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Major League Baseball is investing successful Athletes Unlimited to enactment its softball league that volition debut adjacent month, marking the archetypal clip MLB volition person a broad concern with a nonrecreational women’s sports league.
MLB said Thursday it was making a strategical concern successful the Athletes Unlimited Softball League of an undisclosed magnitude for operational costs and a committedness to assistance it summation visibility successful assorted ways, including assistance with content, selling and sales, events, distribution, editorial, and integer and societal platforms. That includes selling the AUSL and its athletes during MLB's All-Star Game and passim the postseason.
“This is thing we’re truly excited about,” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred told The Associated Press. “We studied the abstraction hard. We deliberation it’s a existent accidental and we’re excited to beryllium involved.”
Athletes Unlimited has featured softball since 2020, erstwhile it unveiled a unsocial format that crowned an idiosyncratic champion. The institution volition motorboat a league with a traditional, team-based format starting June 7 and volition support its idiosyncratic format for the AUSL All-Star Cup that follows.
Manfred noted that involvement successful women’s sports had “escalated significantly” successful caller years and his league had been looking for ways to get much involved, including the imaginable motorboat of its ain softball league. He said Athletes Unlimited’s wide occurrence and its beardown infrastructure helped marque the determination to collaborate easier.
“We thought alternatively than starting connected our ain and competing, that uncovering a spot wherever we could put and turn a concern was a amended accidental for us,” Manfred said.
Kim Ng, a erstwhile Major League Baseball executive, signed connected arsenic an advisor with the AUSL and was promoted to commissioner successful April. Ng is the erstwhile wide manager of the Miami Marlins, the archetypal pistillate GM successful immoderate of the large U.S. pro sports leagues, and has 3 World Series rings from a combined 21 years successful the beforehand offices of the Chicago White Sox, New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers.
“As the process moved guardant and it looked similar we were going to marque an investment, they hired Kim, and we had a agelong narration with Kim, and it conscionable added further comfortableness to the thought of making the investment,” Manfred said.
Athletes Unlimited co-founder Jon Patricof said MLB’s committedness to expanding the AUSL’s visibility is arsenic important arsenic the fiscal investment.
“They’re committed to truly elevating the AUSL,” helium said. “It’s astir apt astir 1 of the astir hard things for immoderate sports league to bash which is to get visibility and interruption done to caller audiences, and I deliberation MLB is already doing that for the AUSL, and there’s going to beryllium a batch much to come.”
Women’s pro softball leagues and autarkic teams person travel and gone implicit the years, but nary person offered a accordant enactment for women to person a unchangeable aboriginal successful the sport.
It appears that mightiness change, with the assistance of softball greats Cat Osterman, Jennie Finch, Jessica Mendoza and Natasha Watley arsenic AUSL advisors. On June 7, the Bandits and Talons volition unfastened with a three-game bid successful Rosemont, Illinois, and the Blaze and Volts volition commencement disconnected with a three-game bid successful Wichita, Kansas. The 4 teams volition play 24 games this play arsenic touring properties that volition play games successful 12 cities. The apical 2 teams volition vie successful the AUSL Championship, a best-of-three bid July 26-28 successful Tuscaloosa, Alabama.
Patricof said the league plans to grow to six teams adjacent play and beryllium metropolis based.
MLB already supports respective women's softball and shot initiatives, including a concern with USA Softball and cognition of the MLB Develops girls shot pipeline. It is not progressive with the upstart Women's Professional Baseball League, which plans to motorboat successful 2026 arsenic the archetypal pro shot league for women since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League — of "A League of Their Own" fame — folded successful 1954.
Manfred said helium sees a agleam aboriginal up for AUSL.
“I afloat expect that they volition expand, and we anticipation that we volition extremity up with a league that is sustainable connected its own, a bully concern for us, and a spouse successful increasing diamond sports internationally,” helium said.
Patricof said the concern with MLB and the already existing narration betwixt the Athletes Unlimited and USA Softball harvester to assistance springiness the AUSL stability.
“As we denote MLB coming into the fold formally into what we’re doing with the AUSL, you truly spot a afloat alignment of this athletics down this league, and that I deliberation is breathtaking for everyone,” Patricof said. “People who person sat connected the sidelines oregon possibly person watched pro softball from a small spot of region — everybody’s present jumped in, and I deliberation that is an breathtaking infinitesimal for radical who’ve been astir this sport.”
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AP MLB: https://apnews.com/hub/MLB
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