On Aug. 30, 2023, Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Nebraska stood packed with thousands of screaming fans dressed in red and white. But it wasn’t University of Nebraska-Lincoln’s football team they were cheering for, it was women’s volleyball.
Heading into the match, Nebraska was ranked four in the nation, having won the NCAA Championship five times.
With a record shattering 92,003 in attendance as opposed to the prior record of 90,185 set at the 1999 Women’s World Cup between China & USA, the Nebraska women’s team is at the forefront of a seemingly newfound trend reflecting new rules allowing athletes to monopolize off their name, image, and likeness (N.I.L.) that have contributed to a greater emphasis on women’s sports. Maddie Raih ‘26 noted, “at our Blake games it’s like basically nothing and so when I saw that there were like what? 92,000 people at the Nebraska game I was like this is insane.”
In similar red and white striped jumpsuits, University of Wisconsin-Madison fans crowded Fiserv Center to watch the Badger women’s volleyball team beat Marquette. They simultaneously broke the indoor regular season record at 17,027 attendees.
However, despite gains made in attendance of women’s athletic events, the Lincoln Journal Star, Lincoln’s local newspaper, reviewed over 4,000 pages of NCAA financial records from the past fiscal year and found that out of 522 NCAA-sanctioned women’s programs in the Power-6, one program turned a profit. It happened to be Nebraska volleyball.
Illinois women’s basketball was the closest major women’s team to breaking even – they reported a loss of $43,156.
Nebraska’s success is in large part due to ticket sales brought about by a change in venue and their lack of a National Football League team means that Nebraska fans follow college sports year-round. Raih thinks this is the next step for volleyball as she said, “Volleyball itself can get a lot of exposure because we don’t have that many girls trying out for Blake volleyball and so I think that because of this we’re going to get a lot more girls.”
