Why is pro softball's AUSL expanding to 6 cities? Commissioner explains

Professional women’s softball might be coming to a city near you.

Athletes Unlimited Softball League, which will begin its second full season on June 9, is no longer a barnstorming organization. Six cities from coast-to-coast will host AUSL teams this year.

The teams, announced by AUSL on Tuesday, are the Carolina Blaze (Durham, North Carolina), Chicago Bandits (Rosemont, Illinois), Utah Talons (Salt Lake City, Utah), Portland Cascade (Hillsboro Oregon), Texas Volts (Round Rock, Texas) and Oklahoma City Spark.

AUSL commissioner Kim Ng, who worked in MLB front offices across three decades, said expanding and having clubs based in cities was always the vision. After having success in its inaugural season, moving to this model was a no-brainer for the league.

“This was the plan, I think 2025 was really to get our bearings and have an understanding of the market and to see which markets performed and where fans were enthusiastic and engaged, and to see the facilities for ourselves firsthand,” Ng recently told USA Today Sports. “And then in 2026, it was our plan to anchor to home cities and become city-based.”

Last season, AUSL toured the country, with its four teams playing games in 10 cities.

In picking the best cities for now six teams, Ng and AUSL leaders focused on a few key attributes. They wanted strong media markets where folks had demonstrated support for women’s sports and an authentic connection to softball. Professional-caliber facilities and the ability to host these teams long-term were also key factors.

North Carolina checked all those boxes. It’s home to three universities that play in the ACC — Duke, UNC-Chapel Hill and N.C. State — and the NWSL’s North Carolina Courage. N.C. State’s women’s basketball team regularly sells out its home games, the Courage just set a single-season franchise attendance record in 2025, and thousands of fans came to Duke when its softball team hosted an NCAA Tournament regional last year.

“It’s a market that has grown and continues to grow,” Ng said, adding that AUSL worked with the Durham Sports Commission, Duke and the Durham Bulls minor league baseball team to bring Blaze to Durham. “This was an obvious market for us. They have the NWSL team right up the road, so they’re not strangers to women’s pro sports.”

The Blaze will play their games at Duke’s Smith Family Stadium, which opened in 2017. Former Blue Devils Ana Gold and Jala Wright, who helped Duke make the Women’s College World Series in 2024, will be on the roster.

Like the Blaze, the Utah Talons will also play on a college campus at the University of Utah’s Dumke Family Stadium. The Spark will compete at Tom Heath Field at Oklahoma Christian University.

Aside from expanding the number of teams, the AUSL is also growing its playoff format this season. The No. 1 seed will automatically advance to the championship series, while the second- and third-place teams will square off in a winner-take-all play-in game. The championship and play-in game will both be contested at a neutral site to be announced at a later date.

“I personally am a huge fan of the one game — you know, like, put everything out on the line. I really felt like that would be a huge addition to our playoff format and really exciting for the fans,” Ng said. “It's really about seven innings of unbelievable, no-holds-barred softball.”

Also new for the AUSL is a multi-year media rights agreement with ESPN through 2028. ESPN will carry 50 exclusive AUSL games annually, which includes the championship series. Coverage will span across ESPN platforms, and at least one marquee game will air on ABC, which the AUSL says will be the first professional women’s softball game to air live on broadcast television in the U.S.

Last year, Game 2 of the AUSL championship series peaked at an average of 347,000 viewers. To compare that figure to other women’s pro sports, Game 4 of the 2025 WNBA Finals between the Las Vegas Aces and Phoenix Mercury drew 1.4 million viewers and the 2025 championship game of Unrivaled — the 3x3 women’s basketball league — 385,000 viewers on TNT. Game 3 of the 2025 Women’s College World Series between Texas Tech and Texas peaked at 2.7 million viewers on ESPN.

“We saw what ESPN has done for the college game. If you go back and you look at those viewership numbers from 25 years ago, ESPN clearly has been a major reason why the number of softball fans out there have multiplied,” Ng said. “It is now easy to watch an AUSL game.”

The AUSL sold out 20 games last season, made more than $1 million in merchandise sales and added more than 450,000 social media followers.

“Just seeing how thirsty softball fans are, and have been, for this type of league where we are No. 1 and the quality of the players is extraordinarily high," Ng said. "There really is a lot of opportunity here when we think about the softball ecosystem

"All of that signals the great place that this sport is in.”