For the primary time because the Eisenhower Administration, girls dreaming of taking part in baseball professionally in the USA could have the chance to see that dream realized with a league of their very own.
Final October, the Ladies’s Professional Baseball League (WPBL) issued its first press launch to announce the founding of the nation’s solely skilled girls’s baseball league, which is about to launch in the summertime of 2026. The league is co-founded by Justine Siegal — who’s finest recognized for founding Baseball For All, “[A] women baseball nonprofit that builds gender fairness by creating alternatives for ladies to play, coach, and lead within the sport” — and Keith Stein, a businessman, lawyer, and member of the possession group for a semiprofessional males’s baseball staff in Toronto. The league has additionally introduced in former Toronto Blue Jays supervisor Cito Gaston and Crew Japan’s two-time Ladies’s Baseball World Cup MVP Ayami Sato as particular advisors.
Ladies’s baseball has a protracted, however sadly sparse, historical past relationship again to the late 1800s, when schools within the Northeast, akin to Vassar, fielded groups. Since then, girls have largely accrued taking part in time by representing their nation’s nationwide staff on the Olympics, taking part in on barnstorming groups – from the Dolly Vardens within the 1870s to the Colorado Silver Bullets within the Nineties – or by incomes roles in leagues primarily created for males, from the beginner ranks to the professionals (see Mo’ne Davis, Toni Stone, Lizzie Arlington, and extra lately, Kelsie Whitmore, amongst many others). Except for the All-American Women Skilled Baseball League, shaped throughout WWII to fill a void left by the male ballplayers combating abroad, girls in the USA haven’t had a devoted skilled league.
So in spite of everything these years and not using a league, why now? “The previous was the appropriate time,” Stein says in a current interview with FanGraphs. “Thirty years in the past was the appropriate time. 4 years in the past was the appropriate time. Undoubtedly, positively, now’s the appropriate time.” As proof, he notes, “There’s now knowledgeable girls’s hockey league that’s thriving, knowledgeable girls’s soccer league, knowledgeable girls’s basketball league. They’re all thriving due to the urge for food, the unbelievable urge for food, for ladies’s sport.”
However whereas the tradition does appear primed to welcome extra girls’s leagues, an enthusiastic fan base solely covers half of the demand equation. In contrast to the opposite sports activities that Stein cites, girls’s baseball doesn’t profit from the existence of school applications to behave as a developmental pipeline. Stein says the creation of a league shall be a “catalyst for the event of a complete infrastructure round girls’s baseball and hopefully spawn the event of a baseball tradition in America for ladies.” And within the meantime, he believes there’s greater than sufficient expertise to fill the WPBL rosters. Practically 700 gamers registered within the first week or so after the league’s announcement, in keeping with Stein. “We’ve nice skilled gamers from world wide, high gamers from Japan, the U.S. — in all places — who’re very excited to play with us,” Stein says. “There are over 2,000 girls taking part in on boys highschool groups. There are 1000’s and 1000’s of gamers who’re able to play on this league.”
Gamers and followers can solely get an upstart girls’s league to date, although; it wants a monetary help system to assist it get off the bottom. A method to do this can be for the ladies’s league to type a partnership with its male counterpart, because the WNBA did with the NBA. Nevertheless, for the WPBL, partnering with MLB would imply giving males’s baseball a say in how the ladies’s league operates. Maybe cautious of this, the WPBL as a substitute is selecting to stay impartial and create a female-led league. To that finish, the league has composed an advisory board of seven girls with a long time of expertise in baseball and girls’s sports activities. Maybelle Blair, a former pitcher for the All-American Women Skilled Baseball League, will function the board’s Honorary Chair and throw out the primary pitch on the WPBL’s season opener in 2026.
The WPBL plans to carry a scouting camp this coming spring, adopted by a participant draft late in 2025, main as much as its first season throughout the summer season of 2026. The league’s six inaugural groups shall be situated within the northeastern area of the U.S. to start out, with plans to increase nationwide because the league grows. Given its bold goals, the challenges of beginning a model new league, and the friction created by a sports activities tradition that’s nonetheless studying to correctly worth athletes who aren’t males, the WPBL faces a formidable path ahead. Fortuitously, trailblazers throughout girls’s sports activities have mapped a course. The current explosion of eyeballs on girls’s basketball units up the WNBA as an apparent mannequin for a girls’s baseball league, however the WNBA stands on the shoulders of earlier makes an attempt at girls’s skilled basketball.
