‘It’s a watershed moment:’ Major League Baseball partners with emerging professional softball league

Photo Credit: MLB.com

On Thursday, Major League Baseball announced a partnership with the Athletes Unlimited Softball League, an emerging professional women’s softball league set to begin its first season in early June. According to ESPN, MLB will own more than a 20 percent stake in the league and assist with promotion and financial matters.

“Major League Baseball’s investment in the AUSL represents an opportunity to support softball’s long-term growth and expand our engagement with these outstanding athletes and their fans,” said MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred in a statement.

“It’s a watershed moment for pro women’s softball, pro women’s sports,” said Jon Patricof, CEO and co-founder of Athletes Unlimited. “This is a financial investment, but also about a number of things money can’t buy.”

Based in New York City, Athletes Unlimited was created by Patricof and his business partner, Jonathan Soros, in 2010. The company’s goal was to create professional women’s sports leagues in sports where there wasn’t already an established women’s league. Before its recent venture into a softball league, Athletes Unlimited focused on basketball and volleyball. They had held softball events in Chicago for the past five years.

The development of more professional women’s sports leagues comes off the rise of the Women’s National Basketball Association and the recent and upcoming expansions of the National Women’s Soccer League and Professional Women’s Hockey League.

With that in mind, Athletes Unlimited hired Kim Ng to be the AUSL commissioner. Ng became the first female general manager in a major men’s North American sport when she was hired by the Miami Marlins in 2020 to run their baseball operations. Before joining the Marlins, Ng spent almost a decade as the senior vice president of baseball operations for MLB. Prior to that role, she was an assistant general manager with the New York Yankees and Los Angeles Dodgers. She is a three-time World Series champion.

“As a part of our broader commitment to growing softball and creating more opportunities for women and girls in sports, this agreement reflects our confidence in Kim Ng’s leadership, the AUSL vision, and the incredible talent of its athletes,” Manfred said. “During this extraordinarily exciting time for women’s sports, we want softball to thrive. MLB is committed to help build a sustainable and impactful league that drives fandom, serves the softball community, and benefits all female athletes.”

"I think this is an incredible step for both sports," said Kim Ng during an appearance on CBS Mornings. "Having worked at Major League Baseball for 10 years and having led that softball division, we were always trying to connect with the women's side, with women's college softball. And so, to now be able to come and have Major League Baseball support women's pro softball and that landscape just is so meaningful to me, and to so many other young women and girls playing the sport."

AUSL will open its inaugural season on June 7.

The Bandits, Blaze, Talon, and Volts make up the four-team league. Each team has 16 players, who earn an average salary of $45,000, with the chance to make up to $75,000 during the season. The rosters were formed through a multi-draft process. In January, the teams selected players who no longer had college eligibility, which included some of the sport’s biggest names. In May, the league held a college draft that consisted of 12 collegiate standouts, with each team landing three players.

The 24-game season will last just over a month, culminating in a three-game championship series between July 26-28 in Alabama. The games will take place in 10 different cities around the country, with the first two games being played in Rosemont, Illinois, and Wichita, Kansas. Other big-name cities include Omaha, Nebraska, Salt Lake City, Utah, and Seattle, Washington.

While none of the four teams have designated cities, the goal is for the league to become city-based in 2026, along with expanding to more teams. With softball returning to the Olympics in 2028, the introduction of the AUSL and potential expansion come at a perfect time.

ESPN will be the founding broadcast partner for the AUSL, with 33 games being televised on ESPN, ESPN2, and ESPNU. As part of the new deal with MLB, other select games will be broadcast on MLB Network and MLB.TV. MLB.com will also provide digital coverage of the league, teams, and players throughout the 2025 season. AUSL players will attend MLB’s All-Star Game and postseason to help promote the league and grow the sport, per ESPN and Patricof.

Following the completion of the first AUSL season, Athletes Unlimited will host the AUSL All-Star Cup, its original softball competition. 60 players will take part in a 24-game competition in August, with an individual champion being crowned thanks to an innovative scoring system.

“This is just getting started,” Patricof said. “We’ve put all these pieces together, we launch June 7, but it’s still incredibly early days in where we envision the AUSL going. We’ve got all the right pieces in place, and now it’s a question of us executing, growing alongside our partners, the players, and really building what we think fans and athletes deserve.”