LOVB Austin center blocker Molly McCage (5) spikes the ball previous LOVB Houston exterior hitter Jess Mruzik (5) through the League One Volleyball match between LOVB Austin and LOVB Houston February 19,, 2025, at H-E-B Middle in Cedar Park, Texas.
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Comcast spinoff Versant has struck a multiyear media rights cope with League One Volleyball, the corporate introduced Tuesday.
Versant’s USA Community will completely air the league’s “Match of the Week” in primetime at 8 p.m. ET each Wednesday, along with the league’s playoff and championship matches. The deal comes as girls’s sports activities, particularly volleyball, have seen a significant uptick in recognition.
Phrases of the deal weren’t disclosed. ESPN additionally holds broadcast rights to LOVB.
“It is actually concerning the development that we really feel is forward for them as a league and for volleyball as a sport,” stated Matt Hong, Versant’s president of sports activities. “We noticed a typical imaginative and prescient, how we might lend our belongings and that might complement what they’re doing to develop their sport.”
The LOVB deal marks the second sports activities rights deal for Versant, which is anticipated to spin off from Comcast in 2026. In August, Versant and NBCUniversal introduced a six-year cope with the USA Golf Affiliation. That deal is price about $95 million yearly, in accordance with individuals accustomed to the settlement who spoke on the situation of anonymity about nonpublic phrases.
Hong stated the corporate started negotiating with LOVB simply a few months in the past. The deal provides to Versant’s present girls’s sports activities rights, which incorporates greater than 500 hours of LPGA protection yearly and future media rights with the WNBA starting in 2026.
For LOVB, the deal means tens of millions of extra eyeballs within the coveted primetime timeslot.
“Versant’s dedication ensures that ladies’s volleyball has the platform it deserves — constant, nationwide primetime protection that displays the caliber of our athletes and the eagerness of our followers,” Raquel Braun, chief media officer for LOVB, stated in a press release.
Volleyball at almost each degree has been on a significant rally. General, courtroom volleyball participation was up 6.7% in 2024, in accordance with the Sports activities & Health Business Affiliation. On the high-school degree, greater than 479,000 ladies participated in volleyball through the 2023-24 season, marking an all-time excessive, in accordance with the Nationwide Federation of State Excessive Faculty Associations.
Faculty volleyball can also be spiking. The 2024 Girls’s NCAA Volleyball Event was the most-consumed ever for ESPN, with greater than 1.3 billion minutes watched throughout its platforms, in accordance with the community. The viewers for the whole thing of the NCAA Girls’s Volleyball Event was 41% increased yr over yr, ESPN stated. And, when the Nebraska Huskers’ girls’s crew took on the Omaha Mavericks in 2023, greater than 92,000 followers had been in attendance, the largest-ever crowd for a girls’s sports activities occasion.
LOVB, which options each youth and an expert league, bought its begin in 2020. The skilled league, which encompasses a group of gamers with a mixed 23 gold medals, kicked off its inaugural season in January.
Disclosure: Comcast is the guardian firm of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would turn into the brand new guardian firm of CNBC below a deliberate January 2026 spinoff.
