Women's basketball and soccer have broken through. Now, another sport is launching its first volleys in a long-term quest for pro league success.
By Cam Kauffman
A sea of red envelopes Nebraska’s Memorial Stadium, as more than 90,000 screaming fans pile into it on a warm day in late August 2023. As players run out of the tunnel, high-decibel fans cheer and the university’s fight song blares.
But this crowd isn’t the Nebraska football faithful after hours of beer-driven tailgating. It’s even better than that, in the eyes of some residents of the state.
This is “Volleyball Day in Nebraska,” a day dedicated to the Cornhuskers’ team, which has led the nation in attendance for years. The 92,003 fans at the match broke the previous record for attendance at any women’s sporting event, according to NCAA.org — surpassing the 1999 Women’s World Cup final between Team USA and China at the Rose Bowl.
The popularity of women’s volleyball doesn’t end at Nebraska’s borders. In fact, volleyball has been the United States’ top sport in terms of youth participation for nearly a decade. In 2017, more than 444,000 girls set, spiked and served on teams at the high school level, and far more participated at the pre-high school level, according to NCSA Sports.
More than 90,000 volleyball fans packed Memorial Stadium at the University of Nebraska on August 30, 2023 to watch the Cornhuskers defeat the Nebraska Omaha Mavericks 3-0. (Photo courtesy of Nebraska Athletics)
But the issue with the sport has never been a lack of participation, but the lack of an outlet for the best players to keep playing at the professional level in the U.S., according to professional volleyball player Ronika Stone.
Such players haven’t had the same luxury in recent years as others in basketball, hockey and soccer who can play professionally in the U.S. Instead, if volleyball players have wanted to go pro, they have had to go overseas.
“I think it’s about time that the U.S. has a pro volleyball league. I think now’s the perfect time.”
— Ronika Stone
That all changed in January, when the Pro Volleyball Federation officially launched. Now, the league is looking to become sustainable, and that requires building enough support for it.
“I think it’s about time that the U.S. has a pro volleyball league,” Stone said. “I think now’s the perfect time.”
Setting up the Spike
Before the Pro Volleyball Federation came onto the scene, however, the United States had actually tried establishing a pro volleyball market more than once.
The first attempt at an all-female league in the U.S. came in 1987 when Major League Volleyball formed. It was set up as a “vehicle for women who are not good enough to compete in the top leagues in Japan and Italy,” according to a 1987 article by The Los Angeles Times.
The league struggled financially and, in March 1989, it shut down in the middle of its third season.
In 2002, the United States Professional Volleyball League launched, but it only survived for one season due to a shortage of funds.
USPV logo
The league’s original plan was to come back in 2003 and add four new teams to its existing four, but that fell through because it lacked the necessary funding for another season.
In 2021, a league called Athletes Unlimited launched in the U.S., but it is a part-time league in which players who make up the teams switch to other teams in a round-robin fashion. At the end, a singular athlete is crowned as champion based on an individual-performance scoring system. The league, however, only guarantees each player $10,000 for their five-week commitment, so it’s not a full-time job.
In all of these instances, league founders moved forward after the U.S. Women’s National Volleyball Team drew major audience interest at the Olympics in the years leading up to their establishment.
Team USA’s silver-medal finish at the 1984 Los Angeles Olympics in women’s volleyball brought more eyes to that sport and prompted the founding of the MLV in 1987. (Video courtesy of ABC) (Click to enlarge.)
Less than four years after the U.S. won gold in Tokyo in 2020 — and less than six months before the 2024 Paris Olympics — the Pro Volleyball Federation was born.
“USA keeps showing up,” said San Diego Mojo head coach Tayyiba Haneef-Park in the PVF. “When they’re doing well, people want to be a part of that pipeline and they want to be a part of that story.”
Timing the Leap
The popularity of many women’s sports across the United States has skyrocketed over the past 10 years, especially soccer and college basketball.
