What the Upstart WPBL Should Learn From Other Women’s Sports Leagues

Tom Szczerbowski-USA TODAY Sports

For the first time since the Eisenhower Administration, women dreaming of playing baseball professionally in the United States will have the opportunity to see that dream realized with a league of their own.

Last October, the Women’s Pro Baseball League (WPBL) issued its first press release to announce the founding of the country’s only professional women’s baseball league, which is set to launch in the summer of 2026. The league is co-founded by Justine Siegal — who is best known for founding Baseball For All, “[A] girls baseball nonprofit that builds gender equity by creating opportunities for girls to play, coach, and lead in the sport” — and Keith Stein, a businessman, lawyer, and member of the ownership group for a semiprofessional men’s baseball team in Toronto. The league has also brought in former Toronto Blue Jays manager Cito Gaston and Team Japan’s two-time Women’s Baseball World Cup MVP Ayami Sato as special advisors.

Women’s baseball has a long, but unfortunately sparse, history dating back to the late 1800s, when colleges in the Northeast, such as Vassar, fielded teams. Since then, women have largely accrued playing time by representing their country’s national team at the Olympics, playing on barnstorming teams – from the Dolly Vardens in the 1870s to the Colorado Silver Bullets in the 1990s – or by earning roles in leagues primarily created for men, from the amateur ranks to the pros (see Mo’ne Davis, Toni Stone, Lizzie Arlington, and more recently, Kelsie Whitmore, among many others). Aside from the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, formed during WWII to fill a void left by the male ballplayers fighting overseas, women in the United States have not had a dedicated professional league.

So after all these years without a league, why now? “The past was the right time,” Stein says in a recent interview with FanGraphs. “Thirty years ago was the right time. Four years ago was the right time. Definitely, definitely, now is the right time.” As evidence, he notes, “There’s now a professional women’s hockey league that’s thriving, a professional women’s soccer league, a professional women’s basketball league. They’re all thriving because of the appetite, the incredible appetite, for women’s sport.”

But while the culture does seem primed to welcome more women’s leagues, an enthusiastic fan base only covers half of the demand equation. Unlike the other sports that Stein cites, women’s baseball doesn’t benefit from the existence of college programs to act as a developmental pipeline. Stein says the creation of a league will be a “catalyst for the development of a whole infrastructure around women’s baseball and hopefully spawn the development of a baseball culture in America for women.” And in the meantime, he believes there’s more than enough talent to fill the WPBL rosters. Nearly 700 players registered in the first week or so after the league’s announcement, according to Stein. “We have great professional players from around the world, top players from Japan, the U.S. — everywhere — who are very excited to play with us,” Stein says. “There are over 2,000 women playing on boys high school teams. There are thousands and thousands of players who are ready to play in this league.”

Players and fans can only get an upstart women’s league so far, though; it needs a financial support system to help it get off the ground. One way to do that would be for the women’s league to form a partnership with its male counterpart, as the WNBA did with the NBA. However, for the WPBL, partnering with MLB would mean giving men’s baseball a say in how the women’s league operates. Perhaps wary of this, the WPBL instead is choosing to remain independent and create a female-led league. To that end, the league has composed an advisory board of seven women with decades of experience in baseball and women’s sports. Maybelle Blair, a former pitcher for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, will serve as the board’s Honorary Chair and throw out the first pitch at the WPBL’s season opener in 2026.

The WPBL plans to hold a scouting camp this coming spring, followed by a player draft late in 2025, leading up to its first season during the summer of 2026. The league’s six inaugural teams will be located in the northeastern region of the U.S. to start, with plans to expand nationwide as the league grows. Given its ambitious aims, the challenges of starting a brand new league, and the friction created by a sports culture that is still learning to properly value athletes who aren’t men, the WPBL faces a formidable path forward. Fortunately, trailblazers across women’s sports have mapped a course. The recent explosion of eyeballs on women’s basketball sets up the WNBA as an obvious model for a women’s baseball league, but the WNBA stands on the shoulders of earlier attempts at women’s professional basketball.

