The 2025 FIVB Women’s Volleyball World Championship, marking its first edition under a new biennial cycle and an expanded 32-team format, has achieved a groundbreaking success for the sport. The tournament generated unprecedented viewership figures across three pivotal markets: China, Italy, and Türkiye.
In China, volleyball soared to historic popularity, capturing over 1.1 billion views across traditional broadcast and digital platforms. Prime-time coverage on CCTV5 alone attracted more than 500 million fans, outperforming major events like the Basketball Men’s Asian Cup (370 million) and the Table Tennis WTT Yokohama (230 million).
- A unique collaboration with 20 Douyin streamers, including former Chinese international stars, further amplified engagement, delivering 638 million additional views, reaching over 140 million unique viewers, and sparking nearly 31 million interactions, thus setting a new benchmark for sports fan involvement in China.
In Europe, the thrilling gold medal final between Italy and Türkiye on RAI 1 captivated close to 4 million viewers, representing 33% of the audience at that time.
- Beyond football, this ranked as Italy`s fourth-largest live sports audience of 2025, just behind the Wimbledon final featuring Jannik Sinner.
- Volleyball also dominated Italian sports broadcasts in August, securing the top three positions over basketball, athletics, and motorsports.
Türkiye mirrored this success, with its World Championship final drawing over 4.5 million live viewers on TRT 1.
- This viewership remarkably surpassed that of the UEFA Champions League Final broadcast on the same channel, cementing volleyball`s status as a leading sport in the nation.
Volleyball World’s dedicated OTT platform, VBTV, significantly bolstered the Championship’s reach, accumulating over 7 million views. The Italy-Brazil semi-final alone garnered 350,000 viewers, while the final attracted 250,000, clearly demonstrating a robust global appetite for premium volleyball content beyond conventional television.
“The 2025 Women’s World Championship powerfully illustrates volleyball’s universal appeal. Fans across multiple continents enthusiastically embraced the tournament’s excitement and drama. These figures highlight the deepening bond between our sport and its global audience, and with our ongoing dedication to developing the game both on and off the court, we are confident these numbers will continue to rise.”
“This World Championship has shown how volleyball is innovating in sports content delivery. By integrating world-class broadcast production with fresh, engaging storytelling through streamers and digital platforms, we are establishing a new standard for fan engagement. Our objective is to foster not just audiences, but thriving communities that truly live and breathe the sport.”
These impressive viewership records build upon a successful month for volleyball, including the VNL, where Poland achieved its highest ratings on Polsat Sport in over 25 years (for the A4+ demographic), and millions of new viewers tuned in globally.
Jasper Thornfield 
Oliver Wrenwick