Honda Center and the 2028 Olympic Rehearsal: Putting Women's Volleyball in the Right Frame

When organizers announced that the Honda Center in Anaheim will host indoor volleyball at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games, most fans simply registered the name of an arena. For those of us who work in this sport, the announcement carried a heavier detail: the building will be used as a full-scale rehearsal ahead of the Games, with international events brought in to test operations, lighting, broadcast camera positions, the mixed zone and the load-bearing capacity of the stands.

I have sat through enough volleyball press conferences to know that announcements like this rarely concern only an arena. They are about who gets seen, who gets broadcast, and who is left outside the frame. This time, the person placed at the centre of the frame is the women's game.

A commercial property that carries an Olympic ticket

The international event most often mentioned here is the Volleyball Nations League (VNL), the annual competition run by the International Volleyball Federation (FIVB). The preliminary phase runs for three weeks across several countries before the finals concentrate in a single host city. Since 2026, the VNL has expanded to 18 teams in both the men's and women's competitions, which means more matches and a higher value for broadcast rights.

In the VNL, prize money and television revenue sit above the surface. Below it lies the FIVB ranking points, accumulated match by match, which feed directly into Olympic qualification alongside continental qualifiers and the world qualifying tournament. For a national team sitting on the borderline between a direct berth and a wild card, one win in a preliminary week in mid-June can be worth an entire four-year cycle.

The choice of the Honda Center as a rehearsal venue therefore carries meaning beyond bricks and steel. An arena of roughly 18,000 seats, long used for North American professional ice hockey, will be configured for elite volleyball at Olympic scale for the first time. The gap between a hockey rink and an FIVB-standard volleyball court is not closed simply by laying a new surface over the ice. It involves stand distances, referee sightlines, medical team routes, and lighting rigs positioned so cameras never lose the ball.

What gets tested never shows on the scoreboard

After years of covering international volleyball, I have noticed that organizers tend to test three things at pre-Olympic events: the broadcast system, the data system and the human system.

Broadcast comes first. Women's volleyball has loyal audiences in several large markets, particularly Japan, Thailand, Brazil, Italy and Poland. A well-optimised broadcast window can swing millions of viewers between two rounds. With the Honda Center selected, organizers must work out a Pacific time zone slot that serves the arena crowd without losing Asian viewers.

Data comes next. FIVB has pushed hard on live statistics, where every rally is logged by error code, position and efficiency. Rehearsal events are the chance to see whether that system survives the load of a five-set match. For a journalist, this is the most interesting part: if the data is trustworthy, we argue less on gut feeling.

People come last. A pre-Olympic tournament typically mobilises hundreds of volunteers, referees, medical staff and interpreters. Mistakes here never appear on the scoreboard, but they show up in close-up frames.

For Asian audiences, the rehearsal is also a test of ticket pricing and broadcast scheduling. A VNL preliminary match in Japan or Thailand usually carries a far lower general admission price than an Olympic event in California could charge. To fill 18,000 seats for the whole tournament, organizers will have to trial session tickets, family packages and student rates. That arithmetic appears in no press release, yet it shapes how the sport looks on television.

In Moscow, I once mispronounced a player's name three times in a single set. Moscow is not only where I got a name wrong, but where I learned to listen to a person. Since then, every time I cover a sporting event, I ask who is missing from the story. And at rehearsals like this one, people call them test events. I call them the people who open the road.

The stage and the market do not sit in the same place

Here I want to raise a question that official announcements rarely answer. If the real goal is growing volleyball, why is the rehearsal taking place in North America, when most of the sport's growth comes from Asia?

Looking at broadcast revenue and audience numbers, women's volleyball lives on markets such as Japan, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. In those places, a national women's team match can fill an arena of several thousand seats, and domestic leagues pull substantial streaming audiences. Yet most international broadcast revenue flows to Western markets, where volleyball is not a leading popular sport.

In Southeast Asia, women's volleyball has a foundation many other sports envy: domestic leagues that run all year, stable streaming audiences, and a generation of younger players trained more systematically. A top-tier tournament in California does not take away their opportunities, but it shows that the sport's centre of power still sits somewhere other than its centre of growth.

One point is easily misread. Choosing a large California arena does not automatically make volleyball more attractive in California. A beautiful venue is necessary, not sufficient. To make the American market love volleyball, what is needed is a strong and relatable United States women's team, plus a school and college pipeline that feeds it from below. That cannot be created by a venue announcement.

Still, I do not want to paint a bleak picture. There is another layer of meaning in the Honda Center choice: it is a rare moment when women's volleyball is placed on equal footing with the men's game in terms of venue. At several recent Olympic Games, it was the women's semi-finals and finals that sold out first. Tournament managers have known this for years. That knowledge is only now beginning to appear on arena rental contracts.

The stands were empty, but the applause remained, only it came from people nobody writes about.

What I am waiting for

What I am waiting for at this rehearsal is not a prettier arena. I am waiting to see whether organizers dare to put women's volleyball in prime time, whether they dare to invest in the data and the stories of individual athletes, and whether they dare to recognise the markets that actually keep this sport alive. The rough gem is not at the bottom of the court, but in the place where nobody looks closely.