College women’s volleyball is drawing record interest — and Chicago fans are all in
When Tarah Dickerson, a longtime volleyball referee from Chicago’s Lincoln Square neighborhood, goes to watch college women’s volleyball at a bar, she is used to having to request the match be shown on one of the restaurant’s numerous screens.
Sometimes the bar doesn’t even have the network the sport is showing on. Even if it does, servers tend to show the match on the smallest television, meaning Dickerson and her friends have to cram into the corner of the establishment.
That was not the case Thursday night as Dickerson and four of her friends gathered at The Globe Pub in North Center, where the NCAA Final Four women’s volleyball matches were the main televised sport playing on TV and over the bar’s speakers. Dickerson and her group whooped and clapped as Nebraska took a strong early lead en route to defeating Pittsburgh.
“We like it here, having the space and ability to watch our favorite sport and hang out,” Dickerson said.
The 2023 NCAA championship marks the end of a record-breaking year for women’s volleyball, which has seen attendance at matches and television ratings skyrocket, creating a new scene at bars and on college campuses as demand for volleyball heightens.
In August, Nebraska, a collegiate volleyball powerhouse, set a precedent when it scheduled a match in its football stadium. The event, dubbed “Volleyball Day,” drew 92,003 fans to the match and set not only an NCAA record for women’s volleyball attendance, but also a world record for the highest attendance ever at a women’s sporting event, the school said on social media.
The soaring interest for women’s volleyball comes on the heels of increased publicity of women’s basketball, with many in collegiate athletics saying women’s sports are finally having their moment.
“It’s very gratifying, and I’m grateful to see the fruits of the labor for women’s sports pay off,” said Jeanne Lenti Ponsetto, former athletic director at DePaul University.
Ponsetto, who served on the NCAA women’s basketball advisory committee from 1992 to 1998 and championed women’s sports for recognition for almost 50 years, pointed to the recent investment in women’s collegiate sports by ESPN and parent company ABC. ESPN has owned the rights to the NCAA championships since the 1990s because of its bandwidth to support women’s and men’s sports, she said.
“Television has a huge impact on how much interest there is in a sport,” Ponsetto said. “More conferences and institutions have put volleyball on television in recent years, so more and more people are watching it.”
The Athletic reported that a matchup between Big Ten Conference rivals Wisconsin and Minnesota on Fox drew a record 1.66 million viewers.
Women’s volleyball has in the past struggled for prime-time television slots since it competes with college football in the fall season, Ponsetto said, with the championship weekend running up against the start of bowl game season. But executives and women’s sports advocates at ESPN continued to push for more live volleyball matches, and the numbers paid off.
Alison Hays of Andersonville has seen firsthand how television broadcasts can draw more fans to the sport.
“My 75-year-old father is a die-hard men’s sports fan, and even now, he’s getting into women’s volleyball because it’s on TV,” Hays said while watching the Final Four at The Globe on Thursday night.
Since taking ownership of The Globe a year ago, co-owner Cassie Dorf said she has aimed to create “a safe space” for people who want to watch volleyball and other sports that are not traditionally popular.
“It became really important to us to give the same attention to women’s sports,” Dorf said. “Sports are sports, and we want people to know they can come here to watch any sport they want.”
Dorf said the pub has seen a lot of interest for NCAA women’s volleyball on its social media pages after advertising they would show live volleyball matches throughout December. She expects the crowd for Sunday’s final between Nebraska and Texas to be the largest for the sport this month.
Dickerson’s table was split as Nebraska Huskers took on Pitt in the first match of the night. Karen Nevotti of Albany Park wore a Nebraska sweatshirt, but Dickerson said she had to cheer for Pitt. The success of her bracket depended on it.
“We do them every year just like a lot of people do for the NCAA men’s basketball,” Dickerson said of their bracket challenge.
The group of friends met through years of officiating high school and club volleyball games throughout the city and came from across Chicagoland to watch Thursday’s doubleheader. Karen Bunkenburg drove two hours from Naperville to join the festivities and said she would be back for the final on Sunday. The game is on ABC at 2 p.m. Texas advanced to the final by beating Wisconsin on Thursday night.
The increase in televised matches also creates more opportunities for younger athletes to watch sports they play, something that adult women today did not experience growing up. More than 470,000 girls across the country played high school volleyball in the 2022-23 academic year, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations participation survey.
“I can actually sit down and watch a game on TV with my daughter,” Bunkenburg said. “I didn’t used to be able to do that.”
Ponsetto said she is grateful to see the decades of hard work paying off for athletes and fans of women’s sports.
“I think it’s the success of women overall for other women to be able to share those stories with their daughters,” Ponsetto said.
