As sport continues to grow, how could ESPN’s broadcast of the NCAA Tournament improve? Craig Skinner and others weigh in.
Kentucky volleyball’s Craig Skinner reflects on the growth of the sport
Kentucky volleyball coach Craig Skinner highlights the sport’s growth as either Kentucky or Louisville has reached the Final Four in the past five years.
- NCAA Volleyball Championship winning coaches, the Kentucky Wildcats’ Craig Skinner and the Wisconsin Badgers’ Kelly Sheffield, want the early rounds of the tournament on linear TV instead of ESPN+.
- The NCAA and ESPN tout the national title game’s slot on ABC as a real triumph. The Kentucky vs Texas A&M match is set for 3:30 p.m. Sunday.
- The 2024 NCAA Volleyball Championship game between Louisville and Penn State peaked at 1.9M viewers, averaging 1.3M, which made it the second most-watched championship game on record.
KANSAS CITY, MO — The NCAA Volleyball Championship Sunday between No. 1 seed Kentucky and third-seeded Texas A&M is the culmination of historic fan engagement.
The 2025 regionals were ESPN’s most-watched on record, highlighted by the Aggies vs. No. 1 overall seed Nebraska’s 1.2 million viewers. Last year’s tournament was the “most-consumed” on record with 1.3 billion minutes, according to ESPN. But some of the sport’s elder statesmen, like UK head coach Craig Skinner, feel it’s being held back by the current broadcast model. They specifically take umbrage with the tournament’s first and second rounds being broadcast exclusively on ESPN+, wanting instead to take advantage of the sport’s growth by seeing those matches aired on linear TV.
But folks with ESPN and the NCAA say it’s not that simple. They point toward how much coverage of the tournament has grown over the last several years, acknowledge that there’s still room to grow, and challenge coaches’ assertion that linear TV indicates legitimacy.
After UK beat No. 8 UCLA in the second round of the NCAA Tournament on Dec. 5, Skinner said: ”I don’t see why our sport doesn’t deserve the opportunity to be on linear TV for this. … The numbers are off the charts. I don’t think there’s any reason why we wouldn’t have more viewers and more potential advertising in matches like this than what’s showing on it right now. I have no idea what it’s showing, so I think our sport deserves that opportunity, and we need to keep fighting for it.”
Wisconsin coach and 2021 NCAA champion Kelly Sheffield called it “a damn shame.” He also said he’ll “go to my grave saying you cannot get newer fans to follow anything if it’s not on linear TV.” More poignantly: “Some sports, you are lifted up by being clumped in with other sports. And then I think there’s some other sports that are being held back, and that’s certainly where we are. The momentum of the season comes to a screeching halt.”
Katie George offers a unique perspective. She played volleyball at Louisville from 2012-15, back when her parents had to watch UofL matches on Game Tracker — an online live updates display of a cartoon fixture of a ball, which would move across the net, then stop, and then the scoreboard changed to indicate a scored point. Now she works for ESPN, covering the NCAA Volleyball Championship, among many other things, for the network.
George told The Courier Journal she agrees with the coaches that it would be great for ESPN and/or ABC to pick up the early rounds. “I was always told, ‘You have to show the game to grow the game.’” But she knows from talking with her bosses that it’d be a heavy lift.
College volleyball’s broadcasting rights were negotiated in a deal between ESPN and the NCAA containing 40 total championships, including the women’s basketball tournament. Nick Dawson, ESPN senior vice president of college sports programming and acquisitions, told The Courier Journal, “our desire was to acquire the full suite of championships. There’s a ton of value for us, in being able to tell those championship moments and stories across the board throughout the entire athletic year.”
There are several reasons, though, why fitting every NCAA Volleyball Tournament match on linear TV is difficult to do. Dawson specifically mentioned window availability, competitiveness of matches and first serve times that allow for better fan attendance.
Coaches like Skinner have lauded the increased parity in volleyball, pointing specifically toward UK’s Sweet 16 matchup with Cal Poly. But 19 of the 32 first-round matches this year were 3-0 sweeps. “One area where we’re seeing growth in the sport right now is a deeper threshold of early quality teams every year,” Dawson said. “(But) there’s still a ways to go there.”
