The FIVB Women’s Volleyball World Championship 2025 – the first under its new biennial cycle and expanded 32-team format – has marked a breakthrough moment for the sport, with unprecedented audiences across three of volleyball’s most important markets: China, Italy and Türkiye.
In China, volleyball reached historic heights with more than 1.1 billion views across broadcast and digital platforms.
- Over 500 million fans tuned in on CCTV5 during prime-time coverage, outperforming other major events such as the Basketball Men’s Asian Cup (370 million) and the Table Tennis WTT Yokohama (230 million).
- For the first time in the sport’s history, Volleyball World also partnered with 20 Douyin streamers, including former Chinese international stars, to bring the tournament directly to fans. This activation delivered 638 million additional views, reached over 140 million unique viewers, and sparked nearly 31 million interactions, setting a new benchmark for sports engagement in China.
In Europe, Italy’s gold medal showdown with Türkiye captivated nearly 4 million viewers on RAI 1, representing 33% of the viewer population at the time.
- Excluding football, this was the country’s fourth-largest live sports audience of 2025, narrowly behind the Wimbledon final featuring Jannik Sinner.
- Volleyball also dominated the Italian sports broadcast charts in August, claiming the top three positions ahead of basketball, athletics and motorsports.
In Türkiye, the World Championships also delivered record-breaking figures, with over 4.5 million fans watching the final live on TRT 1.
- This number surpassed the UEFA Champions League Final on the same channel, underlining volleyball’s position as one of the country’s leading sports.
Volleyball World’s OTT platform, VBTV, added further momentum with more than 7 million views across the Championship. The Italy-Brazil semi-final attracted 350,000 viewers, while the final drew 250,000, underscoring the global appetite for premium volleyball coverage beyond traditional broadcast.
FIVB President Fabio Azevedo said:
“The 2025 Women’s World Championship has truly demonstrated the universal appeal of volleyball. Across multiple continents fans have embraced the excitement and drama of the tournament. These numbers reflect the deepening connection between our sport and its global audience and with the work that we are doing, developing the game both on and off the court, we are sure that these numbers will only continue to grow.”
Volleyball World CEO Ugo Valensi added:
“With this World Championship we’ve shown that volleyball can lead the way in how sport is delivered. By combining world-class broadcast production with fresh storytelling through streamers and digital platforms, we are setting a new standard for fan engagement. It’s about creating not just audiences, but communities that live and breathe the sport.”
These records build on a highly successful month of volleyball with the VNL, which saw Poland score the highest ratings on Polsat Sport in over a quarter of a century (for the A4+ demographic), and millions of new viewers tuning in around the world.
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