Press Release Euro League Baseball
The conclusion of a lot of positive and constructive meetings with clubs and National Federations, made us optimistic about ELB’s future again. The Dutch Federation permits Dutch individual and combination teams to participate. Also the French and Czech Federation are committed to combination teams.
After the inaugural 2016 season with three teams, ELB aims to start the 2017 season with 6-8 teams. Besides Munich Disciples, Regensburg Legionäre and Draci Brno for the 2017 season, Team Amsterdam, Team Prague and a French Team will join the schedule. Talks are ongoing with Rotterdam and our Italian members.
Gregory Halman Trophy
We are very pleased to announce that we’ve received the permission of Greg Halman’s family to connect Greg’s name to the ELB cup, this means that the yearly winner of the ELB Championship will be awarded with the Gregory Halman Trophy. The trophy will be a challenge throphy of which a smaller replica will be handed to the winner to keep at their clubhouse. While the original throphy will be kept at a place to be determined.
We think Gregory Halman, had a great future in Major League Baseball ahead and would definitly had an impact on the popularity of our game in Europe. By naming the ELB trophy after him, he will be remembered as one of the most talented players born and raised in Europe. His young and dramatic death, shocked the baseball community and we believe this is a great way to honor him.
Looking ahead
Finding the funds to cover costs is still challenging. There are companies that follow our developments, but since we had a very bumpy start, these companies need time to make decisions. With more teams on our schedule and more exposure we can start to work on the future of ELB. Regarding partnerships and sponsors we’ll need to regain the trust to keep them on board.
All credits go out to the clubs that actually started to play in ELB this year. They all made great accomplishment and learned from the experiences.
Brno, Regensburg and Munich-Haar showed that it’s possible to play. Now we need to show the world that we can make ELB an added value for players, clubs, fans and business partners.
We’ll have a long road ahead but baseball in Europe can have a bright future. We’re confident that federations and clubs will benefit from Euro League Baseball’s efforts to grow the game by attracting new fans, members, sponsors, partners and media attention.