Softball - one of the WBSC's key disciplines - continues to go from strength to strength, especially in the women's game with a World Games evaluation report illustrating the success of the sport at The World Games 2022 and showcasing its excellent credentials for all multi-sport events around the world.
Coming off a stellar appearance at the Tokyo 2020 Olympic Games, softball proved to be one of the most successful sports at The World Games 2022 in Birmingham, Alabama, USA, last year with the women’s softball competition drawing a record-setting attendance for the entire tournament and a single event/game, while also boasting one of the youngest average ages for athletes at 25 years old.
The World Games 2022 softball competition proved to be a fan-favourite recording the most number of tickets sold to the public, with 11,449 (9.87% of the total tickets) being the only one of the 34 sports to surpass the 10,000 mark. Softball also led all sports in tickets sold to sponsors with 39,306 (15.03% of the total) and had an event-leading 50,755 tickets allocated, representing 13.45% of the total tickets allocated in The World Games.
One of the highlights of the tournament was the amazing Hoover Met Stadium, an existing baseball facility transformed into a world-class softball stadium for the event, with more than 10,000 available seats. The gold medal game between USA and Japan drew the highest attendance for a single event at The World Games 2022, with a fully packed Hoover Met Stadium witnessing USA’s victory over Japan.
The numbers were featured in The World Games Evaluation Report, which was commissioned by the International World Games Association (IWGA) and the Birmingham Organizing Committee (BOC) to Quantum Consultancy to provide a detailed view of the economic, social and environmental impacts associated with The World Games 2022 (TWG 2022).
Softball's success at The World Games 2022, in addition to the sport’s memorable Olympic return in Tokyo 2020, have been perfect illustrations of softball's contribution to multi-sports events, especially in regions with big softball traditions like the Americas and Asia, and have set a precedent for the potential inclusion of softball in future multi-sports events, like the LA28 Olympic Games (where softball is in contention to be added as an additional sport) and The World Games 2025 in Chengdu, China (where softball is expected to be back as a medal sport); or the Santiago 2023 Pan Am Games and the Hangzhou 2023 Asian Games, where the sport of softball has been a permanent feature in the continental games’ programme for many years.
