What we do know about the record-smashing TV numbers posted Sunday for NCAA women’s volleyball is that 1.659 million watched the landmark telecast on over-the-air Fox.
That’s earth-shattering news for fans of the fast-rising sport.
A viewership in seven figures vividly demonstrated to TV executives that volleyball can attract the casual viewers that fuel growth and intuitively should be a catalyst for more matches to air on broadcast platforms.
As for what we don’t know about the telecast, hang on, it’s important, and we’ll get to that later.
But first, the Nielsen ratings also told us that women’s volleyball absolutely blew away EVERYTHING televised in sports that day not called the National Football League in the “prime” 18-49 demographic. The 18-49 demo is highly coveted by advertisers because their marketing surveys tell them younger viewers are more easily influenced by ads and it is the largest age group at roughly 130 million.
Performance in the key demo is considered even more critical than overall viewership to television decision-makers, in that it heavily influences the CPM (cost per 1,000…
