Pro athletes and celebrities are buying up pickleball teams left and right as the sport rises in popularity both as a participatory and a spectator sport. Now, one of the top singers and one of the top quarterbacks in the NFL revealed they’re buying a team in a different sport they hope sees a similar popularity spike.
Jason Derulo revealed on TMZ Sports that he and Joe Burrow invested in a Pro Volleyball Federation team in Omaha, Nebraska.
Volleyball, especially women’s volleyball, is popular in college and the Olympics. Omaha is a volleyball hotbed as the Nebraska Cornhuskers won five national championships. Nebraska regularly tops the attendance for women’s volleyball, averaging over 8,000 people per game. Derulo hopes that the popularity of the college game, especially within Omaha, will translate to the pros and help get volleyball to become the next big thing in sports.
Pro Volleyball Federation is a brand new professional women’s volleyball league that will begin play in February 2024. At least eight teams will compete in a 16-game season, and teams have already been announced for Atlanta and Grand Rapids, in addition to Omaha. One of the PVF’s top priorities is paying players a living wage, pointing out that their first-year base salaries are similar to first-year WNBA players.
[TMZ]
About Phillip Bupp
Producer/editor of the Awful Announcing Podcast and Short and to the Point. News editor for The Comeback and Awful Announcing. Highlight consultant for Major League Soccer as well as a freelance writer for hire. Opinions are my own but feel free to agree with them.
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