Many remember the American Basketball League that started one year prior to the WNBA, and lasted just three seasons, but almost two decades prior, the Women’s Professional Basketball League (WBL) gave American basketball fans their first taste of women’s pro ball. Though the league drew thousands of fans when it tipped off, it folded after three years. The WBL demonstrated that a women’s professional league could work, but it still depended on proper execution off the court. Though women’s sports are generating “incredible interest and support,” as Stein notes in the press release, there’s a lot the WPBL can learn from the missteps of the WBL in three critical areas – team ownership, the on-field product, and media coverage.

Team Ownership

The WBL’s league president Bill Byrne was, like Stein, a sports entrepreneur who dabbled in several burgeoning leagues across football, basketball, and softball. As the league’s president and commissioner, he oversaw a group of owners that ultimately lacked commitment. A sports league, like any new business endeavor, is likely to spend a few years in the red before turning a profit. Karen Logan, a player and coach for the Chicago Hustle who also worked for the league as an advisor and promoter, told the Washington Post, “The team owners are looking at this league as a marketing movement, a fad to cash in on,” she said. “They have no idea what they want the product to be.”

Gail Marquis, who played two seasons in the WBL, echoed Logan’s sentiment in an interview with The Next: “The owners, the organizers, they were just in it for the money and they didn’t have the longevity to go with it the whole time.” Marquis won a WBL title with the New York Stars and then watched the franchise fold during the subsequent offseason. When a championship caliber team did not immediately turn a profit, ownership bailed. Despite its success on the court, the team’s swift demise was not surprising. The Stars began the season playing home games at Madison Square Garden and practicing at Long Island University, but Marquis recalled that part way through the season, they were playing games at local colleges and practicing at rec centers in sketchy neighborhoods. And if that wasn’t enough, player paychecks began arriving at inconsistent intervals, if at all.

As teams folded, sometimes midseason, it cast a negative perception on the league and women’s sports more generally. Marquis said the media would use it as evidence that women’s sports were not sustainable. In reality, the league’s investors didn’t give it the opportunity to reach the point of sustainability.

WBL owners paid a fee of $50,000 to join the league (about $235,000 today), meaning they didn’t need to be billionaires, or even hundred millionaires, to buy a sports franchise, as is the case today. The most recent WNBA expansion teams have paid fees of $50 million, with additional financial commitments required to build state-of-the-art practice facilities, bringing the buy-in figure north of $100 million. Raising the barrier to entry increases the likelihood that potential ownership groups will view teams as investments and the league as a place where certain minimum quality standards must be met.

Stein seems to understand the need to be judicious in vetting ownership groups. “[It’s] the thing we’re going to labor and agonize over the most,” he says, adding that they’ve already had close to 100 ownership inquiries. “Everybody wants to own a professional sports team. And from my experience, most people should not own a professional sports team,” he says. “They might have the money, but they don’t have the right mindset.” Stein is seeking owners “ who are passionate about building out this league over the long haul, not the short term.” He floats a timeline of three to five years before the league breaks even, meaning owners will need to prepare themselves to absorb losses in the early going.

On the topic of facilities, Stein acknowledges that the league’s stadiums initially will be on the smaller end to ensure full, lively crowds and an optimal broadcast product. But regardless of size, Stein expects teams “to have the right training facilities, clubhouses, dugouts, field, field conditions. We’re not going to deal with an ownership group that doesn’t have a facility commitment in place that isn’t fully professional with all of the requisite amenities.”

Too many WBL owners were looking to cash in on an overnight success while running a bare-bones operation. On draft day, mere months before the league was set to tip off, two teams were still without home arenas, and team owners were unilaterally making picks because they hadn’t hired scouts or coaches. Then, when the time came to negotiate contracts with the new draftees – many of whom had to be informed that the league actually existed – players bristled at the low salaries. Luisa Harris (who was also drafted into the NBA) was one year removed from college and working an administrative job at Delta State University when she was drafted by the Houston WBL team. Upon hearing rumors of low four-figure salaries, Harris told the New York Times, “I know the women won’t play for nothing. I make that [much] sitting [at a desk],” while noting that playing basketball requires far more effort and ability than a desk job.