Many bear in mind the American Basketball League that began one 12 months previous to the WNBA, and lasted simply three seasons, however nearly twenty years prior, the Ladies’s Skilled Basketball League (WBL) gave American basketball followers their first style of girls’s professional ball. Although the league drew 1000’s of followers when it tipped off, it folded after three years. The WBL demonstrated {that a} girls’s skilled league may work, but it surely nonetheless relied on correct execution off the courtroom. Although girls’s sports activities are producing “unbelievable curiosity and help,” as Stein notes within the press launch, there’s quite a bit the WPBL can study from the missteps of the WBL in three essential areas – staff possession, the on-field product, and media protection.
Crew Possession
The WBL’s league president Invoice Byrne was, like Stein, a sports activities entrepreneur who dabbled in a number of burgeoning leagues throughout soccer, basketball, and softball. Because the league’s president and commissioner, he oversaw a gaggle of householders that in the end lacked dedication. A sports activities league, like several new enterprise endeavor, is more likely to spend a couple of years within the pink earlier than turning a revenue. Karen Logan, a participant and coach for the Chicago Hustle who additionally labored for the league as an advisor and promoter, advised the Washington Publish, “The staff homeowners are taking a look at this league as a advertising and marketing motion, a fad to money in on,” she mentioned. “They do not know what they need the product to be.”
Gail Marquis, who performed two seasons within the WBL, echoed Logan’s sentiment in an interview with The Subsequent: “The homeowners, the organizers, they had been simply in it for the cash they usually didn’t have the longevity to go along with it the entire time.” Marquis received a WBL title with the New York Stars after which watched the franchise fold throughout the subsequent offseason. When a championship caliber staff didn’t instantly flip a revenue, possession bailed. Regardless of its success on the courtroom, the staff’s swift demise was not stunning. The Stars started the season taking part in house video games at Madison Sq. Backyard and practising at Lengthy Island College, however Marquis recalled that half manner by the season, they had been taking part in video games at native schools and practising at rec facilities in sketchy neighborhoods. And if that wasn’t sufficient, participant paychecks started arriving at inconsistent intervals, if in any respect.
As groups folded, typically midseason, it forged a destructive notion on the league and girls’s sports activities extra typically. Marquis mentioned the media would use it as proof that girls’s sports activities weren’t sustainable. In actuality, the league’s buyers didn’t give it the chance to achieve the purpose of sustainability.
WBL homeowners paid a price of $50,000 to hitch the league (about $235,000 right this moment), which means they didn’t should be billionaires, and even hundred millionaires, to purchase a sports activities franchise, as is the case right this moment. The newest WNBA enlargement groups have paid charges of $50 million, with further monetary commitments required to construct state-of-the-art follow amenities, bringing the buy-in determine north of $100 million. Elevating the barrier to entry will increase the probability that potential possession teams will view groups as investments and the league as a spot the place sure minimal high quality requirements have to be met.
Stein appears to grasp the should be considered in vetting possession teams. “[It’s] the factor we’re going to labor and agonize over essentially the most,” he says, including that they’ve already had near 100 possession inquiries. “Everyone needs to personal knowledgeable sports activities staff. And from my expertise, most individuals mustn’t personal knowledgeable sports activities staff,” he says. “They could have the cash, however they don’t have the appropriate mindset.” Stein is searching for homeowners “ who’re enthusiastic about constructing out this league over the lengthy haul, not the quick time period.” He floats a timeline of three to 5 years earlier than the league breaks even, which means homeowners might want to put together themselves to soak up losses within the early going.
On the subject of amenities, Stein acknowledges that the league’s stadiums initially shall be on the smaller finish to make sure full, full of life crowds and an optimum broadcast product. However no matter dimension, Stein expects groups “to have the appropriate coaching amenities, clubhouses, dugouts, area, area situations. We’re not going to cope with an possession group that doesn’t have a facility dedication in place that isn’t absolutely skilled with the entire requisite facilities.”
Too many WBL homeowners had been seeking to money in on an in a single day success whereas working a bare-bones operation. On draft day, mere months earlier than the league was set to tip off, two groups had been nonetheless with out house arenas, and staff homeowners had been unilaterally making picks as a result of they hadn’t employed scouts or coaches. Then, when the time got here to barter contracts with the brand new draftees – a lot of whom had to learn that the league truly existed – gamers bristled on the low salaries. Luisa Harris (who was additionally drafted into the NBA) was one 12 months faraway from faculty and dealing an administrative job at Delta State College when she was drafted by the Houston WBL staff. Upon listening to rumors of low four-figure salaries, Harris advised the New York Occasions, “I do know the ladies received’t play for nothing. I make that [much] sitting [at a desk],” whereas noting that taking part in basketball requires much more effort and skill than a desk job.
