Major League Baseball is making its first investment in women's professional sports by partnering with a new women's professional softball league, Commissioner Robert Manfred announced Thursday.
The Athletes Unlimited Softball League will hold opening games on June 7 with games in Rosemont, Illinois and Wichita, Kansas, reports CBS News.
Manfred, interviewed on "CBS Mornings," commented that the partnership with AUSL came about because the timing felt right for the investment.
"We've been very engaged in the softball space as part of our youth participation programs," he said. "The growing popularity in women's sports motivated us to look around. We looked at startups, we looked at making an investment, and we thought AUSL was a great fit for us."
He said the MLB chose softball over women's baseball because there is already a "great softball infrastructure" to provide a "pipeline of athletes."
"We thought that we could get to the point of having a sustainable league much quicker with softball," said Manfred.
Kim Ng, who has worked at MLB for 10 years, will serve as the commissioner for the new league.
She said the partnership will be a big step for both baseball and softball, and pointed out that the women's college softball College World Series "routinely outdraws the men."
"Having worked at major league baseball for ten years and having led that softball division, we were always trying to connect with the women's side, you know, with women's college softball," she added.
Manfred said that Ng has shown "great leadership skills while she was with us, great managerial skills. I had no doubt that she had the skill set to be successful in a job like this."
Select games will be broadcast on its network and streaming service, and the game in Wichita will air exclusively on the MLB Network and MLB.TV at 7:30 p.m. ET.
The league will initially have four teams: the Bandits, Blaze, Talons, and Volts. They will play a 24-game season in 12 cities through July 23, with a championship series being played July 26-28 at Rhoads Stadium at the University of Alabama.
In addition to Wichita and Rosemont, games will be played this year in Chicago; Sulfur, Louisiana; Norman, Oklahoma; Chattanooga, Tennessee; Omaha, Nebraska; Seattle; Austin, Texas; Tuscaloosa, Alabama; and Salt Lake City.
In 2026, the AUSL's teams will become city-based, CBS reports.
Single game tickets are available with more information available online at TheAUSL.com.
Sandy Fitzgerald ✉
Sandy Fitzgerald has more than three decades in journalism and serves as a general assignment writer for Newsmax covering news, media, and politics.
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