How bringing it in-house helped Volleyball TV hit 1.5m members

Volleyball TV, the streaming platform for Volleyball World, a partnership between the federation, FIVB, and the CVC Capital Partners hit 1.5 million members last month, including both paying subscribers and freemium sign-ups.

In a landscape where many single-sport streaming platforms have been attempted, to varying degrees of success, this can be seen as an example of how, given the right strategy, the idea can work. Broadcast Sport sat down with Volleyball World CEO Finn Taylor to discuss what has helped Volleyball TV, which shows competitions such as the Volleyball Nations League, Beach Pro Tour, Olympic qualification tournaments, and more, to this mark.

“I think probably the biggest thing that we’ve done is brought everything in-house,” Taylor first noted. “It’s our own business. Our marketing team is internal, our subscriber team is internal, we’ve transitioned to a platform that we’ve essentially built ourselves. Volleyball World has been very focused on building a product that drives consumers, retains consumers, and entertains. So, rather than outsourcing that to a third party, we’ve been very much about building our team internally and having a big focus on that.”

Bringing so much in house has led to looking outside of traditional sport backgrounds for hiring, with people coming to Volleyball World from live entertainment, data science, and more to give a wider perspective on how to grow a following.

Other strengths he pointed to included a focus on entertainment, “It’s very hard to make money in a streaming service. Even the big players, we see, lose money quite successfully. We’ve been very focused on not overspending for content, getting the content that we know will drive fans, and really trying to be entertaining versus just putting up a camera. I think a lot of sports similar to volleyball have a philosophy of just put it up and that’s enough. We didn’t think that was enough. There’s too much competition out there, and we wanted to make sure that all of the volleyball content is entertaining and is produced well, and provides an alternative to going to a movie or watching TV.”

This includes producing almost all content, live and non-live, in-house with production partner Blitz. Taylor estimates that around 85% of matches are produced by the company’s in-house team, which adds up to roughly 3000 beach volleyball and just under 1000 indoor volleyball games a year. It also produces non-FIVB content, working with the Italian men’s professional league and being open to further partnerships - although it will only produce something if it can also be broadcast on Volleyball TV.

Notably, this doesn’t include the Olympics, and Taylor claims that sign-ups have primarily come during the Volleyball Nations League tournaments, which won record viewership in 2024, rather than as an Olympics boost, noting, “It’s growing and they’re staying on the platform. It shows the attractiveness of a live home for volleyball.”

The amount of content only set to grow, with Taylor looking to expand content in the near future. “We’re basically trying to build a 365 day content offering for volleyball fans around the world. The fact of it is, today, there aren’t 365 days of live volleyball around the world. We have an international season, which is more or less May to October, and then the domestic pro season, which is October to May. So in those shoulder periods, the pre season and post season if you like, we’re working on developing new content that will keep fans engaged.”

While continuing to grow, Taylor doesn’t see the platform as a threat to broadcasters. “There’s a lot of volleyball out there, right? Broadcasters don’t necessarily have the bandwidth to be able to broadcast, for example, 3000 matches of the Beach Pro Tour.”

He believes the two can help each other, “There’s a core fan that wants to watch their team play every single match of the year. And then the broadcasters will take the finals and semi-finals and the key matches. We actually have very mutually beneficial partnerships with all of our broadcasters. In fact, we have some partnerships where Volleyball TV is hosted on broadcaster platforms.”

There are also a number of new features in the process of being added to the platform, including improved video quality and search options, a new payments system, and customisable home page.

Volleyball TV’s growth began during the pandemic, and Taylor picks out the 2021 Volleyball National League tournament as the moment fans began to sign up - but a lot of work has come since then to keep viewers coming back. “We’ve spent a lot of money and effort in improving the product from a from a live fan perspective, but also from a broadcast fan perspective. Upping the TV production, improving the commentary, improving the match presentation.”

He added: “It used to just be produced by the local TV network, whichever city it was in. We now have one consistent production throughout the year on all of the events with one company. It works seamlessly. Our production partner Blitz is phenomenal and the quality of the production has grown and fans keep coming back.”