Team USA’s consecutive Women’s World Cup victories in 2015 (Canada) and 2019 (France) scored huge viewership and attendance, with the former setting a record of 1.35 million fans attending matches, according to the Confederation of North, Central America and Caribbean Association Football. (Soccer is called football in Canada.) The 2015 final between the United States and Japan was watched by 26.6 million viewers in the U.S.
At the 2019 World Cup, the U.S. Women’s National Team gained even more national recognition, besting record viewership marks set in 2015 by 30%. More than a billion global viewers tuned in, including over 260 million solely for the USA-Netherlands final.
Women’s college basketball has also enjoyed immense growth over the past two years due to breakout stars like Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, LSU’s Angel Reese and UConn’s Paige Bueckers. Countless viewership and attendance records were broken this year, with the 2024 women’s national championship outdrawing the men’s national championship for the first time in history (18.9 million viewers compared to the men’s 14.8 million).
(Click to enlarge.)
About 15 years ago, women’s sports only received about 4% of all sports coverage. However, between 2018 and 2022, women’s sports coverage across all platforms shot up by an average of 4,000 hours per year, according to a report by Wasserman, a sports marketing company.
The report estimates that women’s coverage makes up 15% of all sports coverage now. It’s not a lot, but it’s clearly growing.
Another PVF head coach, Amy Pauly, said that the lack of women’s sports coverage was a key factor in preventing women’s pro sports from growing for many years.
“There are viewers and there are people out there that want to know more about [women’s sports],” Pauly, who coaches the Orlando Valkyries, said. “The more coverage we keep giving it, the more it’s going to grow.”
Haneef-Park agreed.
“For so long, we’ve been told that we weren’t worth it, or nobody will come to watch us,” Haneef-Park said. “But if you invest the same amount of money in us as you do (in) men’s sports, people are going to come; they’re going to want to watch.”
The new volleyball league has signed a media rights deal with CBS Sports to broadcast a minimum of 10 matches this season, plus the league’s semifinal and championship matches.
Got Next?
Since the last attempt at a full-time professional league more than 20 years ago, the only outlet for women to play professional volleyball has been abroad. Most often, this meant U.S.-born players would go to Europe or Asia to continue playing after college.
Stone said the Pro Volleyball Federation has given her an opportunity she always wanted.
“Just to be able to be in my home state and play in front of a big crowd, play in front of my friends and family, is already more than you could have ever dreamed of,” she said.
Stone is a native of San Jose, California, and she previously played in Puerto Rico and France, meaning she would spend the majority of each year between 2021 and 2023 more than 3,500 miles from her loved ones.
When she was abroad, Stone said that culture shock, language barrier and trying to navigate her way through an unfamiliar place was difficult.
Mojo outside hitter Kendra Dahlke expressed similar frustrations about her career abroad when she played in five different countries between 2019 and 2022.
“I’m really close with my family. They would always be at my games in school and everything else,” Dahlke said. “Knowing that they weren’t going to be at my games (overseas), knowing the time difference was going to be a thing … it was hard.”
In the Philippines, there was a 13-hour time difference between her and her hometown, making it difficult to find time to talk to family members.
Eventually, she decided to come back to be closer to her family, giving up professional volleyball.
But when the PVF came along the following year, it gave her the opportunity to play for the Mojo close to her parents, who now live in Phoenix.
“This is where I kind of grew up,” said Dahlke, a native of Bonsall, California. “Coming back here to play in San Diego has been a true full circle moment. Honestly, it’s been really, really cool.”
How hard is it, really, to play pro volleyball in the United States? (Click to enlarge.)
For the moment, there are only seven PVF franchises, so roster spots are limited.
Players joined the PVF in different ways this year: as veterans from teams abroad, or as drafted rookies.
The college draft in Atlanta in December saw 35 players chosen over five rounds. Besides Orlando and San Diego, the PFV has teams in Atlanta, Omaha, Grand Rapids, Columbus and Las Vegas.
All players are under contract for a 24-match regular season that starts in January and ends with playoffs in May. Each player earns $60,000 with the occasional opportunity to earn more based on individual and team performance.
