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Post by tomclen on Dec 20, 2018 15:56:34 GMT -5
The conventional wisdom on VT always seems to be that fan interest in the sport is growing and VB is becoming the dominant women's sport. There was the Yale VB player upset at the ESPN treatment of the championship match. There's the regular bragging by fans of certain VB teams who lead in attendance every year (Hawaii and a handful of B1G teams). But D1 Women's Basketball runs rings around Women's VB. And neither WVB or WBB come close to D1 Men's Basketball. Here's a breakdown of the number of D1 teams in each sport above certain attendance thresholds:  So when we complain about a men's basketball game running long and preempting a volleyball game, you can see the networks reasoning. Oddly, Softball, which gets very favorable scheduling and coverage from TV (far superior to VB, IMO) only has 2 teams that draw more than 2,000 fans per game. |
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Post by Wolfgang on Dec 20, 2018 15:57:46 GMT -5
The conventional wisdom on VT always seems to be that fan interest in the sport is growing and VB is becoming the dominant women's sport. There was the Yale VB player upset at the ESPN treatment of the championship match. There's the regular bragging by fans of certain VB teams who lead in attendance every year (Hawaii and a handful of B1G teams). But D1 Women's Basketball runs rings around Women's VB. And neither WVB or WBB come close to D1 Men's Basketball. Here's a breakdown of the number of D1 teams in each sport above certain attendance thresholds: So when we complain about a men's basketball game running long and preempting a volleyball game, you can see the networks reasoning. Oddly, Softball, which gets very favorable scheduling and coverage from TV (far superior to VB, IMO) only has 2 teams that draw more than 2,000 fans per game. I'm gonna stop you right there at "The conventional wisdom on VT." |
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Post by mln59 on Dec 20, 2018 16:09:55 GMT -5
i attend Texas women's soccer matches, volleyball and women's basketball. on average, soccer draws the fewest.
volleyball and basketball often times will hit the same mark, at least tickets sold. some Texas volleyball matches will outdraw the wbb games if the vb team is playing in a big match.
for example, when Texas hosted the nike big4 classic, Texas played both stanford and penn state. those matches were packed. easily over 4000 people.
at the same time, when uconn wbb came to austin last year, about 11000 people were there. yuge crowd
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Post by Floyd R. Turbo on Dec 20, 2018 16:15:39 GMT -5
Oddly, Softball, which gets very favorable scheduling and coverage from TV (far superior to VB, IMO) only has 2 teams that draw more than 2,000 fans per game. Part of softball's presence on TV is the relative lack of competition for time slots. The women's volleyball tournament is competing with college football and the almighty NFL, not to mention the start of college basketball, the NBA, and NHL. Softball doesn't have nearly that much competition, particularly on the ESPN networks. College basketball disappears from ESPN in March. No NFL. No college football. There are some NBA and NHL playoff games but I'm not sure that those are even on ESPN. Major league baseball has a presence on ESPN but the vast majority of MLB games are televised locally. |
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Post by ned3vball on Dec 20, 2018 16:16:05 GMT -5
Softball has 2 advantages. It is a better understood game for the casual fan, and the NCAA tournament does not have to compete with basketball or football. ESPN and others need the programming hours in May. I wonder if the new spring football leagues will knock softball down some.
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Post by mikegarrison on Dec 20, 2018 18:30:34 GMT -5
Softball doesn't get great coverage. What it does get is blanket coverage during the Women's College World Series, but that's mainly because it happens to fall in a dead zone in sports TV.
