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Sunday, April 2, 2023

Volleyball Fan Life-What Does Volleyball Do Now?

https://www.nytimes.com/2023/03/31/sports/ncaabasketball/womens-final-four-tv-deal.html?unlocked_article_code=oWUwHFfI_nODWDgv5bkfPoInnLqIT6bS6Y1SRUY_VGzpBpDi6KJtbueEKWDJXFM-Php4WYe_Yupw0vpNr7YCgvzUQru0HaGcKrjjIH7HpgTTUD0GcwY5h1UIA0Xo5pMABCBQkQB4OUmXeYM2JcGDG7J48g_L3DKvrw1lJ6LncVX11-U-sDni9E2GAZ1ALGy_iqwfmmMoxRQ5FqiCIGIXjVLxy01YlRq2qXx2euBRDJT3W4UeEsQIhD-ZNCV9Z8wU_Yrt0_ZNRoJzBOORGWl1EcHT79yX2hUakyGfZFmvSTegF3byJSknZ349G8y4_tdA-o8WLCI3oyUBzyhbeRz5-Tlm8GpktlCy5-SD98hGIyw&smid=url-share

Sorry for the long link. It is a gift link to a New York Times article titled: Women’s Sports Are Raking in Investments. The Final Four Shows Why. Posted on the Sunday of the NCAA Women’s Basketball Finals between LSU and Iowa.

I read the article with excitement, a bit of jealousy, and more than a little melancholy. As the author gushes about Women’s College Basketball’s moment of attention, he predicts a healthy and lucrative future for the sport. Excitement because this is another step towards the acceptance of women’s sports. Jealousy because I kept thinking: why not volleyball? I am very biased, but I think women’s volleyball is a much more exciting game than women’s basketball. Melancholy because I remember all the time, effort, and resources that we have poured into finding that moment for volleyball and it is still relegated to second class citizenry.

Thinking about the differences between women’s basketball and volleyball, I made a list. It is by no means comprehensive.

What women’s basketball has in its favor, in no order, other than the bullets came into my mind extemporaneously:

·       At this moment is WBB history, the college game is exciting, with exciting teams, with transcendent stars populating both the coaching and playing ranks. The NIL deals are also helping the collegiate stars become more popular.

o   Collegiate volleyball players are also beneficiaries of the NIL. What I don’t know are the actual numbers: the amount of money and the percentage of the total number of players who are benefiting from the NIL. How significant are the numbers for both categories?

·       WBB has a viable professional league. As the article make clear,

o   it is backed by the mighty NBA. Indeed, the teams were initially co-located and owned by the NBA franchise.

o   it had a less than auspicious start, like most startups,

o   it gives women’s basketball players a way to play in the US, even though many still play overseas to pay the bills,

·       WBB plays in the Winter.

o   In competition with MBB, but far away from the College Football juggernaut,

·       WBB can be directly compared with MBB, a juggernaut in its own right.

o   Which has a one-on-one comparison for Title IX purposes, i.e. much more visible. For example, when the Oregon basketball player Sedona Prince called out the NCAA for the paltry weight room allotted the women’s tournament, it focused attention on the NCAA when everyone is covering the parallel men’s tournament. No one likes to be called out publicly and changes were studied and implemented.

·       There are certainly rules variations for the collegiate, US Basketball, and FIBA rules. I am not an expert, but my observation is that the variations are relatively minor as compared to the volleyball rules variations.

What does volleyball have in its favor:

·       We have three professional leagues:

o   Athletes Unlimited, a known quantity, with an organizational structure that asks the fans to adapt to their rules. This structure is very player centric, but it also does not reward loyalty to teams.

o   League One Volleyball (LOVB), a nascent league. The Salient difference is that the franchises are partnered or own outright junior volleyball clubs, ostensibly to leverage the junior volleyball bonanza with the professional teams.

o   Professional Volleyball League (PVL), yet another nascent league, based more on the traditional structure of the sports league. Contrary to the other two leagues the teams are owned by independent owners.

·       Many universities make women’s volleyball the flagship Fall women’s sport, focusing campus attention on the sport.

·       USA Volleyball National Team won its first gold medal in the 2020 Olympic games, after many years of ups and downs.

