The World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) announced a major overhaul of its Softball World Cup competitions and calendar on 26 February, with all World Cups moving to a four-year cycle, many with fewer participating teams.

WBSC World Cups are what used to be called World Championships, played by national teams.  In fastpitch softball, World Cups are currently held for Senior Women’s and Men’s Teams, Under-18 and Under-15 Women’s Teams, Under-23 and Under-18 Men’s Teams and Under-12 Mixed Teams.

While there is no Slowpitch World Cup on the 2021-2029 Softball Calendar published by the WBSC as part of its announcement (see Calendar below), this is expected to happen soon.  The WBSC has now set up a Working Group, which will meet for the first time on 23 March, to look at the development of co-ed and single-sex slowpitch around the world, and one of the group’s tasks will be to set a date for the first Slowpitch World Cup, probably beginning with a co-ed format.  It is hoped that this can take place sometime in 2022.

WBSC President Riccardo Fraccari explained the changes by saying, “The pandemic has forced us to rethink our events, innovate and be more efficient with tournament planning.  During 2020, Working Groups for baseball and softball met periodically to examine the WBSC competitions and make a proposal to improve them for all our stakeholders – a proposal that was approved by the WBSC Executive Committee.”

Similar changes have been made to World Cup formats and dates for the WBSC’s two other major disciplines – Baseball and Baseball5 – and full details for these changes can be found on the WBSC website



Different formats

While all WBSC Softball World Cups will now operate on a four-year cycle, there will be two different versions of the cycle.
 

Two-Stage format

For Senior Women, Senior Men and Under-18 Women, the cycle will play out over two preliminary stages and three years:

  • Year 1 – Continental Qualifiers (for GB teams, this will be the European Championship)
  • Year 2 – World Group Stage
  • Year 3 – World Cup Final
  • Year 4 – no event

Under this plan, 18 teams will progress from Continental or Regional Qualifiers in Year 1 to the World Group Stage in Year 2, where three six-team tournaments, seeded but with regional teams spread among the groups, will be played in three separate locations. 

The 18 teams will be made up of three from Europe, two from Africa, three from Asia, five from the Americas, two from Oceania and three Wild Card teams, which could be the countries hosting the World Group Stage tournaments if not already qualified or other countries that request and are granted a place.

The top two countries from each of the World Group Stage tournaments will progress to the World Cup Final in Year 3, along with two Wild Card Teams, one of whom could be the host country if not already qualified.  Otherwise, Wild Card Teams will be the best third-place finishers from the World Group Stage tournaments.

The Calendar (see below) ensures that from 2028 onwards, Year 4 for the Senior Women’s format will be the year when the Olympic Games is staged.

The three key differences from previous World Championships or World Cups are:

  1. The World Cup itself will only have eight participating teams, whereas this event previously had at least 12 or 16 teams, so opportunities for countries to get to a World Cup Final have been reduced.
     
  2. These tournaments used to be played every two years, so the interval between World Cup Finals has been doubled, reducing participation chances for athletes.
     
  3. Previously, each WBSC continent or region was guaranteed to have some representation in the World Cup.  Now, regional representation is only guaranteed in the World Group Stage, not in the World Cup Final itself.  This means that we are unlikely to see an African team in a World Cup Final in the near future, and European representation is by no means guaranteed.



Single-Stage format

For all other age groups -- Under-15 Women’s Teams, Under-23 and Under-18 Men’s Teams and Under-12 Mixed Teams -- the cycle will play out over two years, with one preliminary stage:

  • Year 1 – Continental Qualifiers (for GB teams, this will be the European Championship)
  • Year 2 – World Cup Final
  • Year 3 – no event
  • Year 4 – no event

In this format,12 teams will take part in the World Cup Final, and continental or regional representation is guaranteed.

The World Cup Final will be contested by one team from Africa; two each from Europe, Asia and Oceania; four teams from the Americas; and one Wild Card Team, which could be the host country.

The two key differences from previous World Championships or World Cups for these age groups are:

  1. Some of these tournaments used to have 16 teams participating, so opportunities for countries to get to a World Cup Final have been reduced.
     
  2. For some of these age groups, World Cups used to be played every two years, so the interval between World Cup Finals has been doubled, reducing participation chances for athletes.  A four-year interval for age-group teams means that players essentially have only one shot at participation at each age level.
     

Calendar changes

In setting up the Softball Calendar for its new system the WBSC has had to do some tweaking over the next couple of cycles to compensate for the planned Men’s World Cup in New Zealand in 2022 and for participation by Women's Teams in the Tokyo Olympics, now scheduled to be played in 2021.

The result is that for Senior Men and Women, their first two cycles will be back-to-back, with no off-year in between, as shown below:

Comments and reactions

Riccardo Fraccari said, “This new system will help the WBSC family mitigate the economic crisis the world is facing, providing greater opportunities for teams to participate as well as for more cities to be able to host WBSC events.  The ‘Finals’ will be a far greater product with lower costs for the organisers and a more intense competition over fewer days.”

However, some critics have responded by saying that opportunities for countries to participate in World Cup Finals have actually been significantly reduced, for the sake of producing shorter tournaments featuring a small number of the same elite teams that might be more attractive to television and sponsors.

WBSC President Fraccari hinted at this when he said: “With these improvements, we put the WBSC family and our sports in a stronger position to face the challenges ahead, setting the tone to continue growing the game around the globe by offering quality international events to athletes, fans, sponsors and all the stakeholders of our beloved game.”

A new bidding process for Baseball, Softball and Baseball5 World Cups has also been set up.  According to the WBSC, this will make bidding for WBSC World Cups “more orderly, transparent and robust, as well as providing all interested member countries with a clear view of the options available.”  The WBSC will announce full details of the bidding process soon.