A version of this article first appeared in the CNBC Sport newsletter with Alex Sherman, which brings you the biggest news and exclusive interviews from the worlds of sports business and media. Sign up to receive future editions, straight to your inbox. About two months ago, during CNBC Sport’s Game Plan conference in Los Angeles, I asked the commissioners of the Big 12, the ACC and the Big East the same question: What will be the next big-time, breakout sport? All three answered volleyball. League One Volleyball is betting collegiate excitement will eventually translate to the professional ranks, following the path of the WNBA. The women’s pro volleyball league returns with its second season in January. In just the past few weeks, LOVB has announced new teams coming to Los Angeles and Minnesota for the 2027 season. LOVB launched with the league owning and operating all of its teams. It is now fielding ownership offers for each of its pro teams. Since June, LOVB has named several team ownership groups for teams in Austin ( G9 Ventures, Bolt Ventures and Spurs Sports & Entertainment ), Houston ( Cal and Hannah McNair, who also own the NFL’s Houston Texans), and L.A. (tech founder and prolific sports team owner Alexis Ohanian ). While LOVB doesn’t share financial figures, it typically takes a professional sports league five to seven years to become profitable, said LOVB Chief Operating Officer and President Rosie Spaulding in an interview. LOVB recently reached a media rights deal with USA Network, soon to be part of Versant, the NBCUniversal spinoff which will also be the parent company of CNBC. Versant is paying between $1 million and $2 million for the annual media rights, which feature LOVB games of the week, according to people familiar with the matter. LOVB also has an existing media deal with ESPN that lasts one more year. In its first season, TV ratings were modest but encouraging on the high end. Across ESPN2 and ESPNU, this season’s 10 LOVB matches on linear cable averaged 51,000 viewers, according to Nielsen data. That’s far lower than an emerging sport like simulated golf league TGL. It garnered about $5 to $10 million for its media rights (including matches on ESPN, rather than ESPN2 or ESPNU), and averaged 513,000 viewers. Still, postseason play drew more eyeballs. The LOVB semifinals averaged 114,000 viewers, with the finals at 93,000 on ESPN2. With volleyball as in women’s basketball, college play is currently a bigger draw than a professional league. That’s why investors are bullish on the growth profile of the league and the sport – and why the college commissioners are so optimistic that volleyball can break out. College volleyball had its most-watched regular season ever on ESPN platforms last year, averaging 140,000 viewers. LOVB doesn’t have ready-made stars like Tiger Woods and Rory McIlroy to draw in curious viewers (like TGL does) from the outset. But it does have a lot of famous names as early investors. LOVB has raised three rounds of funding for a total of $160 million. Spaulding declined to comment on whether the league is currently raising a fourth round. Its investor base showcases both institutional capital and professional athletes and celebrities, including Ariel Investments’ Project Level, Ares Management, former WNBA star Candace Parker , skier Lindsey Vonn , NBA star Kevin Durant , and even comedian Amy Schumer. The league isn’t the only professional women’s volleyball organization already operating in the U.S. Major League Volleyball, previously known as Pro Volleyball Federation, began in 2024 and has eight teams. Athletes Unlimited also runs a roughly month-long pro volleyball league, set in one location. LOVB has existing teams in Atlanta, Austin, Houston, Madison, Nebraska, and Salt Lake. Spaulding acknowledged it’s too early to know if having more than one professional league is best for the sport, but for now, she’s just happy to give collegiate players opportunities to extend their careers. “There are instances in other sports where leagues live alongside each other,” Spaulding said. “Time will tell.” LOVB guarantees a starting salary of $60,000 for all of its athletes, a figure Spaulding said the league reached after years of conversations with potential players in the runup to 2025’s debut. “There are athletes who are actually employees of the league, so they get full benefits year round,” said Spaulding. “That’s been very intentional from us. We want to take care of them and provide them with what they need within our means. They’ve been really involved with every decision that we’ve made along the way, whether it was around salaries and benefits or facilities or training needs or how a piece of apparel