League One Volleyball — the youth-to-pro league that includes Unrivaled Sports co-founder David Blitzer among its investors — recently struck a media rights agreement with Versant, the new Comcast cable network spinoff company.
USA Network will carry LOVB matches on Wednesday nights in primetime (8 p.m. ET). The network will also air playoff and championship matches. LOVB also has a deal with ESPN.
LOVB is a grassroots-up operation that runs junior volleyball clubs nationwide. The league started out as a youth volleyball business and then expanded into the professional ranks after securing $100M in private investment.
81 LOVB-connected clubs in 28 states and 93 locations
Over 24K athletes
Over 3K coaches
Over 2K affiliated teams
Volleyball continues to be a youth sports rocket ship. It has already been the No. 1 high school girls sport by participation for a decade and now we have the exploding (and lucrative) club scene, three pro leagues and growing NIL opportunities.
I love the concept of LOVB’s bottoms up youth-to-pro model, something that is not really possible in the major US sports given so many entrenched entities at all levels of the stack and the existence of new player drafts. If we were all starting over, it’s probably the right way to do things.
The closest comp among the top 5 sports is MLS club-owned youth programs. My son’s soccer team played the Union’s U8 team this weekend— their facility has 7 outdoor fields + an indoor complex adjacent to the pro team’s Subaru Park. It was my first time there. Impressive complex.
While the LOVB media rights deal is obviously for the pro league, you can easily see the flywheel effect of increased exposure leading to more youth participation and, thus, even better pro competition in the future.
As an aside, I do wonder if all of these secondary sports and leagues popping up will be able to get meaningful traction with their broadcasts.
It’s kind of the great paradox of sports media rights: there are now more sports vying for less available attention. All pro sports, but especially upstart leagues, are competing with a massive ocean dredge pipe spewing content from streamers and creators alike.
The largest, most established leagues now have to get creative about how they package and distribute highlights to capture Gen Z. So, it’s a daunting challenge for newer leagues to command meaningful live broadcast attention. Ergo, I’m not sure the same rationale about NFL games being live appointment viewing applies to the long tail of sports, or if the WNBA’s recent TV success - led largely by one player - can be extrapolated to other leagues.
That said, youth volleyball is hot right now, and regardless of the success of any particular rights deal, it shows no signs of slowing down.
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