Almost 2 million viewers: Breaking down record NCAA volleyball TV ratings — again
The 2023 NCAA title match drew a record crowd and record TV ratings/@AndyWenstrand
The landmark telecast on over-the-air ABC of the NCAA women’s volleyball championship match on an NFL Sunday afternoon established another record.
Ho hum.
No surprise there, given a season-long trend of sensational TV ratings for the fast-rising sport. Nonetheless, a title tussle between Texas and Nebraska that gave the all-important casuals ample opportunity to tune out almost certainly left some viewers on the table.
In the first airing of an NCAA final on one of the major broadcast networks, the 2-hour, 30-minute show was watched by a total-average viewership of 1.691 million, according to the Nielsen ratings as reported by the Sports Media Watch site, the most ever for a college volleyball match.
That beat the record for volleyball of 1.659 million, a “blended” number reflecting two Big Ten matches that aired at different times regionally on Fox on October 29 and which had an NFL game as a lead-in.
The total audience recorded on Sunday in Tampa, Florida, in the NCAA Division I Volleyball Championship was a 112% improvement over the 796,000 that watched the Texas-Louisville final in 2022 on cable ESPN2, and 551,000 viewers in the key 18-49 demographic represented a 93% year-over-year jump. The previous overall high for an NCAA title match was 1.188 million for Wisconsin-Nebraska in 2021 on ESPN2.
A particularly encouraging note for potential advertisers was that 51% of the TV audience on Sunday was female, a remarkable number for a live sports event. The typical breakdown on a broadcast channel is roughly 2-to-1 male.
So perhaps that 1.691 million number wasn’t so ho hum, after all. Have I mentioned that the record-breaking NCAA final encountered head-to-head competition from an NFL game that was watched by more than 23 million?
But, oh, what could have been if Nebraska had figured out a way to keep from getting served off the court by Texas in the last two lopsided sets of a sweep that provided scant incentive for casual viewers to stick around.
Two million. It was there for the taking
A viewership of 2 million for the volleyball championship was considered well within the realm of possibility, given that each of the NCAA semis on ESPN had hit seven figures, and the large and loyal fan bases of the finalists. But a non-competitive match tossed the broadcast a monkey wrench. Its peak quarter-hour did log 2.1 million viewers, coming from 4:45 p.m. to 5 p.m. Eastern, during a title-clinching third set won by Texas 25-11. The “match window” on Sunday averaged 1.8 million.
Once the outcome became a fait accompli, the Dobie Gray effect took hold, and many casuals likely drifted away to the NFL action in the late-afternoon window. Over on Fox, the Buffalo Bills vs. Dallas Cowboys rang up 26.339 million. A fast match also left more than 10 minutes of “fill time” before the show signed off at 5:30 p.m. Eastern, another catalyst for those with less investment to flip the channel. All of those factors dragged down the average.
But by any measure, breaking the record against direct NFL competition has to be regarded as a successful culmination to a college volleyball season that established new viewership highs multiple times across a variety of linear TV platforms.
Could the viewership have hit the 2-million milestone with a more compelling — and longer — match?
The matchup of traditional rivals held undeniable appeal. The crowd of 19,727 (a record for an indoor college-volleyball event, naturally) that packed Amalie Arena was filled mostly with Nebraska red, plenty of Texas burnt orange and a lot of unaffiliated volleyball fans, all of whom made a lot of noise. The reality of live sports, however, is that the teams don’t read a script.
“If we’re at 2.1 million (viewers near the end of the match), it means we have them,” said ESPN executive Dan Margulis, the worldwide leader’s senior director of programming and acquisitions. “Where we lost them was when the celebration happened. We had them, and if the match keeps on going, you keep them and you keep growing. But we didn’t get that.
“Certain things we can control in this business and a lot we can’t. Nebraska-Wisconsin two years ago went five sets. This year, we were at our highest quarter hour in the last 15 minutes of the match. I’m thrilled with what it did. I’m thrilled that people found it. (The telecast) started pretty large, stayed pretty large and only grew. Clearly, I would have preferred the match to go longer than three sets. But considering the length of the match, and that we still pulled in a record rating, I’m elated.”
Trusting the process paid off
Although the NCAA national semifinal matches three days earlier had knocked it out of the park with viewerships of 1.097 million and 1.070 million on a cable channel with roughly 53 million fewer TV households than broadcast giant ABC, Margulis had set a realistic goal for the final.
“When we went to Tampa, we really didn’t have expectations of a certain number,” he said. “We wanted to set a record. We wanted to prove that in a stand-alone window, yes, against the NFL, and with no real lead-in, volleyball could do well. And we did.”
