NEW YORK (AP) — Kinzie Hansen-McKinzie is looking forward to connecting with a fanbase as the Athletes Unlimited Softball League switches to a traditional model of teams in fixed cities in year two rather than the touring model of its initial season.
“That’s going to be so fun because then you can establish fans that can keep coming back,” the 24-year-old Oklahoma City catcher said.
Six teams will compete this season: the Carolina Blaze, Chicago Bandits,
Utah Talons and Texas Volts return, joined by two expansion teams, the Oklahoma City Spark and Portland Cascade. Two ballparks host minor league baseball teams and four are softball specific.
“We wanted all of our markets to be softball strong, as well as hospitable to women’s sports,” said AUSL Commissioner Kim Ng, the former Miami Marlins general manager. “I would expect somewhere in the next three-to-five years we’ll be in, say, a couple of bigger metro areas.”
Major League Baseball invested last year in Athletes Unlimited, which administers the AUSL along with competitions in basketball and volleyball.
“We don’t think about the trajectory of AUSL on a 30-year horizon. We think of it as a much shorter, kind of quicker horizon,” Athletes Unlimited CEO Jon Patricof said. "We really see the Olympics and then the years right after that as being kind of the time that we’re shooting for to kind of really reach major league status and be where we want to be business for us."
Each team has a 16-player roster and there is a league-wide reserve pool filled with potential replacements in the event of injuries.
Training starts May 27 at Vero Beach, Florida, and each team is scheduled for 25 regular-season games from June 9 to July 20. The top three advance to the playoffs: the second and third seeds meet in a knockout game at College Station, Texas, on July 23, with the winner advancing to the best-of-three championship against the top seed two days later at the Davis Diamond.
This season’s schedule includes 51 games on ESPN platforms, 20 on the CBS Sports Network and 11 on the MLB Network.
Ballparks were at 90% capacity last year, including 24 sellouts as four touring teams competed. Eleven telecasts on ESPN2 averaged 117,000 viewers.
Ballpark capacities range from 7,250 in Round Rock to 1,300 in Oklahoma City. Patricof said more than half ticket sales are from individual game buyers.
“I think that’s got to evolve over time,” he said.
Seventeen of 18 members of the U.S. national team player pool are in the league. New commercial partners include Adidas and Sephora.
“It’s going to be dramatic growth," Patricof said. We’re talking about significant increases in the number of people who are going to be attending, significant increases in merchandise sales.”
Attention on the sport is likely to increase in 2028, when the eight-nation Olympic softball tournament will be played in Oklahoma City from July 23-29. The league will interrupt its season for the Olympics, part of the Los Angeles Games.
“We really see kind of the Olympics and then kind of the years right after that as being kind of the time that we’re shooting for to kind of really reach major league status,” Patricof said.
Odicci Alexander-Bennett, a 28-year-old right-handed pitcher on the Chicago Bandits, is looking forward to having her 5-year-old Alanna and 3-month-old Halo watch her play. She felt pitching while pregnant last summer helped her velocity.
“I'd say 70 (mph) on a good day,” she estimated.
Softball doesn't yet pay enough for most players to rely on it as a sole income source.
“It’s getting there,” Hansen-McKinzie said. “I’m very, very grateful, but playing softball I feel like is just part of the job because I teach the younger athletes, I do private lessons, and then just marketing for myself, a lot of brand engagement, which is really fun.”
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