Three years earlier, Gao—a brand executive turned unlikely sports entrepreneur—had joined forces with a small group of entrepreneurs who sensed volleyball’s untapped potential. As they explored the landscape, they found themselves returning to this fact: volleyball was the most widely played team sport among girls in the U.S., yet it lacked any professional infrastructure. Here was a sport with massive participation, passion, and scale—but no architecture to sustain long-term growth.
They saw the makings of a business—and a movement.
The founding team—Gao, Olympic volleyball player Kevin Wong, and entrepreneur Peter Hirschmann—conceived League One Volleyball (LOVB), setting out to build an integrated ecosystem from grassroots development to a professional league. Over the next three years, they quietly assembled the largest youth volleyball network in North America.
That August night in Nebraska confirmed what Gao and her cofounders had believed all along: this wasn’t a niche—it was a sleeping giant. “It wasn’t even a postseason game—it was a regular season match,” Gao says of the collegiate match between Nebraska and Omaha. “That might surprise some people, but it doesn’t surprise the people in Nebraska or a lot of these hotbeds of the sport. It’s a religion of sorts—what football is to young men in the Midwest, volleyball is to girls. But while football enjoys massive commercial investment, volleyball’s been largely ignored.”
No longer. In the fall of 2024, Atwater Capital, alongside Ares Management and Left Lane Capital, committed $100 million to Gao and her cofounders’ vision—one of the largest single investments ever made in U.S. women’s sports. “We’re commercializing the biggest female sport in the country,” Gao says. “And in doing so, we’re helping drive better outcomes for this female-led game.”
Behind that statement is a market blind spot that investors are only now beginning to see. For decades, capital flowed into marquee men’s franchises and media rights deals, while massive markets like volleyball went ignored. The LOVB founders didn’t just spot the gap—they moved to fill it. What they’re building isn’t just a league. It’s a business case for the future of sports.
Setting the Play
For Katlyn Gao, the path to volleyball began in the corporate world, where she witnessed firsthand how brands could thrive by inverting traditional wisdom. After starting her career at Bain Capital, Gao worked across various retailers, and it was her time at Lululemon that proved transformative. Unlike other brands that relied on top-down marketing, Lululemon built its empire from the community up—cultivating devoted local followings that became the foundation for national scale.
This community-first philosophy would become central to LOVB's strategy. But Gao's approach is also shaped by her perspective as a woman building a business in a male-dominated industry. She could see what others were missing: the volleyball opportunity was part of a seismic shift happening across women's sports.
As women's sports revenue surpassed $1 billion globally for the first time in 2024—it’s projected to reach $2.35 billion in 2025 —it’s suddenly becoming abundantly clear that an area that institutional capital had long dismissed as unviable is transforming into one of the fastest-growing investment sectors.
According to Deloitte, 99% of brand decision-makers have increased women’s sports investments over the past five years. Dedicated funds focused specifically on women's sports have emerged over the last year, recognizing that massive participation without professional infrastructure creates market inefficiencies.
Volleyball represented the most dramatic disconnect. “It is the number one team sport for girls in high school ages —it actually has a higher player base than soccer,” says Gao. And yet, America's best players, “after they compete at the Olympics, they actually have to go abroad to make a living in professional volleyball.”
What made Gao and the LOVB founding team’s approach revolutionary wasn’t just the sport they chose, but how they chose to build it. “There is actually no model to what we’re doing,” Gao says. “There hasn't been a single sport here in the U.S. that’s ever started with the youth up to pro.”
Traditionally, American sports development follows a top-down structure: build professional leagues first, then talent pipelines. Gao’s team reversed that approach.
“Building the community at the youth level isn't just good business—it’s how you create something that lasts,” Gao says. The youth clubs generate recurring revenue, deepen market presence, and nurture athlete development. The health and development returns validate this approach: Adolescents who play sports are eight times more likely to be physically active at age 24. And organizations like LOVB cultivate the next generation of leaders: according to the Women's Sports Foundation, 80% of female Fortune 500 CEOs played sports in their formative years.
