Closing Shot: Serving Up A Winner

Nebraska’s volleyball match against Omaha became the most well-attended women’s sporting event ever, with more than 92,000 fans on hand.getty images

The Nebraska volleyball team played a match at Memorial Stadium last week in front of 92,003 people, numbers normally reserved for football in Lincoln. Avid fan support for the volleyball program was a part of the equation — winning five national titles over the last 30 years will do that. So was a lesson from country music superstar Garth Brooks.

How? Let Brandon Meier, Nebraska’s senior associate athletic director for marketing and media, explain.

“We really kind of started looking closely at the weather, staffing and what days were available and kind of landed on, ‘Hey, we’re going to kind of need that shade the stadium is going to provide this time of year,’” Meier said. “Went back and looked at some pictures we had taken from the Garth Brooks concert two years ago just to see where the shadow was going to be and the difference between the sun and the shade — and we decided we thought we could pull it off.”

There have been similar major brand-building ideas in the ilk of last week’s Volleyball Day in Nebraska in recent years. North Carolina and Michigan State men’s basketball played on the USS Carl Vinson in 2011. Virginia Tech and Tennessee football played at Bristol Motor Speedway in 2016. Nebraska’s own football team opened the 2022 season in Dublin, Ireland, against Northwestern. This, though, was different.

“I hate using the word ‘epic,’ because it’s a little bit overused, but it’s epic,” said Matt Davidson, Nebraska’s associate athletic director for event management and operations. “Volleyball in the state of Nebraska is gigantic. Volleyball in the country is huge and this just takes it up another level.”

The crowd at Memorial Stadium set a world record for the most well-attended women’s sporting event in history — an honor previously attributed to a Champions League match between FC Barcelona and Wolfsburg in April 2022.

The Cornhuskers, who beat Omaha 3-0 in the match, also previously set a Big Ten Network record in November 2022 when the volleyball team reeled in 587,000 viewers for its match against Wisconsin, the most for any non-football or basketball event in BTN history. Viewership numbers for Wednesday’s event were not available at the time of publication, but are expected to be at or near a Big Ten Network record.

This all comes amid a boom in viewership in women’s sports, particularly on the college side. The NCAA women’s basketball tournament set all-time marks for every single round of this year’s event, for example.

Consider Nebraska volleyball now part of that increasingly profitable equation.

“I have a daughter, she’s in fourth grade,” Meier said ahead of last week’s festivities. “She’s so excited. She loves volleyball. I want her to have that moment where she looks at me and is like, ‘Oh my gosh, Dad, this is possible. If I keep playing volleyball at the highest level, are you kidding me, I can play in front of [nearly] 100,000 people.”

Editor’s note: This story is revised from the print edition.