fits.” LOVB is unique in that the organization branches out beyond professional volleyball to the youth and club levels, often ushering its best players through the ranks. Professionals train at youth club gyms, allowing younger volleyball players to watch and even get to know pro athletes. That’s helped to give LOVB a base of an audience as it expands throughout the U.S. Currently, 68% of LOVB’s fans are female, and a whopping 77% are millennial-aged or younger, according to league data. That’s appealing for sponsors and advertisers who have already flocked to the league in droves, including Adidas, YETI, DryWater, Revolve, and Skims. The next step is to branch beyond younger girls (and their families) that play volleyball. Spaulding hopes the 2028 Summer Olympics in L.A. will help bring additional exposure to the sport, but she added there are already pros playing in LOVB who have the type of social media exposure, driven by college success, where they may be able to break out into household names. ” Lexi Rodriguez in Omaha, Madisen Skinner out of Austin – there are already incredibly long lines of fans waiting for their autograph. LA 2028 will be a milestone, but we certainly won’t be waiting for ’28 to build up athletes,” she said. *** Some pre-Thanksgiving leftovers on Youtube TV vs. Disney, the carriage dispute of the decade: 1) I’m told YouTube TV didn’t get the sliding-scale rate improvement it had wanted in case it becomes the largest distributor over the course of the multiyear agreement. Disney held firm and is paying YTTV standard rates based on its current size. So, count that as a win for Disney. 2) YouTube TV is paying Disney a per-subscriber fee for its “ingestion” of ESPN Unlimited within the YTTV platform. Basically, it’s YouTube TV paying a fee for a glorified ESPN+. 3) YouTube TV will now be able to offer skinny bundles including ESPN for the sports fan that wants to save some money. Fubo and DirecTV already have this option with ESPN. 4) Disney avoided an awkward situation when it reached a deal last week. I’m told there’s another potential carriage dispute opportunity at the end of the month between Fubo and NBCUniversal. In this case, Disney is now the majority owner of Fubo. Had Disney not ended its blackout with YTTV, it would have been arguing from the content provider side with YouTube and the distributor side with NBCU. Not ideal! But that’s the world we live in. We’ll see in the coming days if Fubo vs. NBCU gets ugly. NBCU has a long history of reaching deals before content blackouts. Fubo has about 1.6 million subscribers. (NBCU is the current parent company of CNBC). *** One more news nugget – a CNBC Sport exclusive – I’m told Learfield is in the final stages of selling itself. Learfield is a college sports media and technology company, connecting schools, fans and sponsors. Learfield’s annual EBITDA is just shy of $200 million, I’m told by sources familiar with the company’s finances, with a sub-3x leverage ratio. That’s bringing in bids of more than $2 billion, two of the people said. Buyers include a small group of private equity funds, said the people, who asked not to be named because the discussions are private. Learfield is currently owned by Charlesbank Capital Partners and Fortress Investment Group after a 2023 debt restructuring turned its creditors into equity owners (and a subsequent 2025 buyout of Clearlake Capital by Charlesbank.) Interest in Learfield is significant given name, image and likeness earnings opportunities and record viewership for college sports including football, women’s basketball and volleyball, A Learfield spokesperson declined to comment. Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal, which owns CNBC. Versant would become the new parent company of CNBC upon Comcast’s planned spinoff of Versant. On the record With Professional Women’s Hockey League executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer … Sticking with the theme of emergent women’s sports, my colleague Contessa Brewer sat down with Professional Women’s Hockey League executive vice president of business operations Amy Scheer . The PWHL was founded in 2023 with eight teams – four in the U.S. and four in Canada. The league is owned and operated by the Mark Walter Group, which owns the L.A. Dodgers, Lakers and Sparks, among other sports entities. Similar to LOVB’s 2028 Olympics plan, the PWHL plans to take advantage of next year’s Winter Games in Italy to showcase its talent. “25% of our players will be participating in the Olympics, not just USA and Canada, but Czechia, Finland, and other countries as well,” said Scheer. “The most important message coming out of there with our players is that elite women’s