The AVP League will take a significant step in putting its new team-oriented product in front of mainstream sports fans with a two-hour telecast Sunday evening on cable TV CBS Sports Network.
The show will air matches from Week 4 of the League in suburban Austin, Texas, at the 8,700-seat H-E-B Center at Cedar Park. The AVP on Saturday announced over its social media platforms that an agreement had been reached with CBS Sports that would put its League on CBSSN every Sunday through the completion of the League’s regular season and the one-weekend playoffs.
Competing this weekend are the Austin Aces (2-2), Palm Beach Passion (1-3), LA Launch (1-3) and Brooklyn Blaze (1-3).
CBSSN will air the AVP League from 5 p.m. to 7 p.m. Eastern on Sunday in a tape-delayed scenario. The competition at the H-E-B Center is scheduled to conclude around an hour before the show ends.
Calling the action from Austin will be versatile Dain Blanton, charismatic recent ex-pro Casey Patterson and the capable Rich Lambourne, a former indoor USA Olympic gold medalist and high-profile beach coach who has worked as an announcer for the AVP and VBTV.
Blanton, who was part of NBC’s crew at the Paris Olympics, brings an impeccable degree of announcing professionalism to the telecast, as well as first-hand knowledge of the sport as an Olympic gold medalist and as the coach of USC’s powerhouse beach program that has won the last four NCAA championships.
The producers will be Echo Entertainment, the AVP’s longtime media partner. A rotating cast of announcers that will include AVP regulars Kevin Barnett and Camry Irwin is likely in subsequent weeks.
The two-hour telecast on Sunday will show the late game from Saturday night between the Aces and Passion, which includes the showdown between U.S. Olympians Taryn Kloth and Kristen Nuss of the Aces against Canadian Olympic silver medalists Melissa Humana-Paredes and Brandie Wilkerson of the Passion. The show also could include a highlight package from the other League games, time permitting.
CBSSN should be familiar to volleyball fans since it telecast a package of regular-season matches and the playoffs of the first-year indoor Pro Volleyball Federation this spring.
The TV/streaming picture from Austin will look like this: The first game on Saturday between the Blaze and Launch will be streamed live on the Bally Live app and ballylive.com. The later Aces-Passion game will air exclusively on CBSSN. The two games on Sunday will be archived on the AVP’s free YouTube channel after the completion of the national telecast.
Adding new fans to a highly invested base that has diminished over the last decade or so was a major motivating factor in the AVP’s launching its League series this fall, in hopes that its team dynamic could be more familiar to casual viewers. The first three weeks of the League likely have been seen by die-hards, with the games being streamed live on Bally Live app and matches archived on the AVP YouTube Channel. The largest number of cumulative views logged for a video of any League match on the YouTube Channel is 22,000, that coming in Week 1.
Meanwhile, the AVP gained thousands of potential new fans when the Manhattan Beach Open finals on the broadcast Ion channel had a total average viewership of 299,000 and the title matches from the Chicago Heritage Series event were watched by an average of 215,000 on the over-the-air CW Network.
