Since Aug.1, the Women’s Pro Baseball League has been playing its inaugural season in Springfield. It’s the fifth league of its kind in U.S. history. Its players hope there is no need for a sixth.
“We want to make this thing last forever and ever,” L.A. Queens captain Ashton Lansdell said. “We want this to become the MLB of women’s baseball.”
But just how likely is that?
Across the history of professional sports, leagues have come and gone in every game conceivable. Setting one up is no guarantee of its continued existence. Just look at the XFL, which only completed two full seasons across two different incarnations before merging with the United States Football League in 2023.
Before the WPBL got started, the previous U.S. women’s baseball league, Ladies League Baseball, folded 12 games into its second season.
So, what does a nascent league like the WPBL need in order to succeed?
According to Nola Agha, sports management professor at the University of San Francisco, it needs two things.
The first is investors willing to support it in the long-term. Agha said that it can take upwards of a decade for a league to find its footing and its owners need to be patient in the meantime.
“It takes more than a year to make a fanbase,” she said. “In fact, sometimes it takes an entire generation to make a fanbase. So, the success of any startup league, whether it’s the XFL, whether it’s women’s baseball, is you need owners committed for the long-term.”
The WNBA, the women’s pro basketball league, has recently gained in popularity. But that league just turned 30 years old.
The second thing that a new league needs is a dedicated fanbase. Agha said this can be cultivated by tapping into a pre-existing desire for a given sport in a particular location, creating a loop where fans bring more coverage and coverage brings more fans.
“If women’s baseball is located in a hotbed of baseball interest in Springfield, Illinois, then you’re on the right step forward to get this positive feedback loop going to build on interest that might already be there,” she said.
In order to build that fanbase, though, people need to be aware of a league’s existence. Sports economist and Southern Utah University economics professor David Berri said a new league needs media coverage to reach people unable to attend the games in person.
“There has to be a way for a large number of people to sample the product without actually going to the game,” he said.
In the U.S., the WPBL is streamed by ESPN. Outside of the country, games are available to watch on YouTube.
Berri said leagues now considered mainstays of sports culture, such as the NBA and the NFL, didn’t become what they are today until they began broadcasting on TV.
“It really appears to be the coverage happens first and then the fans follow,” he said. "It doesn’t seem like it goes the other way around. It’s not that the fans are saying, ‘You need to put this on television.’ That’s not really what seems to be happening.”
So, what advantages does the WPBL have in this respect? Well, a movie certainly helps.
References to the 1992 film, “A League of Their Own,” and its famous assertion that “there’s no crying in baseball” were inescapable in the run-up to and during the league’s opening weekend.
The movie tells a fictionalized account of the history of the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, the country’s first baseball league for women. Some players for that league, including 99-year-old pitcher Maybell Blair, were present for the WPBL’s opening weekend.
Berri said this history helped the league familiarize itself with audience members. “There’s a history, so that makes for a compelling storyline, and they took advantage of that in the opening,” he said. "'‘Hey, you actually saw this. You’ve seen this in a movie.’ And they took advantage of that.”
But Agha said the WPBL has to contend with the numerous other things competing for people’s attention in 2026. She says the biggest challenge that any start-up league faces is getting people to put their devices down in an age where anyone can stream anything they want to their devices.
“We see bowling alleys going out of business,” Agha said. We see movie theaters going out of business. Getting people to leave their homes and come to any entertainment venue is a challenge in live sport right now.”
So, let’s go back to that original question. Does the WPBL have what it takes to keep going?
Berri says yes, so long as investors don’t give up too quickly on the league, something that happens fairly frequently in women’s sports. He cited the Women’s National Basketball Association, which marked its 30thanniversary in April, as an example of how long some leagues need to find success.
That success, however, hinges on its ability to get people familiarized with the sport by getting it in front of as many eyeballs as possible, he said.
“You’ve got to get it so that the people who are not at the game can actually participate,” Berri said. “And then, when they start to participate and they start to see it and they start to get excited about it, then they go to the game too, because they’re like, ‘Hey, I want to go see this.’”