hockey is not just around every four years. Elite women’s hockey is available every year through the PWHL, and you don’t have to wait for the next Olympic cycle to enjoy these athletes and what they bring to the ice.” The PWHL season begins Friday . You can watch that entire conversation here . Or listen here and follow the CNBC Sport podcast if you prefer the audio version. Contessa’s Corner It turns out breaking up is pretty easy to do — you just walk out. That’s exactly what DraftKings and FanDuel did Monday night in Washington, D.C., at the executive meeting for the American Gaming Association, the trade group representing the gambling industry. Sources tell me the AGA is drawing a line in the sand — excluding from membership any company that offers prediction markets. DraftKings and FanDuel are both launching their own prediction platforms. Company spokespeople told me their companies’ goals were incompatible with the AGA’s position. The AGA is between a rock and a hard place. It often navigates difficult issues between its members. For years, Sheldon Adelson used his clout and financial resources as the founder and head of Las Vegas Sands to fight any form of internet gambling, even as competitors were fighting to get mobile sports and casino gambling legalized in New Jersey. Now, payments processors build business off fantasy and sweeps gaming platforms, but their tribal co-members at the AGA are lobbying state lawmakers and fighting in court against the products to protect tribes’ exclusive right to offer gambling on their lands. State regulators face similar dilemmas. Take Nevada: The state’s Gaming Control Board has made its stance clear – sport event contracts in prediction markets are unlicensed gambling. After announcing plans to enter the prediction business, DraftKings and FanDuel last week abandoned any efforts to offer sports gambling in Nevada. (DraftKings was still in the application phase of a very long and drawn-out process, so probably not that hard to walk away.) Nevada gaming regulators’ reaction: “It has been made clear to the Board that Flutter Entertainment/FanDuel and DraftKings intend to engage in unlawful activities related to sports event contracts. This conduct is incompatible with their ability to participate in Nevada’s gaming industry.” The Nevada regulators insist any company that offers sport event contracts in violation of any state’s regulations or on tribal lands are at risk of losing their Nevada license. And then the regulators really lay down the law: : “If a licensee… partners with another entity that offers sport event contracts… [they] may be subject to discipline.” What constitutes a partner? Is it PrizePicks’ tie-ups with Kalshi and Polymarket? Or do game-makers like Aristocrat or Light & Wonder end up on the wrong side of Nevada gaming regulators because they supply content to DraftKings and FanDuel, who also offer prediction trades? What’s clear is that more clarity is needed. *** Meantime, prediction platform Kalshi is going into the sneaker business, or at least predictions on sneakers. It’s partnering with StockX, a marketplace for hot stuff like Labubus or Pokemon cards or the Air Jordan 3 ‘Black Cat’ . Kalshi’s offering a new category of event contracts that allows someone to bet on whether that new sneaker will clear a certain price a week after its release. Maybe a winning prediction on sneakers will help pay for that $119 Labubu. **** The countdown’s on in Missouri. In less than two weeks, legal sports gambling will be available in the state — both in person and online. It’s a little like coming late to a party. After all, NFL quarterback Patrick Mahomes and his Kansas City Chiefs have been to the Super Bowl three times in three years — but hometown fans haven’t had the opportunity to wager legally (though maybe they’d like to bet AGAINST the team this year). Sweeps-style gaming, fantasy sports and, starting last year, prediction markets filled the void, as well as offshore, unregulated sportsbooks. The promotional offers are already coming at Missouri fans fast and furious, but when sportsbooks open up for betting on Dec. 1 they’ll be competing with all the other platforms who’ve given not only Chiefs fans but those who follow the Cardinals, the Blues, the Royals and the Missouri Tigers a way to have skin in the game. CNBC Sport highlight reel The best of CNBC Sport from the past week: The MLB has officially, finally, announced that NBC and Netflix are taking over what had been ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball package, and ESPN is getting a new bundle of games and rights for itself, including the ability to sell and distribute MLB.TV , the league’s version of Sunday Night