When WBL owners didn’t land in the black after one or two seasons, teams found themselves too far in the hole to dig their way out. During the league’s third and final season, players were walking out of games in protest due to lack of pay. Ownership groups underestimated or misunderstood the cost of owning a sports franchise, perhaps assuming they could pad their profit margins by exploiting the labor of women – one of the classic cheat codes for those in positions of power.

Stein admits that WPBL salaries won’t be high at first, but he says the plan is to have salaries grow as the league does. “It’s a key goal for us to elevate the [compensation] for women baseball players, because at first they’re not going to make anything close to what professional basketball or soccer players are making right? But our hope is we get them there.” By his estimation it will take a few years to reach that point. In the meantime, to make up for the insufficient salaries, “We will raise the bar by doing things like [covering] accommodation costs and food costs,” he says. “We will be making this as attractive financially as we can.”

While this plan is admirable and could be cause for cautious optimism, it’s also unlikely to be management’s decision alone to make. In most professional sports leagues, salaries are not unilaterally decreed by management, but rather negotiated by a players union. Marquis bemoaned the lack of a union in the WBL, wishing the players had been better equipped to fight back against the owners. And though Stein seems poised to argue the financial realities of a league that’s just getting started, he should be prepared to do so before a united front of players who know their worth.

To return to Karen Logan’s thoughts on the financials of a new league, “If a league can’t pay decent wages, it shouldn’t exist.”

The On-Field Product

Everything the league does should showcase the actual baseball being played. This should go without saying, but because many people still view women’s sports as lesser, those who are charged with selling the product may be tempted to dress it up with various gimmicks to attract more eyeballs. Some of the WBL gimmicks involved literal dress up. The Dallas team brought in a stylist for a marathon makeover session prior to opening night. Other teams spent draft picks on publicity stunts. The New York Stars drafted a former Miss America, who at the time was busy working as an NFL broadcaster for CBS. The Iowa Cornets selected a player from the Soviet Union’s national team, seemingly for the sole reason that she was 7’4”. Some argue all publicity is good publicity, but lookie-loos don’t make for invested fans, and artifice tends to distract rather than enhance.

Meanwhile, players should be allowed to focus on their craft rather than crafting the desired public persona. We’ve come a long way since the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League had its players on the field in skirts, but female athletes are still under pressure to present a satisfactory image to the public, even though the public rarely agrees on what that image should be.

As one of the faces of the WBL, Molly Kazmer (who at the time went by Molly Bolin) bore the burden of conflicting expectations. Many people thought that elite female athletes should give off stereotypical tomboy vibes, while Kazmer offered a more conventional femininity. Then, when she went against the norms established by male athletes and sold posters of herself that looked more like they belonged in a fashion magazine than Sports Illustrated, she came under fire from feminists for allowing herself to be exploited. It didn’t matter that the poster was her idea, and that she was the one directly collecting revenue from the sales; to her critics, she was using her femininity for financial gain. Later, the fact that she pursued a career at all rather than being a stay-at-home wife and mother was used against her in court when fighting for custody of her son.

Though much of what Kazmer and her peers endured has been rightly excised from society, pro athletes still face hordes of harsh critics and pressure to live up to stereotypes, but it’s crucial that none of that comes from league or team officials. A healthy league empowers its players to be themselves and discourages unnecessary external commentary because creating that environment will allow players to perform at their peak. And high-quality baseball is the actual product.

But again, because some view the women’s version of sport as lesser, they believe that provides a built-in excuse to invest less. In their eyes, simply providing a league for women is a generous act of charity, one that does not extend to executing the basic operations of a league in a competent manner. For its part, the WBL cheaped out on officiating. It’s hard to play a respectable game of basketball with rec league-quality refs. During one particular game, the referees were so egregious that five players from the New Orleans Pride fouled out with five minutes remaining in the fourth quarter, leaving only four healthy players to finish the game. Rather than play shorthanded, the team agreed to walk out in protest of the substandard officiating.