When WBL homeowners didn’t land within the black after one or two seasons, groups discovered themselves too far within the gap to dig their manner out. Through the league’s third and closing season, gamers had been strolling out of video games in protest as a consequence of lack of pay. Possession teams underestimated or misunderstood the price of proudly owning a sports activities franchise, maybe assuming they may pad their revenue margins by exploiting the labor of girls – one of many basic cheat codes for these in positions of energy.
Stein admits that WPBL salaries received’t be excessive at first, however he says the plan is to have salaries develop because the league does. “It’s a key purpose for us to raise the [compensation] for ladies baseball gamers, as a result of at first they’re not going to make something near what skilled basketball or soccer gamers are making proper? However our hope is we get them there.” By his estimation it’ll take a couple of years to achieve that time. Within the meantime, to make up for the inadequate salaries, “We’ll increase the bar by doing issues like [covering] lodging prices and meals prices,” he says. “We shall be making this as enticing financially as we are able to.”
Whereas this plan is admirable and might be trigger for cautious optimism, it’s additionally unlikely to be administration’s choice alone to make. In {most professional} sports activities leagues, salaries usually are not unilaterally decreed by administration, however moderately negotiated by a gamers union. Marquis bemoaned the shortage of a union within the WBL, wishing the gamers had been higher geared up to battle again in opposition to the homeowners. And although Stein appears poised to argue the monetary realities of a league that’s simply getting began, he ought to be ready to take action earlier than a united entrance of gamers who know their price.
To return to Karen Logan’s ideas on the financials of a brand new league, “If a league can’t pay respectable wages, it shouldn’t exist.”
The On-Discipline Product
All the pieces the league does ought to showcase the precise baseball being performed. This could go with out saying, however as a result of many individuals nonetheless view girls’s sports activities as lesser, those that are charged with promoting the product could also be tempted to decorate it up with varied gimmicks to draw extra eyeballs. Among the WBL gimmicks concerned literal costume up. The Dallas staff introduced in a stylist for a marathon makeover session previous to opening night time. Different groups spent draft picks on publicity stunts. The New York Stars drafted a former Miss America, who on the time was busy working as an NFL broadcaster for CBS. The Iowa Cornets chosen a participant from the Soviet Union’s nationwide staff, seemingly for the only cause that she was 7’4”. Some argue all publicity is sweet publicity, however lookie-loos don’t make for invested followers, and artifice tends to distract moderately than improve.
In the meantime, gamers ought to be allowed to concentrate on their craft moderately than crafting the specified public persona. We’ve come a great distance because the All-American Women Skilled Baseball League had its gamers on the sphere in skirts, however feminine athletes are nonetheless beneath stress to current a passable picture to the general public, although the general public not often agrees on what that picture ought to be.
As one of many faces of the WBL, Molly Kazmer (who on the time glided by Molly Bolin) bore the burden of conflicting expectations. Many individuals thought that elite feminine athletes ought to give off stereotypical tomboy vibes, whereas Kazmer provided a extra standard femininity. Then, when she went in opposition to the norms established by male athletes and bought posters of herself that appeared extra like they belonged in a trend journal than Sports activities Illustrated, she got here beneath hearth from feminists for permitting herself to be exploited. It didn’t matter that the poster was her thought, and that she was the one straight gathering income from the gross sales; to her critics, she was utilizing her femininity for monetary achieve. Later, the truth that she pursued a profession in any respect moderately than being a stay-at-home spouse and mom was used in opposition to her in courtroom when combating for custody of her son.
Although a lot of what Kazmer and her friends endured has been rightly excised from society, professional athletes nonetheless face hordes of harsh critics and stress to dwell as much as stereotypes, but it surely’s essential that none of that comes from league or staff officers. A wholesome league empowers its gamers to be themselves and discourages pointless exterior commentary as a result of creating that atmosphere will enable gamers to carry out at their peak. And high-quality baseball is the precise product.
