Lisa Bluder had a captivated audience, and she had a point she wanted to make.On the floor at Carver-Hawkeye Arena stood her former player Caitlin Clark, on hand to watch her No. 22 Iowa jersey be hoisted to the rafters, fittingly on Feb. 2 (or “2-2”), 2025. A few feet away sat the USC women’s basketball team, including budding superstar JuJu Watkins. Secondary-market tickets had reached $650 for spots in nosebleed sections, and more than 1.1 million people watched from home.Bluder, the winningest coach in Big Ten women’s basketball history who retired after taking Iowa to consecutive national title games, looked at Clark and told the crowd why it was wise for networks and companies to invest in women’s sports.“It’s not only the right thing to do,” Bluder said, “but it’s the smart thing to do.”Women’s basketball soared in popularity as Clark set the NCAA scoring record at Iowa. In the two years since Clark left for the WNBA, the Big Ten has kept its momentum and expanded its reach, with television ratings and attendance remaining strong. While other leagues have mirrored that growth — particularly the SEC — the Big Ten’s focus and willingness to change keeps it at the cutting edge, and for those directly involved, the ascension serves as a starting point, not a destination.“It’s a really special time,” UCLA women’s basketball coach Cori Close said, “but without vision, people perish. None of us want this to be a moment; we want it to be a movement that continues to grow and is sustainable. We need strategy, vision, teamwork and I want the Big Ten to lead the way in that.”At the Big Ten office, capitalizing means reshaping the league’s inventory and creating special events that place its best programs, environments and star athletes into key television windows. It’s taking what was a good product and making it great.“The growth has been unbelievable,” USC women’s basketball coach Lindsay Gottlieb said. “Just continuing to value women’s basketball as the entity and the force that we are, never putting limits on what these women are capable of, not putting limits on their value to a university, their value to TV stations.”The growth is not exclusive to just one sport. Since the 2021-22 school year, women’s basketball ratings are up 38 percent and women’s volleyball are up 37 percent on Big Ten Network. Soccer (62 percent), gymnastics (39 percent) and softball (27 percent) follow a similar trend. The league has added event and feature coverage on BTN, including weekly highlight shows and daily segments. In a four-year period, the total number of live women’s sporting events shown on BTN has grown 24 percent from 196 in 2021-22 to 243 in 2025-26.“I think it has shown in women’s basketball, shown in women’s sports, people are going to watch it if you put it on,” Maryland women’s basketball coach Brenda Frese said.Volleyball’s spikeWomen’s volleyball has lacked a Caitlin Clark-like superstar, but perhaps no sport has enjoyed more organic growth. Last fall’s NCAA Tournament on ABC/ESPN was the most watched in history, and four matches surpassed 1 million viewers. And nowhere does the sport garner more support than Nebraska.For a decade, Nebraska volleyball was the conference’s only women’s team in any sport to generate an annual profit. In 2023, the Huskers shifted a home match to the football stadium and set a global women’s sports attendance record by drawing 92,003 fans. Nebraska sells out at home and regularly on the road.“You saw what the Memorial Stadium match did for volleyball,” said Nebraska coach Dani Busboom Kelly, who was coaching at Louisville at the time. “There’s people all over the world that started taking notice when they saw that event.”BTN has increased its total volleyball telecasts by 44 percent in a four-year period, and 1.66 million watched Minnesota play Wisconsin on Fox following a Vikings-Packers football game in 2024.For Grace McNamara, the Big Ten’s senior director of television administration who oversees volleyball, the confluence of interest and prowess has led to wide-ranging conversations about how to increase visibility.