It’s a rather light night in the wide, wide world of sports tonight. Both the NBA and Stanley Cup finals are off–I guess they were spooked by the prospect of taking on AMERICA’S GOT TALENT and Pat Sajak’s last-ever episode hosting any version of WHEEL OF FORTUNE. Aside from the usual array of MLB games, there’s a modestly intriguing pair of WNBA Commissioner’s Cup games, the marquee one being the defending champion New York Liberty looking to keep pace with their Minnesota Lynx arch-rivals by seeking their ninth consecutive win since the 2025 season started, hosting Angel Reese and what’s left of the injury-plagued Chicago Sky.
Oh yeah, ESPN2’s got the rubber game of the Talons-Bandits series live from the Parkway Bank Sports Complex in lovely suburban Rosemont, IL. It’s the only game in town, BTW, as via yet another schedule quirk both the Cubs and White Sox are on the road along with the Sky.
But don’t consider the Talons or Bandits another addition to the Chicago sports landscape. They are merely half of what someday may be considered to be an historic quartet as charter members of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL) that will be a de facto traveling roadshow. AUSL.com’s Alexandra Lewis did her best to explain it in a preview story dropped late last month:
The Athletes Unlimited Softball League is the premier professional women’s softball league in the United States. The AUSL regular season delivers a 24-game professional softball season across 10 major cities in the U.S., culminating in a best-of-3 Championship.
It is complemented by the AUSL All-Star Cup – a four-week season where 60 professional softball players compete utilizing Athletes Unlimited’s innovative format, taking place in Rosemont, IL, Raleigh, and Greenville, NC . (T)he AUSL will be a touring property featuring games in the following cities:
- Rosemont, Illinois
- Wichita, Kansas
- Sulphur, Louisiana
- Chattanooga, Tennessee
- Norman, Oklahoma
- Omaha, Nebraska
- Seattle, Washington
- Salt Lake City, Utah
- Round Rock, Texas
- Tuscaloosa, Alabama
The 2025 AUSL All-Star Cup will feature games in Rosemont, Illinois, as well as Holly Springs and Greenville, NC.
No, those aren’t the biggest media markets–not by a long shot. Heck, even Oklahoma City and Indianapolis outrank Tuscaloosa (Birmingham) and Chattanooga. Edmonton’s got an advantage over Sulphur (a hoot and a holler down the road from Lake Charles).
But there is a method to this madness, and a pretty shrewd practioner that’s behind it, as TIME’s Sean Gregory penned on Friday:
Kim Ng, who became the first female GM in the history of major North American men’s pro team sports when the Miami Marlins hired her to run the team’s baseball operations in 2020, is taking on a new challenge: building softball’s version of the WNBA. In April, Ng was named commissioner of the Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), a new professional start-up that begins its inaugural season on June 7.
Asked to explain the approach to the schedule, Ng offered this unimpeachable rationale:
There was a very short period of time in which to launch. So Jon and Jonathan (league co-founders Patricos and Soros) just wanted to get out there and really get an understanding of the markets. When you’re talking about partnering with venues and markets, you want to have an understanding of who the stakeholders are, who the actors in the landscape are, and you want to make sure that you have really good partners who want you to be there, who are committed to making the partnership work. It’s like dating. You’re going to date before you get married. Now’s the dating process.
There have been previous attempts to launch women’s (and men’s) professional softball leagues, most little more than glorified beer leagues. But the AUSL not only has Ng’s brain, it also has financial backing from MLB. As a result, MLB.com, along with ESPN, will be carrying the entire schedule. That already puts it ahead of the two-year-old Professional Women’s Hockey League, which is still without a national U.S. media home, and approaching the frequency and availability of the National Women’s Soccer League. No, it’s not the WNBA, and there’s no Caitlin Clark or even Angel Reese on the horizon. But they are starting at perhaps the peak popularity point for the sport, as TEXAS LONGHORNS ON SI’s Ylver Deleon-Rios reported earlier today:
The Texas Longhorns’ victory at the Women’s College World Series didn’t just make history for the Texas softball program, winning its first-ever national championship, but it also broke viewership records across all three games. ESPN announced the viewership for the winner-take-all decisive Game 3 of the Women’s College World Series championship series, with the game averaging 2.4 million viewers and peaking at 2.7 million, becoming the most-watched NCAA softball game ever. Games 1 and 2 also generated record-breaking viewership numbers, with both averaging 2.1 million viewers, becoming the most-watched games 1 and 2 in WCWS history. The opening game of the championship series peaked at 2.8 million viewers, and game 2 peaked at 2.6 million viewers.
Again, no WNBA regular-season game has come close to matching the audience generated by top-tier college post-seasons, and the NWSL even on CBS garners a fraction of what a Women’s World Cup match or even what some international friendlies deliver. But in a landscape where support for women’s sports in growing by leaps and bounds, much as those other sports have been able to extend sponsors’ honeymoons past graduation day, the AUSL seems poised to do that with those who just helped make Oklahoma City the sports capital of America last week.
Check it out. It’s gotta be more exciting that Pat Sajak doing anything these days.
Courage…