(Bloomberg) -- Despite being one of the most popular women’s sports for decades, pro volleyball leagues in the US have struggled to get off the ground.
Now a group of private equity firms have invested $100 million in a women’s volleyball startup that’s debuting a US professional league in January.
Atwater Capital, a female-founded firm, took part in the latest funding round for League One Volleyball. Existing investors Ares Management and Left Lane Capital added to their stakes, according to a press release. The company has now raised a total of $160 million.
The new women’s league joins recently launched competitions from the Pro Volleyball Federation and the five-week Athletes Unlimited league. Previously, US volleyball athletes had to move abroad to play in professional competitions.
“It feels like now is the time, and we’re very fortunate,” said Vania Schlogel, managing partner of Atwater. “No, I’m going to take that back. I’m not going to say we’re fortunate that women’s sports are coming to the forefront because it should have been like this.”
Major League Volleyball was the first attempt for a women’s league that was formed in 1987, a decade before the WNBA or any attempt professional women’s soccer league. The MLV lasted two full seasons, but in the third year they tried to go to individual team ownership with a licensing fee of $100,000. They folded before the season finished.
The United States Professional Volleyball League was founded in 2002 by a single investor William Kennedy. It lasted only one year.
Despite the struggle at a pro-level, volleyball has remained popular. Last school year, the number of high school volleyball players hit a record of more than 470,000, according to the National Federation of State High School Associations.
League One Volleyball, which calls itself LOVB, will begin early in 2025 with six teams located in cities that boast premier college volleyball programs. That includes Omaha, Nebraska, home to the University of Nebraska that last year broke the world record for most attended women’s sporting event when 92,000 watched a match in its football stadium.
LOVB was founded by Katlyn Gao, Peter Hirschmann and Olympian Kevin Wong in 2020 with the vision of creating a youth club network that would build a foundation for the professional league to succeed.
The founders looked at why past attempts at pro leagues failed and realized that there was an opportunity to leverage the popularity of the sport at the youth level. LOVB started by creating elite training clubs around the country and now has about 60 with more than 16,000 athletes.
“You wouldn’t build a house without a strong foundation,” said Gao, who serves as chief executive officer. “Why would you build a league without a strong foundation?”
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