LINCOLN, Neb. (Nebraska Examiner) — Former Nebraska Attorney General Jon Bruning loves just about everything about women’s volleyball — the speed, the grace and the thundering spikes.
“I’ve always been a volleyball fan,” Bruning said. “It’s a beautiful sport to watch because it’s violent and it’s athletic and every point matters.”
Abboud is old friend
So when an old buddy, Las Vegas lawyer and Omaha native Andy Abboud, called recently about buying into a new pro volleyball team, Bruning said he couldn’t pass that up.
On Wednesday, Bruning was announced as a minority owner of a new Las Vegas franchise in the Pro Volleyball Federation, the women’s professional league that includes the Omaha Supernovas.
The league, which will begin play in January, now has seven teams lined up for its 2024 inaugural season, and another seven teams are scheduled to join in 2025.
Abboud, a senior vice president of government relations for the Las Vegas Sands casino/resorts, is leader of the ownership group of the Vegas volleyball franchise.
Bruning, who now heads up a private law firm in Lincoln, said he sees interest in women’s volleyball exploding, with the new pro league tapping into that, and attracting the world’s best players and eventually a television contract.
Served as AG from 2003-2015
“I’ve always been an entrepreneur at heart, and politics is kind of an offshoot of that,” said the former attorney general, who served in that office from 2003 to 2015 after serving six years in the Nebraska Legislature. A Republican, he also ran unsuccessfully for the U.S. Senate and governor.
Abboud, Bruning said, has been a longtime friend, and he, as well as other owners in the new league, anticipate that it will be a big hit.
He cited the world-record, 92,003 fans who attended the Volleyball Day matches at Memorial Stadium at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln in August, and the NU-Stanford volleyball match, which drew a larger TV audience than a Yankees-Red Sox baseball game on the same night in September.
Bruning, a longtime fan of NU volleyball, said it’s long overdue that the U.S. has a premiere women’s volleyball league. Currently, the country’s best female athletes must go overseas to pursue a pro career.
“Women’s volleyball is not only the top United States team sport in high school with more than 500,000 girls playing annually, it’s one of the highest rated Olympic sports every four years,” Bruning said.
Big names involved
Others involved in the new league include four-time Olympian Logan Tom, who is a player development official with the league, and Kerri
Walsh Jennings, a three-time Olympic Gold Medal winning sand volleyball player who is the lead owner of the San Diego franchise. NFL quarterback Joe Burrow and his father, Jimmy, a former NU football player, are among investors in the new league.
The Las Vegas franchise has yet to select a name or choose a place to play, but it has already lined up a coach — Fran Flory, a Hall of Fame former coach at LSU — and a president — Ruben Herrera, a former Red Bull marketing executive and head of the Vegas Aces youth volleyball club.
Other owners in the Las Vegas franchise have yet to be announced, said Abboud, a graduate of UNL.
“My partners and I are dedicated to bringing amazing experiences to Las Vegas sports fans,” he said in a press release from the league.
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