The PVF also provides free housing for every player during the season to help make their salary more liveable, especially in expensive cities like San Diego. Two players live in their market year-round to serve as ambassadors for the team and earn an additional $40,000.
For drafted rookies, the PVF also gives them more time after college to stay near family, as opposed to moving across the world to play shortly after graduating.
Rookie Kalyah Williams, who was selected with the 33rd overall pick, said she decided to join the PVF because she wasn’t ready to leave her family so soon after graduating from USC in December of 2023.
“I couldn’t imagine being home for (just) three weeks and then going across the world,” said Williams, an opposite hitter for the Valkyries. “I don’t think I would have done well with that one.”
Hear more about why these players and this coach wanted to join the PVF.
Kendra Dahlke
Kalyah Williams
Ronika Stone
Amy Pauly
Coach Pauly said she has seen first-hand how the league has positively affected her players.
“The biggest impact is just actually being able to see our players hug their families after the matches,” Pauly said. “Knowing that this wouldn’t have happened without this league, that’s what it’s kind of all about.”
Low attendance has been an issue for the Mojo all season, but around 5,000 fans packed Viejas Arena for the game against the Columbus Fury. That was the second-most attended Mojo home game this season. (Photo by Cam Kauffman)
Early challenges facing the league
Two large challenges have quickly emerged for the young league: a lack of permanent facilities and low attendance in some markets.
Right now, none of the PVF teams practice or play in facilities that are owned by the league, meaning the teams share their space, which can get awkward.
Haneef-Park said because some teams practice at club volleyball facilities or play in converted hockey arenas, these venues can often lack traditional volleyball locker rooms or the training facilities and recovery services the players were used to in college, or abroad in some instances.
In addition, getting fans to come to games has been a challenge for some of the larger-market teams.
Although home-opener numbers were over 6,000 for five of the seven clubs, attendance for some has dwindled to less than half that on average.
In San Diego, a staff member estimated that average attendance has been between 1,000 and 3,000 a night. At the game on April 7, more than 5,000 fans attended — the second highest attendance for a Mojo home game. The staff member, however, also said that “a lot” of tickets were given away as a promotion.
Coach Tayyiba Haneef-Park shares her experience with the league's fanbase.
One sports media expert says persistent low attendance is a threat to the longevity of many professional leagues.
“There’s a marketplace for women’s sports, but you have to build the numbers. People have to go to games,” said Rob Parker, a USC sports journalism professor and Fox Sports Radio host. “You have to do that in order to pay the bills, to open the facilities, turn the lights on.”
Parker insisted that teams have to get decent crowds on a regular basis before potential new fans and advertisers will truly start to take notice, making it easier to get more matches on television as well.
Rob Parker, a USC sports journalism professor and Fox Sports Radio host, says the league needs to get attendance up if it wants to survive.
Parker also warned that a lack of attendance could cause big financial backers to eventually step away from the league.
“People, after a while of pouring money into something, will eventually say, ‘Why am I pouring this money in? We’re not making any money. People aren’t coming.’ And they’ll pull the funding,” Parker said.
Although he says it’s not impossible to get attendance — and therefore funds — up, for now, he remains skeptical that this league will break through for good.
If You Build it, Will They Come?
Still, the PVF is set to expand to 10 teams next season and perhaps to 14 by 2026.
Pauly expects the Valkyries to get their own building in Orlando in the coming years, and some other teams may have similar plans in the works.
The Mojo’s logo displays shortly before a match is set to begin. (Photo by Cam Kauffman)
Perhaps more important to the players, the league is looking to provide better medical insurance that covers athletes year round, even when they are not formally training or playing.
In terms of building up its fan base, the league is looking to add more games to the CBS Sports calendar next year.
Although the league has not finished its inaugural season, Pauly believes that the Pro Volleyball Federation is here to stay.
“We just need to keep kind of grinding away at making it the best product that we can and keep continuing to build our fan base.”
