Mister-Baseball.com has learned that a couple of club teams in European Baseball will meet in the coming days to create a professional baseball league in Europe. The league would consist of two teams apiece from the Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Germany and France and is supposed to start in April of 2016.

Rumors like this have been in existence since a couple of years, as the European Cup competitions haven’t really been able to raise the interest in European Baseball and lot of fans and players have called for a professional league in Europe. This sounds as a serious project, although it remains to be seen if the involved parties put politics aside and produce a league, which can survive the early pains.

A lot of different questions from all areas and aspects have to be answered as soon as this becomes public. Do national, continental and international federations back this idea? What happens to national competitions without their best teams? Are there marketing and media experts involved to bring people into the stands and content into TV, internet and newspapers? Who will finance travel costs and is going to pay the players? Will get other teams, which haven’t been invited initially, the opportunity to join the league?

The creation of independent leagues is not uncommon for European Baseball. There are interleague competitions in parts of Eastern Europe. The Collegiate Baseball League Europe was founded in the Netherlands a couple of years ago to give young players a summer-league experience compared to leagues like the Cape Cod League in the US. In Italy a league was formed with teams not willing to pay the costs of playing under the umbrella of the federation.

Nonetheless since the top clubs are involved from the top baseball countries in Europe (excluding the Czech Republic), this certainly has the potential to stir European Baseball as a whole.