Many WBL teams further chose to compromise the product on the court by hiring coaches based more on name recognition than actual qualifications, preferring former NBA players and coaches to candidates experienced in the women’s game. As a result, the league wound up with men who viewed the coaching opportunity as a stepping stone for a better position on the men’s side, as well as coaches who had already proven themselves lacking in the NBA — and then did no better in the WBL. Several coaches had to be replaced midseason for underperformance or racking up so many technicals that the team couldn’t afford the fines. In the aftermath, the players were left to clean up the messes for men who probably shouldn’t have had the job in the first place. Here WPBL teams will do well to lean on Siegal and Sato and their networks within the sport as they go about their hiring, rather than trying to poach big names from MLB.

And though Stein is already priming the narrative that budgets will be tight early on, he understands that putting out a compelling on-field product is paramount. “What we’re doing is important in terms of elevating women’s sport and women’s baseball, but we want to be a kickass league,” he says. “We want people to watch us, not just because it’s women; we want people to watch it because it’s thrilling, it’s great competition, [and] there’s great talent.”

Media Coverage

The media landscape in the late 1970s was obviously very different from what it is today. Where the WBL struggled with limited avenues for getting its product in front of fans, the WPBL will have the opposite problem: Today’s entertainment market is oversaturated. The abundance of options is overwhelming, making it tougher than ever to cut through the noise and attract fans to a new league.

As the WBL attempted to get off the ground, those within the league understood that the key to winning over potential fans was getting them to a game. Even those skeptical of women’s sports or agnostic to the cause could be converted by the action on the court. Ray Scott, who coached the Dallas Diamonds and New Orleans Pride, said he and his wife Sandi made a point to get as many people as possible to come to games, and Sandi noted that the experience received rave reviews. “One comment that was almost universal,” she said, “was that people had no idea how well the women played and how interesting the game was.”

People won’t know what they’re missing if they can’t watch the games. The WBL’s attendance was strong early on, when the new league had plenty of buzz, but the teams’ home arenas held only around 5,000 fans – similar to the ballparks the WPBL will have starting out. Not many WBL games made it on TV given the limited air time available back then, so sustaining that early buzz was challenging.

A study from the talent agency Wasserman estimated that 15% of sports media coverage from 2018 to 2023 went to women’s sports. That number represents a broad definition of media, including streaming sites and social media accounts. When zooming in on more mainstream TV coverage like studio talk shows, women’s sports garner just 5% of the coverage. Though the study shows year-over-year growth for women’s sports, the discrepancy between where that coverage comes from underscores the point that an increase in quantity doesn’t guarantee increased accessibility. Last season, WNBA games airing on ESPN averaged 1.19 million viewers, while games airing on ION, a lesser-known cable channel, averaged just 670,000 viewers. The best way for a new league to reach potential fans is through quality, mainstream coverage.

Unfortunately, securing a major rights agreement with one of the marquee networks may not be an option for a newly formed women’s baseball league. Understanding this, the next best option for the WPBL may be to make its games available on an easily accessible streaming service for no cost.

Currently, the WPBL is in the early phases of broadcast negotiations, and Stein is confident games will be nationally distributed, but details have yet to be worked out. Watching games should be neither complicated nor cost prohibitive, and the WPBL needs to prioritize accessibility as it moves forward with negotiations. If the process for watching games leads some sports blog to publish a “How to Watch the WPBL” guide every day, then someone messed up. Let the NFL put games on Amazon Prime and Netflix, and let MLB hand two games a week to Apple TV+. Those are established leagues with fanbases that will go the extra mile to figure it out. Would-be fans shouldn’t have to download an obscure app or pay extra subscription fees, and while free trials are great for streaming services with a bunch of movies and/or TV shows, they wouldn’t work well for a new league because they don’t last long enough for people to develop their fandom. The WPBL needs to make it as easy as possible for fans to come back for more, day after day. Sure, giving any product away for free is not the best way to turn a quick profit, but it could be the best path toward sustainability; it also doesn’t have to be a permanent model. Once fans are invested and willing to pay to watch games, the league can explore the entire media landscape and work out a more robust broadcast rights agreement.

