Wisconsin Badgers volleyball is approaching historic level of fan interest in 2025 season

MADISON — Kelly Sheffield still clearly remembers the conversations in his first year of leading the Wisconsin volleyball program about playing at the same time as the Green Bay Packers.

It was in 2013 — well before Wisconsin re-opened the upper deck of the UW Field House, which was 83 years old at that point.

“We had long dialogues on, ‘Should all the TVs in the concourses have the Packers game on so we can entice people,’” Sheffield said. “You can still come and watch us, but we’ll also give you the Packers game so that you can go and maybe cheer from the corridor or the concourse.”

Twelve years later, a Sunday afternoon with a Wisconsin volleyball match happening at the same time as a Packers game spoke volumes about how much the fan base surrounding Sheffield’s program has grown.

No. 7 Wisconsin’s match against then-No. 15 Florida on Sept. 21 drew a season-best 12,277 fans in the Kohl Center Classic in the Sunday noon time slot.

Wisconsin has the best average attendance in the country, as of Sept. 23, with 8,620 fans flocking to the Field House or Kohl Center per match. That is barely ahead of Nebraska’s 8,602 fans per match. No other program is averaging more than 6,000 fans per match.

The home attendance average obviously excludes the Sept. 17 match against Marquette at Milwaukee’s Fiserv Forum, but most of the 10,020 fans in attendance were wearing Badger red.

The concept of UW being among the best in the country in volleyball attendance certainly is not new. The Badgers have ranked second in attendance for six consecutive seasons and in the top five for 23 consecutive seasons (excluding the COVID-19-affected 2020 season).

But the 8,620 fans per game in 2025 even outpaces the program’s existing all-time attendance record of 7,761 fans per game in 2022 — the year following the Badgers’ national championship.

Wisconsin’s attendance average is inevitably going to decrease as the Badgers play their remaining 10 home matches in the Field House, which has a seating capacity of 7,229. The current average is above the Field House capacity because of the three matches at the 17,071-seat Kohl Center.

But Wisconsin officials are quite optimistic about attendance and ticket sales ahead of the start of Big Ten play on Sept. 26 against Rutgers.

“We’re really, really excited; we’re going to exceed $2 million in volleyball ticket sales for the first time ever,” UW deputy athletic director Mitchell Pinta said. “And we’re largely sold out for the rest of our matches at the Field House for the remainder of the season.”

For perspective, UW had about $1.6 million in volleyball ticket revenue in 2023, according to the most recent NCAA financial filing. In 2013 — Sheffield’s first season — UW reported $111,809 in volleyball ticket revenue in its NCAA financial filing.

Along with an outstanding on-court product — Wisconsin is No. 7 in the most recent AVCA coaches poll and has advanced to the Sweet 16 or farther in 12 consecutive seasons — a variety of business decisions have helped the Badgers reach the heightened level of ticket revenue.

“It’s been an increase in pricing, a creation of new, differentiated premium products — group sales on Bucky’s Balcony in the Field House, for example — and then it’s been the ability to have more matches at the Kohl Center,” Pinta said.

How many matches will be at the Kohl Center in future seasons is “something we’ll continue to have conversations about and look at,” Pinta said.

“It’s for sure a balancing act with us,” Pinta said. “We have such an incredible home-court advantage in the Field House, such an amazing, iconic venue. But also on the flip side, you walk around the Kohl Center for the match vs. Florida this Sunday — just seeing the amount of people who were maybe experiencing Wisconsin volleyball for the first time. My two children who are three-and-a-half and five years old were there having an incredible time.”

The Kohl Center, in other words, gives UW the opportunity to have “thousands of more people who get to experience Wisconsin volleyball that wouldn’t normally have been able to.”

“If there’s a saturation point on the demand for Wisconsin volleyball, we certainly have not seen it yet,” Pinta said. “So we’re excited to continue to explore different ways to grow volleyball. We’ve talked a lot in the past obviously about playing in different places like Milwaukee and things like that. It’s all on the table. And I’m really excited to have a partner in Coach Sheffield who’s thinking the same way as myself and Mac (Chris McIntosh) on how we want to grow the sport.”

Sheffield was “really, really thankful” for the 12,277 fans at that Florida match — all while a Packers game was happening — and ended his press conference with a request for fans ahead of the Sept. 26 match against Rutgers.

“I think this is going to be a special year,” Sheffield said. “We need them on Friday night. We need that place packed. I don’t want to see a single seat open. We need them to come along for this journey and get that place cranking on Friday.”

This article originally appeared on Milwaukee Journal Sentinel: Wisconsin Badgers volleyball approaches historic level of fan interest