However once more, as a result of some view the ladies’s model of sport as lesser, they consider that gives a built-in excuse to speculate much less. Of their eyes, merely offering a league for ladies is a beneficiant act of charity, one that doesn’t lengthen to executing the fundamental operations of a league in a reliable method. For its half, the WBL cheaped out on officiating. It’s arduous to play a good recreation of basketball with rec league-quality refs. Throughout one specific recreation, the referees had been so egregious that 5 gamers from the New Orleans Delight fouled out with 5 minutes remaining within the fourth quarter, leaving solely 4 wholesome gamers to complete the sport. Fairly than play shorthanded, the staff agreed to stroll out in protest of the substandard officiating.
Many WBL groups additional selected to compromise the product on the courtroom by hiring coaches primarily based extra on title recognition than precise {qualifications}, preferring former NBA gamers and coaches to candidates skilled within the girls’s recreation. Because of this, the league wound up with males who seen the teaching alternative as a stepping stone for a greater place on the boys’s aspect, in addition to coaches who had already confirmed themselves missing within the NBA — after which did no higher within the WBL. A number of coaches had to get replaced midseason for underperformance or racking up so many technicals that the staff couldn’t afford the fines. Within the aftermath, the gamers had been left to scrub up the messes for males who most likely shouldn’t have had the job within the first place. Right here WPBL groups will do nicely to lean on Siegal and Sato and their networks inside the sport as they go about their hiring, moderately than making an attempt to poach massive names from MLB.
And although Stein is already priming the narrative that budgets shall be tight early on, he understands that placing out a compelling on-field product is paramount. “What we’re doing is essential when it comes to elevating girls’s sport and girls’s baseball, however we wish to be a kickass league,” he says. “We would like folks to look at us, not simply because it’s girls; we wish folks to look at it as a result of it’s thrilling, it’s nice competitors, [and] there’s nice expertise.”
Media Protection
The media panorama within the late Nineteen Seventies was clearly very totally different from what it’s right this moment. The place the WBL struggled with restricted avenues for getting its product in entrance of followers, the WPBL could have the alternative drawback: In the present day’s leisure market is oversaturated. The abundance of choices is overwhelming, making it harder than ever to chop by the noise and entice followers to a brand new league.
Because the WBL tried to get off the bottom, these inside the league understood that the important thing to successful over potential followers was getting them to a recreation. Even these skeptical of girls’s sports activities or agnostic to the trigger might be transformed by the motion on the courtroom. Ray Scott, who coached the Dallas Diamonds and New Orleans Delight, mentioned he and his spouse Sandi made some extent to get as many individuals as attainable to return to video games, and Sandi famous that the expertise acquired rave evaluations. “One remark that was nearly common,” she mentioned, “was that individuals had no thought how nicely the ladies performed and the way fascinating the sport was.”
Individuals received’t know what they’re lacking if they’ll’t watch the video games. The WBL’s attendance was robust early on, when the brand new league had loads of buzz, however the groups’ house arenas held solely round 5,000 followers – much like the ballparks the WPBL could have beginning out. Not many WBL video games made it on TV given the restricted air time obtainable again then, so sustaining that early buzz was difficult.
A research from the expertise company Wasserman estimated that 15% of sports activities media protection from 2018 to 2023 went to girls’s sports activities. That quantity represents a broad definition of media, together with streaming websites and social media accounts. When zooming in on extra mainstream TV protection like studio speak exhibits, girls’s sports activities garner simply 5% of the protection. Although the research exhibits year-over-year progress for ladies’s sports activities, the discrepancy between the place that protection comes from underscores the purpose that a rise in amount doesn’t assure elevated accessibility. Final season, WNBA video games airing on ESPN averaged 1.19 million viewers, whereas video games airing on ION, a lesser-known cable channel, averaged simply 670,000 viewers. The easiest way for a brand new league to achieve potential followers is thru high quality, mainstream protection.
Sadly, securing a significant rights settlement with one of many marquee networks will not be an choice for a newly shaped girls’s baseball league. Understanding this, the subsequent best choice for the WPBL could also be to make its video games obtainable on an simply accessible streaming service for no value.
Presently, the WPBL is within the early phases of broadcast negotiations, and Stein is assured video games shall be nationally distributed, however particulars have but to be labored out. Watching video games ought to be neither difficult nor value prohibitive, and the WPBL must prioritize accessibility because it strikes ahead with negotiations. If the method for watching video games leads some sports activities weblog to publish a “The way to Watch the WPBL” information day by day, then somebody tousled. Let the NFL put video games on Amazon Prime and Netflix, and let MLB hand two video games per week to Apple TV+. These are established leagues with fanbases that may go the additional mile to determine it out. Would-be followers shouldn’t must obtain an obscure app or pay additional subscription charges, and whereas free trials are nice for streaming companies with a bunch of films and/or TV exhibits, they wouldn’t work nicely for a brand new league as a result of they don’t final lengthy sufficient for folks to develop their fandom. The WPBL must make it as straightforward as attainable for followers to return again for extra, day after day. Certain, giving any product away without cost is just not one of the best ways to show a fast revenue, but it surely might be the very best path towards sustainability; it additionally doesn’t must be a everlasting mannequin. As soon as followers are invested and prepared to pay to look at video games, the league can discover all the media panorama and work out a extra strong broadcast rights settlement.