Greasing the skids for the show were cross-promotion and roughly 20 minutes of “scene setting” between sign-on and the first serve.
“We had some nice promotion day of, ‘NFL Countdown,’ ‘Good Morning, America’ had a piece, which helped set us up to get the die-hards and the non-die-hards,” Margulis pointed out. “The environment in the arena for that match was fantastic. Anytime you’re trying to get a viewer who’s not necessarily as passionate as some of the other ones, you need an environment that they can look at and ask, ‘What is this? Why am I watching?’ And that place was crazy.”
The casual viewers who “found” the volleyball telecast didn’t necessarily stumble upon it by accident. The sport rang up a series of significant ratings victories, starting with the 518,000 viewers on Big Ten Network on August 30 whose interest was piqued by the giant throng of 92,003 that gathered for the outdoor stadium match at Nebraska. The ESPN channels (part of the Disney conglomerate that also owns ABC) played a key role by increasing its regular-season offerings on ESPN and ESPN2. A 32.3% jump in year-over-ratings for the four regional finals on third-tier ESPNU was a clear signal that more than die-hards had been reeled in.
Margulis could barely contain his enthusiasm in a lightning-round recap of a magical season on TV for college volleyball.
“Every good story has a beginning, a middle and an end, right?” Margulis asked. “So everything points to the beginning of the season with this outdoor volleyball match. People see clips of it. There’s 92,000 people. It was great. It set the stage.
“Then throughout the season, we upgraded a ton of matches (to linear channels), got a lot of coverage, and there’s coverage elsewhere. The sport had some great momentum. We go into the first and second rounds. We upgrade the ‘Fifth Set’ (studio show) to get it some linear exposure. We got better on how we do the whip-around. Every game was available, and people start to figure that out.
“Then you got into the regional semis and finals that did great (numbers), all leading into the semifinals and champ. The semis and the championship were three of the five biggest (TV viewerships for volleyball) ever, and it should just build from there.
“You try to plan things out to be exactly like that and there were a lot of people who put in a lot of blood and sweat to get to this point where we have the final on ABC,” Margulis added. “A lot of us, I don’t know that we’re smiling, it’s more like relief and a smile. We all believed in it, no matter what, and this just shows that our beliefs have validity.”
Answering the critics
As the primary national outlet for college volleyball in the Southeastern, Atlantic Coast and Big 12 conferences, as well as the sole host of the NCAA tournament, ESPN frequently has caught heat from heavily invested fans who question why the cable powerhouse doesn’t do more.
“We have had an intentional strategy with volleyball that is never fast enough for the die-hards, and I get that,” Margulis said with a chuckle. “I love that passion, even when they Tweet at me and say mean things.”
A particular bone of contention is that all first- and second-round NCAA matches can be seen only on the streaming ESPN+ platform. Margulis stuck to his guns on that, while pointing that the Fifth Set show is a one-stop shop for casuals.
“I believe ESPN+ is the proper place for the first round,” he said. “Every match is there for the die-hards. Any matchups we might want to do (on a linear channel) are not ones that would be competitive. We’re going to pick a Wisconsin or a Nebraska, those teams with large fan bases.”
Regarding potential changes to second-round coverage, Margulis said, “I will fight to get Fifth Set on ESPN2 next year. On the Saturday night (of the round of 32), we covered eight matches on Fifth Set, coming on at 8 p.m. (Eastern) and we whipped around to everything until the last West Coast match ended.
“That covered all of our prime time for the night on a linear window. The final West Coast match was competitive and for all purposes it was aired live (on the studio show). People seem to forget that. Our die-hards get hung up on the stand-alone matches, but when there’s all of them going on, Fifth Set is a great way to cover them.”
Margulis next tackled the sticky wicket of each of the four regional finals being joined in progress because of overruns in the events preceding them. All were scheduled in two-hour blocks.
“Volleyball is at a point where the regionals are going to go two-and-a-half hours and we need to figure that out,” he said, a statement which should be greeted with huzzahs by highly invested fans. “You have to learn certain things as you go. It’s harder to go back if you jump too far ahead too fast. You have to figure out the right pacing.”
The bottom line is the ratings successes seen throughout 2023 have positioned volleyball on solid footing in the competition for precious air time on the linear platforms that put more eyeballs on it.
“I’m fighting for this sport,” Margulis said with conviction, “and the fight’s gotten a lot easier with all the successes. Now it’s just about how we take all of the upgrades from this year, keep that momentum going and continue the growth.”
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