This grassroots infrastructure became the launchpad for a professional league. In January 2025, LOVB Pro launched with teams in Austin, Houston, Madison, Omaha, Salt Lake City, and Atlanta—all cities with strong collegiate volleyball traditions and existing youth clubs. The six teams feature seventeen Olympians, including nine out of the twelve players from the 2024 U.S. Olympic team.
“We were very focused on ensuring that our product is the best,” Gao explains. “A couple of them are actually investors as well,” Gao says of the Olympic athletes. “The integration of what they have seen in the other 48 leagues across the world and what they want to see here in the U.S.—that’s been a really special blend of insights.”
This athlete-ownership model creates strong stakeholder alignment. By making players investors rather than just employees, LOVB creates incentives for long-term ecosystem building rather than short-term individual optimization. LOVB players are co-owners of the ecosystem.
“This is a sport that doesn’t sit in the shadow of a big brother,” Gao explains. Unlike women’s basketball or soccer, volleyball has no male equivalent competing for attention. “It’s already the female version of the game—there’s nothing to be compared to.”
Ready for Primetime
The collaborative approach extends beyond athlete ownership to investment partnerships. Recalling her first meeting with the team at Ares, Gao says, “It was clear from the start this wasn’t going to be a transactional relationship. They wanted to help us build.”
The relationship that emerged reflects a new model of institutional engagement. “Being part of the journey has been what we certainly appreciate the most about our relationship,” Gao says, regarding the collaborative approach with investors. “Our conversations within the board meetings and outside have all been quite strategic, and less of a transactional kind of feel to it.”
The Ares team’s broader sports portfolio creates additional value for LOVB, providing access to league development insights and potential franchise partnerships that purely financial investors couldn’t offer. Says Gao, “Their relationships, their contacts, their willingness to make connections has definitely allowed us and enabled us to really take on that wisdom.”
This operational support proved crucial in securing what may be LOVB’s most significant partnership: a broadcast deal with ESPN. For a startup league in an undervalued women’s sport, landing on the network that defines mainstream sports represents both validation and transformation. ESPN carries all LOVB Pro matches, featuring 84 players across six teams competing on national television.
The partnership transforms volleyball from Olympic curiosity to year-round consumption. “Every four years, volleyball is one of the most popular sports to watch for the Olympics,” Gao says. “The fact that we’re volleyball also means that the recognition and engagement that people want and covet this particular game [comes], not just every four years, but every season with LOVB."
For Gao, LOVB's significance extends far beyond volleyball. The company represents a proof of concept for an entirely new investment thesis that institutional capital is only beginning to understand.
“It’s recognition that women’s sports is really an asset class that can unlock a lot of opportunities that haven't been there before,” she says. “There are so many data points already about the fact that 90% of consumer decisions in any household are made by women. And they develop an affinity towards any brand at age twelve or thirteen. Guess who we have in these gyms, right? Who we’re engaged with, who's already participating.”
LOVB cultivates brand loyalty at its source, building relationships with the athletes and families who will shape culture and communities for decades to come. “I think that alone is a dynamic that I’m really excited about, demonstrating how this can all work together, not forgetting the fact that these days, purpose and profit can be married if you’re intentional about it,” Gao explains.
What Gao and her cofounders built in volleyball is just the beginning. As women’s sports revenue skyrockets, LOVB’s community-first model has become the template for turning overlooked markets into billion-dollar opportunities. The youth-to-pro pipeline that seemed revolutionary in volleyball is now being replicated across sports, creating an entire ecosystem of female-focused professional development.
Across America, twelve-year-old girls are watching Olympic champions on ESPN and seeing a future that didn't exist three years ago. What LOVB built isn’t just professional infrastructure—it’s a pipeline of possibility that reframes how young athletes think about their sport’s ceiling. And its blueprint isn’t just transforming volleyball—it’s becoming the playbook for smart money in the next frontier in sports.