Inside League One Volleyball: CMO Raquel Braun on Partnering With Omaha Productions, Mobile TV Group

In the league's second year, new partnerships enhance broadcast quality for games on ESPN, USA Network, Victory+

The young League One Volleyball (LOVB) is already making significant strides to solidify its growth and future success. On the production side, the league recently teamed with Omaha Productions to produce its Game of the Week coverage on USA Network. On the operations side, Mobile TV Group (MTVG) - a major mobile-units and live-services provider on the regional and national level - has come on board to support both onsite and remote productions. Spearheading the efforts is LOVB Chief Media Officer Raquel Braun, an industry veteran with an extensive background in production.

SVG sat down with Braun to talk about the origins of LOVB's relationship with Omaha Productions and Mobile TV Group, how partnering with these two powerhouse companies will provide greater broadcast visibility, how LOVB is contributing to the rise in televised women's sports, and more.

How did the relationship with Mobile TV Group and Omaha Productions begin? What made them stand out from others?

When we started the process to build out our production plans for our second season, we knew our media partners were going to be different. We brought in USA Network as a partner; we hadn't announced yet that we were going to be working with Victory+ as well.

Elevating our media partners from season one to season two, we knew we also had to step up our production. We had a good baseline on production in season one, but there were definitely some things that we needed to work on and adjust. As a new sports league, we don't have an unlimited budget, so we had to be thoughtful about how we could approach having a premium Game of the Week and still have a strong setup for every other match. We went to market with our proposal for the production technical services and technical facilities and had a really good response.

As part of that process, we had started talking to Omaha Productions as well, because I had worked with a number of their employees while I was at FOX Sports and knew about their big sports events and original programming. I saw the opportunities at LOVB to innovate and do things a little differently. I've worked across a number of sports leagues, and, once you've been in this business for many years, you have a very set way of how you produce games. Finding that marriage between Omaha and MTVG provided us with an interesting proposition because we're now able to create a phenomenal product.

What lessons from year one were taken into year two?

We spent a lot of time looking at what worked last year and what we want to improve. We had a lot of conversations with our media partners. When we secured primetime on Wednesday nights, we spent a lot of time talking with USA Network to understand their expectations and how they wanted these broadcasts to look on the air. We also spent a lot of time with MTVG and Omaha heading into the start of the season, and we're continuing those daily conversations right now. Whether it's managing technical issues, thinking through how we expand our storytelling or how we can innovate to cover how our finals will look three months from now, we're constantly talking about how we can do things better. I think the only way to do that is to have great communication and have partners who want to improve alongside us.

You mentioned topics like budget limitations and technological issues. What are some of the challenges that your league is facing? How do you rely on these two production partners to solve those problems?

As a new league, one of the earliest challenges that we experienced was finding people who knew volleyball and could produce the sport. Luckily, we've been successful in getting a phenomenal crew to help us produce our matches. Another challenge is making sure that our other matches are living up to the same high standard that we have for our Game of the Week. That's where having a partner like MTVG is especially helpful: they care about the property and how it shows up. On our off days, we'll test different options; we discuss a certain problem and address it by bringing in a specialist to help manage and fix the issue.

Creating awareness and visibility has been a huge priority. How are you making League One Volleyball a viable possibility for top-tier collegiate and professional players through high-quality productions?

We've had these exceptional female volleyball players who have played collegiately in the U.S. and have won Olympic medals, but, in between those major competitions, they've had nowhere at home to play. They've traveled internationally to grow this sport, but now they have the chance to play professionally in a league that features 10 of the 12 Olympians from Team USA who won medals in Paris. For those 10 women to have the choice and ability to play at home instead of having to go abroad was really meaningful. We also have the captain of the Chinese national team who now plays in LOVB, so we have this destination for the best volleyball players in the world to continue playing at the highest level.

To match the opportunity that they have on the court, it's my job and my team's job to make sure that we put their games on the biggest platform. That meant teaming up with VERSANT for games on USA Network and working with Victory+ to build a hub for our fans to consume live matches, replays, and short-form content. It also meant continuing to leverage our relationship with ESPN. We have to give these athletes not just the ability to play on the court but the media opportunity to have their stories told; [it also gives] fans the chance to watch them play their games. It has been a big task but one that has been exciting and a lot of fun.

The team at League One Volleybal

LINK:	https://www.sportsvideo.org/2026/02/03/inside-league-one-volleyball-cm...
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