The WPBL might consider the example set by the Professional Women’s Hockey League, which played its debut season last winter. The PWHL streamed games for free on YouTube in the U.S. and broadcasted them on several regional sports networks in Canada. Did this generate a bunch of revenue for the league? I don’t know. But it made it super easy for anyone curious about the league to open up an app they’re already familiar with and turn on a game at no additional cost. They all but removed the barrier to entry. The league’s inaugural season opener drew 130,000 viewers on YouTube and 2.9 million viewers across the networks in Canada. By season’s end, the PWHL’s YouTube channel had over 100,000 subscribers and generated over 40 million views.

And the fans who tuned in enjoyed a well-produced broadcast with quality play-by-play and commentary. In a few years, if the PWHL does sign a larger media rights deal, those fans will probably be more willing to follow the league to a specific streaming service and pay a few bucks extra to watch it.

The WPBL also needs to understand that while many sports media outlets are expanding their scope to include more women’s sports, it shouldn’t rely on external coverage to keep fans in the know, spark interest, or provide primers for curious folks wanting to learn more. Just as MLB employs its own beat writers to cover each team, prospect analysts to provide updates on soon-to-be stars, and Mike Petriellos to show off the types of analyses unlocked by Statcast data, the WPBL should be prepared to make stats available and serve up storytelling around its own teams and players, and allow fans as many opportunities as possible to see and appreciate its elite athletes.

According to Stein, the league has already begun making moves to initiate supplemental coverage of the league. “There will be a docuseries relating to this league on one of the streamers,” he says, adding that roughly a dozen production companies have reached out, and several of those discussions have led to formal offers to produce a series.

‘This Is Historical’

The WPBL has the chance to be a gamechanger for women’s baseball. Fifty years from now, the league could be preparing to celebrate a half century of existence, having become the destination for players around the world to come play against the best of the best. But to get there, it will take patience and “millions and millions and millions of dollars,” as Billie Jean King said in a recent podcast interview with Sarah Spain, where she described the process she has undertaken alongside Mark Walter (a member of the Guggenheim Group that owns the Dodgers) in helping to launch the PWHL. King is intimately familiar with the social dynamics that challenge women’s sports, but she maintains that partnering with Walter is the key to the PWHL’s future success because “You need someone who believes in the investment, and he believes that he will get a return on his investment.”

It’s not just about the investment. It’s the belief behind the investment. Players, coaches, and everyone involved will be uneasy at first. Starting a new league is a terrifying proposition. Brenda Pitts was skeptical when she started hearing rumors about the WBL, and after graduating from the University of Alabama, her next professional move was securing a job as a teacher. But despite the uncertainty of joining the WBL, she felt she had to take the leap. “This is historical, and I just need to go do it. Even if it fails, I just need to go do it.”

Everyone involved in the WPBL is taking a leap of faith. The league and team owners can ease the fears of the players and staff by demonstrating unflinching confidence in their investment and committing to ride it out, especially through the lean years. And by focusing on ensuring the highest quality play on the field and making it easy for fans to immerse themselves in the game, that 50-year milestone is achievable. Even if it fails, this league will make history and become part of the foundation for some future league that doesn’t fail, as the WBL was for the WNBA — though the WPBL wants to be so much more than a blueprint for the next iteration of a women’s baseball league. Fortunately, if Stein, Siegal, and their powerhouse advisory board get the proper investment from ownership, showcase the product on the field, and put the game in front of as many potential fans as possible, there is no reason why the WPBL cannot succeed.





Kiri lives in the PNW while contributing part-time to FanGraphs and working full-time as a data scientist. She spent 5 years working as an analyst for multiple MLB organizations. You can find her on Bluesky @kirio.bsky.social.

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Chase PectolMember since 2024
1 month ago

Do they know where the Leagues will be? I know Philly is feeling really left out from the last few rounds of women’s sport expansion. I hope one comes here.