for out-of-market games. CNBC’s Dom Chu sat down with LPGA Commissioner Mollie Marcoux Samaan about the state of women’s golf and increasing prize packages, including a new $4 million purse for the winner of this week’s 2025 CME Group Tour Championship. The $4 million first-place prize represents the largest single amount in the history of women’s golf. McLaren is dominating Formula 1. McLaren Racing CEO Zak Brown sat down with CNBC’s Tania Bryer in a wide-ranging interview about how he’s improved the team and its race car year after year. (CNBC is a sponsor of McLaren F1 racing.) Who will Golden State Warriors star Steph Curry choose as his new apparel sponsor? That’s the big question after he suddenly (and surprisingly) ended his 13-year partnership with Under Armour. If you haven’t noticed from their soaring valuations, sports teams are increasingly fielding offers from wealthy individuals and families. Twenty percent of family office principals reported owning controlling stakes in sports teams, up from 6% in 2022 – overtaking other luxury assets like art and cars, according to a new survey by J.P. Morgan Private Bank. The big number: 27.3% This week’s big number isn’t really that big, but I wanted to highlight it to shine a light on the NFL’s supersized influence on TV – and why the NFL may not be imperative for Netflix. For October, more than 27% of all TVs on Sundays were turned into a broadcast TV network. That outpaced the 22% viewership that broadcast TV got every other day of the week (as a cumulative average), according to Nielsen’s monthly The Gauge report. The reason, of course , is NFL games largely still air on broadcast TV. No NFL games air on Sundays on Netflix, so you’d expect viewership on that platform to decline. And you’d be wrong. “While most non-NFL streamers saw decreases on game days, Netflix bucked the trend and grew its share of TV on Sundays. Netflix netted out with 7.9% of TV in October, but on Sundays specifically, its share climbed to 8.2% of TV,” Nielsen said. Nielsen attributed the jump in Sunday eyeballs to the true crime series “Monster: The Ed Gein Story,” from Ryan Murphy and Ian Brennan , which was Netflix’s most-streamed title of the month. So, Netflix is increasing its share on Sunday without the NFL, while all the other streamers are losing. Quote of the Week “We can’t top what we just did. How we gonna top those last two games?” — LeBron James , ruling out his participation in the 2028 L.A. Summer Olympic Games in a podcast conversation with Steph Curry. For his part, Curry didn’t completely rule out playing in ’28, but he said it wasn’t likely. “God willing, I still have the choice and physical option where I could impact the team,” Curry said. “Never say never, but I highly doubt it. Highly doubt it.” James and Curry, who led their U.S. team to a dramatic gold medal in the 2024 Games, will be 43 and 40, respectively, during the next Summer Olympics. They spoke on the “Mind the Game” podcast , along with guest host Steve Nash. Around the league We’re starting to get some details from the new WNBA collective bargaining agreement. The Associated Press reports the league’s new league minimum salary would be more than $220,000, with an average player salary of more than $460,000, according to terms currently under discussion between players and owners. Under the league’s just-expired CBA, the highest paid WNBA star gets about $250,000. Highest salaries could balloon to more than $1.1 million, the AP reports. The National Independent Venue Association, the largest national trade association representing thousands of independent live entertainment venues, is calling on “strong enforcement against speculative ticket listings.” This is the issue I discussed in my newsletter a few weeks ago, after I purchased StubHub tickets a month in advance of my son’s birthday that never got transferred to me. “Speculative listings push risk onto fans and independent stages while platforms collect billions,” NIVA Executive Director Stephen Parker said in a statement . “StubHub’s stock plunge after its first investor call shows what we already know: the public is losing trust, legislatures are stepping in, and ticket resale in the United States is on the brink of fundamental structural change.” A huge weekend for professional golfers on the fringe of the PGA Tour: The 2025 PGA Tour concludes this week at The RSM Classic in St. Simons Island, Georgia. As part of the PGA’s eligibility changes for the 2026 season, only the top 100 players in the FedExCup Fall standings when The RSM Classic ends will earn exempt status on the tour for next season. Correction: This article has been updated to correct the spelling of Madisen Skinner.
