Even before the 2024 Olympic Games, volleyball started gaining traction in the US market. In the 2022-2023 season, a reported 470,488 high school volleyball players were registered across the country. The next year, the Huskers made history by attracting 92,003 fans to Memorial Stadium for a match between Nebraska and Omaha, the highest number of fans in one place for a women’s sporting event. Obviously, you’d expect the trend to continue. But it seems like the Big Ten volleyball is regressing instead of moving ahead.

As Penn State and Nebraska shared the 2024 Big Ten volleyball title among themselves, the season finished on a high note. Now with the 2025 season inching closer, fans were quite possibly anticipating the conference to cash in on that momentum and gain a larger footing in the country with bigger plans for its matches. But alas!

An article on the official Big Ten website from July 28 notes that 79 women’s volleyball matches will be broadcast via television, with the coverage beginning with the AVCA First Serve Showcase. The matches will be televised via the “Big Ten Network, FOX, FS1 and NBC for the 2025 season,” as per the report, with the official Big Ten network set to broadcast at least 63 matches. The broadcast on the BTN will begin on August 25 with the AVCA First Serve Showcase, when two matches (Penn State vs. Kansas and Minnesota vs. Texas A&M) kick off in Sioux Falls, South Dakota.

FOX and FS1 will televise additional First Serve matches on August 22 and 23. FOX will broadcast five Big Ten volleyball matches in total, whereas FS1 is likely to televise nine games. Fans can watch only two matches on NBC: UCLA vs. USC on Saturday on October 11, and Minnesota vs. Nebraska on November 8. These matches will also be available to livestream on Peacock.

On November 28, Penn State and Nebraska will cross paths at Lincoln. Given how the Huskers, often considered the country’s top volleyball program, were subdued twice by the Nittany Lions last season, fans wouldn’t want to miss the scintillating matchup. They can watch the game on the Big Ten Network. Apart from the matches that will be nationally televised, more than 200 matches can be streamed online via Big Ten volleyball’s subscription service, BIG+. But despite so many options, one troubling data cannot be overlooked.

In 2024, 83 Big Ten volleyball matches were televised nationally via the same abovementioned networks. What’s more, for the first time in collegiate volleyball history, NBC televised 3 matches across the country, as opposed to only two in the upcoming season. But while the overall number of Big Ten matches to be televised has gone down, one of the top programs of the country still got their fair share of television real estate.

Big Ten volleyball gives Nebraska its due

With the rise of several women’s professional volleyball leagues in the US, the popularity of the sport is at a never-before-seen heights. So much so that Dani Busboom Kelly, the Huskers’ new head coach, believes that there’s no better time than now for aspiring athletes to find a place for themselves in the scene and pursue their volleyball passion.

“Man, I think the pro volleyball now, there’s no better time to try to get involved if you want to play,” said Kelly in an interview with Out of Play. One of the biggest contributors to the country’s bustling volleyball scene is undoubtedly Nebraska. From setting records in attendance numbers across all women’s records to even helping their opponents attain new milestones, the Huskers have been a formidable force. So much so that with the ongoing Volleyball Nations League suffering from poor attendance numbers, many fans even urged the US Volleyball seek help from the Lincoln program to rope in more fans to the stands. So it’s rather unsurprising that the volleyball program is set to get some serious exposure come next season.

As they announced the 2025 volleyball television schedule, the Big Ten Network also added 10 Nebraska volleyball matches to its plans, with 19 of Nebraska’s regular-season matches now set to be televised on BTN, FOX, FS1, NBC, ABC, and ESPN. The Huskers added three national television broadcasts last month after having already announced two national broadcasts in the spring. In fact, a dozen of the volleyball program’s 20 Big Ten conference matches will receive national coverage—that includes 9 of the final 11. Excited? Let us know in the comments.