Skinner also pointed toward the women’s basketball tournament as a reason to expand volleyball’s linear reach. But March belongs to basketball. Whereas December is full of competition on ESPN. College football’s regular season is winding down. Bowl games and the College Football Playoff are starting up. Plus men’s and women’s basketball is in full swing.
Broadcasting every first and second round match on ESPN+ was a way to make sure they could all be delivered live and in their entirety. The “Fifth Set” on ESPN2/ESPNU, now in its fifth year, is a whip-around show a la “NFL RedZone” that takes viewers to “the best action at any given moment,” Dawson said. In 2022, it was an hour’s worth of content. This year’s show eclipsed 10 hours.
This was the first year a regional semifinal was played on ESPN (Indiana vs. Texas and Wisconsin vs. Stanford) and a regional final was played on ABC (Nebraska vs. Texas A&M). It was the second year of the regional rounds spanning four days — a decision made specifically to expand the event’s linear windows so games wouldn’t bleed into each other.
“We continually evaluate each and every year,” Dawson said, “to see, ‘Hey, are we prioritizing the right things on the right days and the right windows? Or is there a reassessment that needs to be made that we should look at?’”
One thing Dawson thinks they’ll discuss this offseason is moving a few first or second round matches from evenings to afternoons. While that could adversely impact match attendance, it would open up more linear window opportunities. He called it “a give and take” that ESPN and the NCAA have to weigh as far as potential upside from the media perspective versus potential downside logistics wise.
Volleyball itself is action-packed, with every rally ending in a point. But the fan environments also make for great television, Dawson said. If one watched UK play at Historic Memorial Coliseum this postseason, they’d be able to hear through their speakers the home crowd chant one word at a time “Go Big Blue!” for every Wildcat touch.
The feedback from coaches like Skinner and Sheffield seemingly stemmed from a place that views linear TV as a legitimate platform and streaming as a place events of less importance are relegated to. Kristin Fasbender, director of championships and alliances for the NCAA, would like to challenge that notion.
“We’re used to linear. We’re used to turning our TVs. We’re used to this. But is that the best thing?” Fasbender told The Courier Journal. “I don’t know. … So I think we keep learning and growing, just like everybody else as this evolves.”
Still, the NCAA and ESPN tout the national title game’s slot on ABC as a real triumph.
“The fact that the Final is on ABC, and not ESPN,” George said, “ABC is in almost every home in America. So that’s a massive deal.”
Similar to the afternoon versus evening scheduling was the decision to broadcast the NCAA Championship match on ABC.
The Thursday-Sunday split of Final Four weekend is different from the women’s basketball tournament, which employs a Friday-Sunday schedule. The volleyball championship was previously aired on ESPN primetime Saturday night. So the question was whether Saturday’s primetime slot was better for the sport than Sunday afternoon, which brushed up against the NFL slate. ESPN and the NCAA decided to give it a shot in 2023, and it’s worked out so far.
Last year’s match between Louisville and eventual champion Penn State peaked at 1.9 million viewers, averaging 1.3 million, which made it the second most-watched championship game on record and third most-watched volleyball match ever. The Texas-Nebraska championship before that peaked at 2.1 million viewers and averaged 1.69 million.
Keeping the national semifinals on Thursday kept both games in a primetime slot and, with hindsight, avoided conflict with the expanded CFP.
Other, more extreme, conversations have been had about moving the season altogether, Fasbender said. Maybe spring would be a better window. But with basketball all winter, and softball, baseball and MLB taking off right after that, when exactly would a better time be? And after the 2020 COVID tournament, played in April of 2021 in shared facilities with other spring sports, that conversation dissipated.
“Let’s figure out how we can be our best in the time that we are,” Fasbender said, “evolve where we can.”
Reach college sports enterprise reporter Payton Titus at [email protected] and follow her on X @petitus25. Subscribe to her “Full-court Press” newsletter here for a behind-the-scenes look at how college sports’ biggest stories are impacting Louisville and Kentucky athletics.
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