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Robot umpires aren’t coming to pro softball just yet.
Kim Ng, former Marlins GM and current commissioner of the MLB-backed Athletes Unlimited Softball League, said Friday that pro softball is “not there yet” on implementing an Automated Ball-Strike Challenge System (ABS).
“We don’t have the tenure that MLB does, we haven’t necessarily experienced what MLB has,” Ng said in response to a question from Front Office Sports. “Until something really is glaring, we will address it when it comes to the surface.”
The ABS system, which allows players to appeal umpires’ ball and strike calls through tracking cameras that monitor pitches, was implemented in MLB beginning in the 2026 season. It caught on quickly with players, with 124 challenges made in the first four days of the regular season and 67 of them resulting in overturned calls. MLB commissioner Rob Manfred also said it was a hit with fans.
Just over a month after MLB introduced ABS, it will make its way to college baseball, debuting at the SEC tournament. AUSL, Ng says, doesn’t have the adequate data yet to implement this system, but she’s not totally ruling it out for the future.
“We definitely need to do something about this, but we’re not there yet,” Ng said.
Ownership and Markets
AUSL will begin its 2026 and second overall season just days after the NCAA softball season ends in early June. The biggest change from season one is that teams will be playing in six different home markets, rather than operating on a touring league model.
However, despite each team having a distinct location now, they will still all be under the ownership of Athletes Unlimited.
“What’s interesting about being a single-owner entity is that you create guardrails in terms of how you want to present the game and present your players,” Ng said. “Understanding that each market is different, you’ll do some things differently, but for the most part you’re applying on a consistent basis.”
However, Ng says she is “entertaining all” when it comes to ownership—including the possibility of bringing multiple owners to the league down the line. Many newer leagues like the PWHL and Premier Lacrosse League are single-owner entities, but PLL founder Paul Rabil noted to FOS the conflict-of-interest concern under this model, and that a multi-ownership system was required to become a top five North American sports league.
AUSL currently consists of the Chicago Bandits, Carolina Blaze, Utah Talons, Texas Volts, Portland Cascade, and Oklahoma City Spark. The latter two teams were expansion teams added ahead of the 2026 season, while the Bandits and the Spark existed as teams in previous professional softball leagues.
The Spark, founded in 2022 as part of the now-defunct Women’s Professional Fastpitch, played as an independent team from 2024 until November 2025, when it joined the AUSL.
“On the Spark the last couple of years, because we didn’t have that [top] competition, we were excluded from the professional softball conversation,” Spark player Kinzie Hansen-McKinzie told FOS. “Being able to be part of the AUSL, play that competition, and be included in those conversations is very exciting.”
The AUSL recently concluded its 2026 college draft on May 4. It will kick off its second season on June 9, with games on various ESPN platforms including ABC.
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