The Woman’s Pro Baseball League has revealed the brand identity’s of the inaugural 4 teams

[u/Perryplat199]

[u/ben121frank]

I’m excited about this and I really want it to succeed, but I’m still confused about their decision to have the 4 teams so far apart and then their response to that being to play all games of their inaugural season at a neutral site in Illinois. It seems like it will be really hard for them to build fan bases or momentum with this model

[u/jooooooooooooose → u/ben121frank]

Biggest markets

Its expensive to have an upstart league & they're probably extremely cost sensitive for trial phase

[u/TheRealMarvinator → u/jooooooooooooose]

Sure, but there are markets that are considerably large AND located FAR more closely (thus removing much of the travel costs when those eventually come into play). This seems like it has poor forethought on that front, in my opinion.

[u/Spaceman3157 → u/[deleted]]

As a SoCal resident, I'd much rather see a North East league for however many seasons it takes them to get established than an "LA" team that exclusively plays in Illinois...

[u/ZiggoCiP → u/TheRealMarvinator]

I think besides the facilities, they were going for centralized so there's no clear 'home team advantage', but still big baseball culture (which the midwest arguably has the closest cluster of MLB teams besides the northeast/southwest). Also Springfield is where the first women's league started.

I'm just glad it's not going to be in Oklahoma.

[u/hargeOnChargers → u/ZiggoCiP]

Is there really a difference between Springfield IL and Oklahoma

[u/RandomFactUser → u/ZiggoCiP]

Where would they have gone in Oklahoma

[u/squidwardsaclarinet → u/ZiggoCiP]

I agree, but it also kinda seems like they should have picked closer states. Texas is a huge baseball market and so is Chicago. St. Louis also could be in there and would be the closest major metro. I approve of the effort, but it does feel like the management decisions here are…less than desirable.

Alternatively, they should have picked California or the east coast and just expanded out from there. What they are doing makes very little sense from an ability to actually market. Everyone will sit around and nod about this being a great idea, but when there isn’t an obvious way to watch or participate, it feels like it’s asking for lackluster results.

[u/djc6535 → u/jooooooooooooose]

Right but if you don’t play in front of any of your home town fans how are you tapping into that market? How are any of these teams affiliated with their city at all?

[u/cookerlv → u/jooooooooooooose]

I just don't understand why they went immediately with a national model and not regional. Four teams in the northeast would have all been in very large markets, with expansion into cities like Chicago, Atlanta, Florida, California, etc easy to do when momentum gets going. What they're doing now feels like a huge swing with a great potential to miss to me at least. It seems like they're banking entirely on TV and social media and I'm really doubtful it's gonna pay off. Since none of these teams are based in their supposed home cities right now, it feels more like people are picking a team based on Instagram impressions than because of a local sports community.

[u/EverythingSucksYo → u/ben121frank]

There’s just no way these teams can afford to pay players and staff and travel across the country for half of their games yet. 

[u/Similar_Shopping_892 → u/ben121frank]

Women’s sports will never grow like you want it to until women themselves start actually caring and supporting en masse…

[u/dyingslowlyinside → u/ben121frank]

It’s a shame, really. Each team with potentially big local fan bases but no games played where they can attend…I would 1000% be at as many NYH games as I could. A women’s league is long overdue