Baseball & softball

UK baseball and softball community preparing for LA 2028

Published September 12, 2025

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Paul

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With baseball and softball returning to the Olympics roster in Los Angeles in 2028, the UK’s excited baseball and softball communities are looking forward to some of the benefits that come with being included on sport’s top table.

UK Sport recently announced £1m in funding for both the Great Britain women’s fastpitch softball team and GB’s baseball national team. It is the largest funding award in British baseball/softball history, and it is hoped the investment will help both teams qualify in what is a fiercely competitive field.

At the time of writing, the women’s softball team is ranked 11th in the world, while the men’s GB baseball team sits in 18th place, just behind Germany. With just over three years until the Games begin, here’s how key figures in the UK’s baseball and softball community see the Olympics impacting at grassroots level.

Chris Knoblock, PR Officer and Broadcaster for BaseballSoftballUK

“There’s a spike in chatter. What we’ve not seen is a spike in participation, and that is one thing that we need to get sorted before the next World Baseball Classic and the Olympics. I’m working on turning that excitement on the ground into grassroots players and development of the sport.

“When the last World Baseball Classic (baseball’s World Cup) happened in 2023, no one paid attention to Great Britain baseball until they won a game. When they won that game, they had less than 18 hours left in the tournament. So we had an 18 hour window to take advantage of their first win, and all these great articles were written, and they were all published after the team was on its way home. So turning these fireworks moments, as we call them, into recruitment is the number one thing for the Olympics in 2028.”

Bob Rowe, head coach at Birmingham Baseball Club

“I think the Olympics has always been good for sport, especially the smaller sports, in terms of getting people in. So even if they don’t even do well at the Olympics, hopefully just them being there means people will see it on TV and say, ‘Oh, there’s baseball in the Olympics. It must be a thing in this country, so I’ll look into it’.

“Especially from the youth side of things, if we can get kids seeing it on TV and saying they want to try that, then it means that hopefully lots of clubs will grow. The adult side of things will always get people in the door. I’m not so worried about that. But if we can get the kids to a really good participation level, that’ll be good going forward”.

David Morris, GB women’s U18s coach and Chichester Falcons president and head coach

“If we qualify I think it will raise the profile of the game in the country, because if lots of people watch the Olympics and probably don’t realise we had a softball team. They might think, ‘my goodness’. At the same time the stakes are higher, so they’re extra competitive. So whereas previous years there would be a squad of American-based girls and two to four British-based girls for the experience, that’s stopped now. Because they absolutely have to win all their games. There’s no room for rookies tagging along for the experience, even though it was good for them.

“So there are two sides to it. I work with a lot of younger girls, where my daughter goes to train, and it’s quite disheartening for them because they’re starting to realise they actually haven’t got a chance of getting to the Olympics. So what happens after the Olympics is going to be really interesting. Because if they don’t qualify, or it just doesn’t go very well, I wonder if they’ll revert back to a UK-based team.”

Luis Arrevillagas, Great Britain slow-pitch softball assistant coach

“I think it would be amazing if any of the GB teams, either baseball or softball, made it to the Olympics, because we might be able to follow it a little bit more. In the past, both sports have been in the Olympics, like in Tokyo, but some people in the UK didn’t even know because it’s not shown much on TV if the GB team isn’t participating.

And when the Olympics came to London in 2012, baseball and softball were taken out. We didn’t even have a stadium here, never mind trying to host. But if a baseball or softball GB team manages to get into the Olympics in LA, we’ll be able to follow it a bit more, and people might actually say, ‘I want to join this.’ Hopefully, we’ll be able to connect with those people and say, ‘If you want to play locally, this is where you need to go.’”

Find out more about baseball and softball at the LA Olympics