “Each time we do this stuff, it’s an experiment, and we expect it’s going to achieve success.”
Bump in attendance
Regardless of going up in opposition to the NFL with a 3 p.m. airtime, Sunday’s championship between Nebraska and Texas on ABC grew to become the most-watched faculty volleyball match in historical past. The occasion averaged 1.7 million viewers—a 115% enhance from 2022 when ESPN aired the championship on a Saturday evening in primetime.
Moreover, final week’s semifinals on Thursday, which went in opposition to Thursday Evening Soccer and the NBA, averaged 1.1 million viewers—one other file.