The WPBL would possibly take into account the instance set by the Skilled Ladies’s Hockey League, which performed its debut season final winter. The PWHL streamed video games without cost on YouTube within the U.S. and broadcasted them on a number of regional sports activities networks in Canada. Did this generate a bunch of income for the league? I don’t know. But it surely made it tremendous straightforward for anybody curious concerning the league to open up an app they’re already accustomed to and activate a recreation at no further value. All of them however eliminated the barrier to entry. The league’s inaugural season opener drew 130,000 viewers on YouTube and a couple of.9 million viewers throughout the networks in Canada. By season’s finish, the PWHL’s YouTube channel had over 100,000 subscribers and generated over 40 million views.
And the followers who tuned in loved a well-produced broadcast with high quality play-by-play and commentary. In a couple of years, if the PWHL does signal a bigger media rights deal, these followers will most likely be extra prepared to comply with the league to a selected streaming service and pay a couple of bucks additional to look at it.
The WPBL additionally wants to grasp that whereas many sports activities media shops are increasing their scope to incorporate extra girls’s sports activities, it shouldn’t depend on exterior protection to maintain followers within the know, spark curiosity, or present primers for curious people eager to study extra. Simply as MLB employs its personal beat writers to cowl every staff, prospect analysts to offer updates on soon-to-be stars, and Mike Petriellos to indicate off the forms of analyses unlocked by Statcast information, the WPBL ought to be ready to make stats obtainable and serve up storytelling round its personal groups and gamers, and permit followers as many alternatives as attainable to see and admire its elite athletes.
Based on Stein, the league has already begun making strikes to provoke supplemental protection of the league. “There shall be a docuseries referring to this league on one of many streamers,” he says, including that roughly a dozen manufacturing corporations have reached out, and several other of these discussions have led to formal gives to provide a sequence.
‘This Is Historic’
The WPBL has the prospect to be a gamechanger for ladies’s baseball. Fifty years from now, the league might be making ready to have fun a half century of existence, having change into the vacation spot for gamers world wide to return play in opposition to the very best of the very best. However to get there, it’ll take endurance and “thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands and thousands of {dollars},” as Billie Jean King mentioned in a current podcast interview with Sarah Spain, the place she described the method she has undertaken alongside Mark Walter (a member of the Guggenheim Group that owns the Dodgers) in serving to to launch the PWHL. King is intimately accustomed to the social dynamics that problem girls’s sports activities, however she maintains that partnering with Walter is the important thing to the PWHL’s future success as a result of “You want somebody who believes within the funding, and he believes that he’ll get a return on his funding.”
It’s not simply concerning the funding. It’s the idea behind the funding. Gamers, coaches, and everybody concerned shall be uneasy at first. Beginning a brand new league is a terrifying proposition. Brenda Pitts was skeptical when she began listening to rumors concerning the WBL, and after graduating from the College of Alabama, her subsequent skilled transfer was securing a job as a instructor. However regardless of the uncertainty of becoming a member of the WBL, she felt she needed to take the leap. “That is historic, and I simply have to go do it. Even when it fails, I simply have to go do it.”
Everybody concerned within the WPBL is taking a leap of religion. The league and staff homeowners can ease the fears of the gamers and employees by demonstrating unflinching confidence of their funding and committing to journey it out, particularly by the lean years. And by specializing in guaranteeing the best high quality play on the sphere and making it straightforward for followers to immerse themselves within the recreation, that 50-year milestone is achievable. Even when it fails, this league will make historical past and change into a part of the inspiration for some future league that doesn’t fail, because the WBL was for the WNBA — although the WPBL needs to be a lot greater than a blueprint for the subsequent iteration of a girls’s baseball league. Fortuitously, if Stein, Siegal, and their powerhouse advisory board get the correct funding from possession, showcase the product on the sphere, and put the sport in entrance of as many potential followers as attainable, there isn’t a cause why the WPBL can’t succeed.
