On Wednesday, the University of Nebraska women's volleyball team made history, breaking the record for the most attended women's sporting event of all time with 92,003 fans. The five-time NCAA champions beat the University of Nebraska at Omaha 3-0 in front of the record crowd.
The previous attendance record for a women's sporting event was the Champions League matchup between FC Barcelona and Wolfsburg with 91,648. In the United States, the previous women's sports attendance record was the 1999 Women's World Cup final when the United States beat China in penalty kicks in front of 90,185 fans at the Rose Bowl Stadium.
This attendance record shows what investing in women's sports can do for college programs. According to the Lincoln Journal Star, Nebraska volleyball was the only program out of 522 women's sports programs to generate profit in 2022. The team generated $3.8 million in revenue in 2022 through ticket sales, royalties, concessions, media rights, investments, and more.
Volleyball popularity in Nebraska dates back to the 1990s when according to the New York Times, “Trev Alberts, Nebraska's athletic director, said in an interview that the volleyball coach in those days wanted to capitalize on the fervor for football, so Nebraska let many football fans into volleyball matches for free if they showed their football tickets, with the events often happening in succession and near one another in Lincoln.” Nebraska has since won 5 national championships and has averaged more than 8,000 fans every year since 2013, the highest average in all of college volleyball.
This all sounds impressive, but how does the Nebraska volleyball game compare to other college sports attendance records?
1. College Football
The highest attendance at a college football game is 156,990. The University of Tennessee and Virginia Tech faced off at the Bristol Motor Speedway in 2016. The game was nicknamed the “Battle at Bristol.”
2. Men's College Basketball
Nicknamed the “Basketbowl,” Michigan State University and the University of Kentucky set the record for the most attended college basketball game with 78,129 people in 2003. The teams played at Ford Field, a Detroit football stadium.
3. Women's College Basketball
In 2002, UConn women's basketball played the University of Oklahoma in San Antonio at the Alamodome in the NCAA National Championship. The two teams set the women's college basketball attendance record of 29,619. This number is likely to change this year, as Iowa women's basketball will scrimmage Depaul in October at the outdoor Kinnick Stadium, the home stadium for the Iowa football team.
4. Women's College Gymnastics
Utah gymnastics set the college gymnastics attendance record of 15,558 against the UCLA Bruins in 2017. Before this record was set, the Utah gymnastics team had averaged 14,000 fans for seven straight seasons.
5. Women's College Soccer
The women's college soccer attendance record has yet to be broken since 1999. North Carolina beat Notre Dame 2-0 in the NCAA final in front of a crowd of 14,410 people in San Jose California.
6. College Softball
The 2022 Softball College World Series set the softball attendance record of 12,533 fans. In double elimination, Oklahoma beat Texas while Oklahoma State beat UCLA to move on. Days one and two of this College World Series also had over 12,000 fans in attendance.
Hopefully, more and more of these records will continue to be broken. Fans are a huge part of sports and all athletes deserve the chance to have a massive amount of fans cheering them on. Nebraska has led the way by investing in volleyball and providing bigger arenas to play in. Iowa women's basketball seems to be following suit. These attendance records prove that people want to go to women's sporting events. Teams just need the right investment and publicity on their side.
