Nebraska won’t play its first home football game until Sept. 16, but on Wednesday night, 92,003 fans packed Lincoln’s Memorial Stadium for Volleyball Day — making it the highest-attended women’s sports event in history.

Highlighted by the Cornhuskers’ volleyball team taking on in-state counterpart Nebraska-Omaha, the crowd broke the previous record for a women’s sports event set in April 2022, when Barcelona hosted Wolfsburg at Camp Nou for a UEFA Women’s Champions League match. 

The evening also included an exhibition between Division II schools Nebraska-Kearney and Wayne State.

Volleyball Day was conceived after Nebraska’s top rival Wisconsin set a regular-season  volleyball attendance record of 16,833 at the Kohl Center in Madison last September — nine days after the Cornhuskers had set the previous mark of 15,797 at the CHI Health Center in Omaha.

Seven months of planning went into putting the event together. That included meetings from police, fire, rescue and traffic to concessions, the band and marketing — and monitoring the weather 10 days out.

“I don’t know how to properly define just how big this is,” Nebraska athletic director Trev Alberts said. “Unless [the football team is] undefeated when we play Michigan in Week 5, I don’t know of anything that’s going to be bigger.”

A Volleyball Love Affair

If it wasn’t clear already, the state of Nebraska is crazy about volleyball. 

Nebraska has sold out 306 consecutive regular-season volleyball matches, which is an NCAA women’s record. Matches involving Nebraska account for eight of the top nine crowds in NCAA volleyball history and 13 of the 14 largest NCAA regular-season crowds.

Wednesday’s gathering of College Football Playoff leaders in Dallas came and went without a decision on any major format changes — at least for now.

CFP executive director Bill Hancock called the meeting productive but claimed the need to “wait until the dust settles” on conference realignment before altering specific details of the expanded, 12-team playoff that begins next year.

Many around college sports are anticipating that instead of the CFP including the six highest-ranked conference champions and the six other highest-ranked teams each season — as originally planned — the postseason could ultimately include the five highest-ranked conference winners and seven at-large bids.

Pac-12 commissioner George Kliavkoff was in attendance despite the conference’s murky future beyond this season with just four member schools — and potentially fewer next year. Kliavkoff is a member of the CFP group through June 30, 2024.

Hancock called the meeting “cordial,” and SEC commissioner Greg Sankey said that “everyone was friendly.”

Clock Is Ticking

The ACC had reportedly wanted to have a final decision on expansion by the start of Week 1, which begins on Thursday with 11 games scheduled across the country.

Pac-12 remnants Stanford and California, along with current AAC member Southern Methodist University, have reportedly been inching closer to joining the ACC, while Oregon State and Washington State are waiting on their West Coast counterparts before deciding the conference affiliation for 2024.

The Premier League season is off and running, but soccer leaders in the U.K. are setting their sights on increasing a key revenue driver for future campaigns.

Under its current four-year cycle ending in 2025, the EPL is bringing in more than $6 billion from its domestic media rights deals. Negotiations for the next cycle — 2025-29 — could begin before the start of 2024, according to the Financial Times.

EPL games are currently broadcast in the U.K. on Sky Sports, TNT Sports (a subsidiary of Warner Bros. Discovery formerly known as BT Sport), and Amazon Prime Video. 

Tempered Expectations

But while the English league continues to attract the best soccer players in the world, it may not see a drastic increase in domestic media rights payments akin to the double-digit percentage bump the NFL recently saw for its main broadcast package, which is worth more than $100 billion over the life of the deals.

One EPL club executive said, “If we came 5% ahead I’d be delighted, because it’s a slowing rights market.”

Once the main driver of revenue for the EPL, domestic media rights now comprise slightly less value than the league’s international media deals with partners like NBC in the U.S. In total, the U.K. and international deals will bring in nearly $13 billion from 2022-25.

When bidding begins, the EPL will seek payment increases from its current partners and potentially hear offers from DAZN.

The city of Memphis envisioned a historic distribution of stadium renovation money — but that lofty plan has devolved into a growing scramble for cash involving the mayor and every major pro and college team in town.

The Tennessee General Assembly gave $350 million to Memphis in April to help renovate FedEx Forum, the home of the NBA’s Grizzlies, AutoZone Park, where the Triple-A RedBirds play, and Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium, home of the University of Memphis football team. The money also is intended to help build a proposed soccer stadium that would be the permanent home of the USL Championship’s Memphis 901 FC.

Cutting Up The Pie

But specific allocations of the money, which are the responsibility of the city, have not yet been made. Now, many of the individual teams involved are publicly lining up to get their share, and maybe more — and it’s uncertain if there will be enough funds to satisfy everyone.

The University of Memphis is strongly arguing that the stadium upgrades are critical to ensure the school isn’t left out of further college conference realignment. The school is looking to start stadium renovation work in January and pushing to get some of the state money now.

“We want to not lose out on the opportunity to maximize those state allocations to really help us in the most optimal way,” said Laird Veatch, Memphis’ athletics director. 

The needs of each venue are critical due to their ages: All facilities are at least 19 years old, and Simmons Bank Liberty Stadium dates to 1965.

“These stadium renovation projects and their respective funding streams are complex, and we hope to have a resolution that everyone can be proud of in the near future,” said Memphis mayor Jim Strickland.