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Post by tomclen on Dec 20, 2018 19:07:27 GMT -5
Softball doesn't get great coverage. What it does get is blanket coverage during the Women's College World Series, but that's mainly because it happens to fall in a dead zone in sports TV. Every softball 'tournament' game I've watched has far superior coverage to how VB is handled. They don't 'miss' pitches. They don't tell stories while the ball is in play. They don't run replays that make you miss the next play. They don't constantly tell me "3 outs per half-inning", "We play 7 innings", "you gotta win by 1." And there are some rules in women's volleyball (particularly substitution-related) that are much different from MLB. I don't quite understand some of them, but the announcers don't do a primer on the rules. They also don't do a coaching clinic on every player: how they swing, their arm motion, their positioning, etc. They allow the competitive drama of the game to be front and center....not THEM. |
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Post by mikegarrison on Dec 20, 2018 19:13:51 GMT -5
Softball doesn't get great coverage. What it does get is blanket coverage during the Women's College World Series, but that's mainly because it happens to fall in a dead zone in sports TV. Every softball 'tournament' game I've watched has far superior coverage to how VB is handled. They don't 'miss' pitches. They don't tell stories while the ball is in play. They don't run replays that make you miss the next play. They don't constantly tell me "3 outs per half-inning", "We play 7 innings", "you gotta win by 1." And there are some rules in women's volleyball (particularly substitution-related) that are much different from MLB. I don't quite understand some of them, but the announcers don't do a primer on the rules. They also don't do a coaching clinic on every player: how they swing, their arm motion, their positioning, etc. They allow the competitive drama of the game to be front and center....not THEM. Yes, yes, that's not what I meant. I meant that the softball season runs from early Feb to late May, but it only gets a lot of national TV coverage during that one week in May. |
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Post by jayj79 on Dec 20, 2018 23:01:31 GMT -5
They don't tell stories while the ball is in play. They don't run replays that make you miss the next play. Because there is so much dead time between plays that they can tell all sorts of stories and show plenty of replays. Where as volleyball has lots more action with less time between plays. |
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Post by pavsec5row10 on Dec 20, 2018 23:31:56 GMT -5
Two softball teams average over 2K per game?
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Post by tomclen on Dec 20, 2018 23:39:59 GMT -5
Two softball teams average over 2K per game? Alabama: 2,732 Oregon: 2,146 (Auburn: 1,979) |
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Post by gobruins on Dec 21, 2018 7:23:22 GMT -5
Two softball teams average over 2K per game? Alabama: 2,732 Oregon: 2,146 (Auburn: 1,979) There are only a handful of college softball stadiums that seat much over 2,000. |
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Post by tomclen on Dec 21, 2018 8:43:07 GMT -5
Alabama: 2,732 Oregon: 2,146 (Auburn: 1,979) There are only a handful of college softball stadiums that seat much over 2,000. According to the NCAA website there are 30 softball facilities that hold 2k or more. |
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Post by Wiswell on Dec 21, 2018 9:32:23 GMT -5
This is very interesting. Nationally, I just read last week at the championship that more kids are playing volleyball than basketball this year, and yet, attendance and the coaches' pay, not even discussed here, is much higher for basketball. It is also more valued. As an illustration, at Wisconsin, the head women's bb coach made about 600k last year. The team won 9 games. You read that right. The base salary for wvb is about 250,000. This year they made it to the Elite 8 and won 24 games. They have been in the post season 6 straight seasons.
Granted, the wbb team stinks, and the coach was lured to turn around the team, but the women's wvb program was on a downward slide too (and never as bad as wbb), and yet the salary to lure someone in is much different.
It seems like it's a lot like soccer - lots of kids play, but nobody watches.
Also, I think it hurts that volleyball is played in high school gym class. Does that "degrade" the sport? I don't remember playing softball and basketball in gym class. To the extent there were organized sports in gym class - it was "medicine ball soccer," flag football, and whiffle ball, and volleyball. Not exactly DI sports thrown in there with volleyball.
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Post by huskergeek on Dec 21, 2018 11:41:58 GMT -5
If we're really going to examine what's going on with fan attendance, we need to look at more than just a single year because year over year attendance change is important for growing sports. Over the last five years here are the numbers for the top twenty programs in average attendance. | Women's Basketball | | Women's Volleyball |
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| Yearly Change | T20 Attendance | School Year | T20 Attendance | Yearly Change |
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| -4.80% | 6,341.80 | 2018-2019 | 3,431.70 | -1.06% | | 2.57% | 6,661.25 | 2017-2018 | 3,468.45 | 8.89% | | -6.00% | 6,494.45 | 2016-2017 | 3,185.20 | -0.16% | | 2.42% | 6,908.80 | 2015-2016 | 3,190.40 | -2.16% | | 1.74% | 6,745.60 | 2014-2015 | 3,260.70 | -3.21% | | -0.81% | 6,630.38 | Averages | 3,307.29 | 0.46% |
Looking at the top 20 programs, both sports have had largely stagnant attendance growth with Volleyball's 2017 year over year growth pushing the sport slightly above 0% while Women's Basketball has been slightly less than a zero growth rate. Still, with both sports averaging less than a percent from zero growth, I'd say neither can really claim to be "Growing the Sport" in any more than a token way. Clearly, Women's Basketball can still lay claim to dominance from a fan perspective given the average attendance for the same subset of programs is more than double that of volleyball. |
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