Women's professional baseball has landed a home base, with Front Office Sports reporting on Monday that the newly formed WPBL will play the entirety of its 2026 debut season at Robin Roberts Stadium in Springfield, Illinois.
The incoming league prioritized a neutral venue without an existing baseball team to house its four inaugural clubs — New York, Boston, LA, and San Francisco — for its first campaign, with barnstorming games also planned for each team market.
"Our sport is for everybody," WPBL co-founder Keith Stein told FOS. "It's for middle America, everybody. We thought, 'Our teams are on these two coasts, it would be good to be in the middle of the country.'"
Founded in 2024 as the first professional women's baseball outfit in the US since 1954, the WPBL will hold its first-ever draft on Thursday, with the league's four teams drawing from a pool of 120 eligible players.
The WPBL recently fielded an oversubscribed Series A investment round, telling FOS that they're closing a $3 million raise with another round planned ahead of its August 2026 season-opener.
Each 30-player team will operate under a $95,000 salary cap for the first year, with the league also covering living costs throughout the seven-week season as well as giving players a percentage of sponsorship funds.
How to watch the first-ever WPBL Draft
The 2025 WPBL Draft kicks off at 8 PM ET on Thursday, with live coverage streaming across the league's Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube channels.