In this time of WCBB upsurge, I am reminded of the 1996 Atlanta Olympics. The understanding that this was the moment for the United States to put women’s sports squarely in the middle of the general public’s radar screen. Of the major team sports, basketball, softball, and soccer leveraged their medals into lucrative opportunities, and more importantly, attention. Twenty seven years later some of those sports are still benefitting for their efforts for relevance in the American sporting landscape, as the article makes clear. Pro leagues were started and they went through their evolution, with differing successes, living though the ebb ad flow of anything new.

We have focused a lot of attention on the establishment of a professional volleyball league. The history of professional volleyball leagues is well documented, Indeed, one hopes that the founders of the three professional leagues have studied the history and learned from the past. Given the histories of the professional leagues in the other sports, it makes me wonder about how important having a professional leagues can help a sport gaining traction in the minds of the general public. The benefit of a local pro league is self-explanatory:

·       It gives collegiate players a chance to stay home and play, if not make a sustainable living.

o   The question is, would the domesticate league help the upper echelon players improve themselves in preparation for the international game?

o   If the answer to the previous question is no, would there be a segmentation of players where those who have hopes of playing for the national team play overseas only?

o   Referencing the recent interviews with American professional volleyball players on VolleyballMag.com, life in a foreign country, working in a foreign country is not homogenously grand, there are many obstacles and challenges.

o   Can the players make a living without having to go overseas to make a sustainable living? Will the domesticate league just be a supplement to their overseas salary?

·       It will put the sport of volleyball in center, we hope, of the very cluttered sports landscape.

o   We have also been focused on the idea of televising the matches as the springboard to popularity. Yet, that belief also minimizes the number of broadcast technologies available and the various modes of payment for access to the broadcast. The broadcast media has undergone a massive sea change

§  Will people watch?

§  How often will people watch?

§  Will people watch consistently?

§  Are people willing to pay for the programming. Many paid for the streaming services during the Olympics and European seasons, are they willing to pay for access to the domestic league? How much?

·       The real question is: whether there is a causal relationship between having a professional league and the popularity of a sport? Or is it just a correlational relationship?

o   Soccer and volleyball are the most popular sports for junior club sports. But neither has enjoyed the kind of moment that basketball is enjoying outside of the Olympic quadrennials, and for soccer, the Women’s World Cup quadrennials.

o   I am not saying that we should not pursue the goal of fielding a stable and sustainable domestic professional league. What I question is whether we are using the Field of Dreams fantasy as reality: Will they come if we built it?

We can look upon this explosive moment of popularity for WCBB for lessons and try to spot trends, which is the wont of all humans: make connections, draw analogies, create powerful metaphors. But what kind of connections, analogies, and metaphors? How real are they? Or are we just indulging in wishful thinking without any tangible and hopeful truths to back up our conjectures?

The title of this shallow exploration is What Does Volleyball Do Now? What can we do? This WCBB moment just made the Women’s Collegiate basketball the 800-pound gorilla in the room. What is volleyball’s game plan? What is our response to this challenge? Is there a cohesive element to volleyball organizations? Or are the independent volleyball entities dallying around with internecine childhood games?

We had a possible transcendent moment, when the USA National Team won the gold in 2021, with a courageous and improbable performance. Yet I did not see a concerted effort to leverage that gold medal to promote the sport to the public. We had legitimate stars on that squad to promote the sport: Jordan Larson, Jordan Thompson, Annie Drews, etc. But outside of a few immediate post-Olympic events, silence. Yet another missed opportunity, in my humble opinion. One can use the pandemic as an excuse: the NGB’s financial situation post pandemic was challenging, the fear of the spread of COVID was still palpable. But they also held an Olympics under the same conditions. In recent years, the USAV has turned their board makeup towards the sports business end of corporate governance, in the hopes of leveraging that know-how in turning this Titanic around. And yet.

I am hoping that this can motivate discussions amongst those of us who love the sport and have put in many years of work and faith towards advancing the sport. Contrary to my initial assertion that the successes of the WCBB is an 800 pound gorilla in the women’s sporting space, I hope that this is a chance for volleyball fans and entities to coalesce around our sport and take on this challenge. Inside the box, outside the box, doing away with the box, but always thinking critically and working together.

What does volleyball do now?