Four Countries Plus WBSC Europe Establish Baseball European Champions League

Through its website, the European branch of the World Baseball and Softball Confederation (WBSC Europe) announced four countries plus the European governing body have established a new European baseball championship: the Baseball European Champions League.

According to the website of the WBSC Europe, the BECL will replace the current European Champions Cup in 2024. The top four European baseball countries will send their two best teams to the new championship: Czech Republic, Germany, Italy, and the Netherlands.

“This groundbreaking decision, announced during the 2023 European Championship, sets the stage for the future of European club competitions,” says the WBSC Europe.

“The baseball European clubs league will welcome a maximum of eight elite teams. The top European baseball clubs will engage in a series of home and away games in different European cities to notch the title of European Champions during the final four.

While the core framework of the league has been established, the finer details of the Baseball European Champions League will be defined in the coming weeks, thanks to the collaborative efforts of the participating nations and WBSC Europe.”

Good initiative, or perhaps not? I cannot tell yet. Too many questions remain before I can judge this new format. For example, home and road games… This will cost the clubs a lot of money. For all road games, hotel rooms need to be reserved, next to the travel costs.
For the two Dutch representatives, games in Germany could be done by bus, but the Czech Republic and especially Italy will be too far, so plane tickets need to be bought. Will the WBSC Europe give the participants a financial compensation to deal with these extra costs?

What about the format of the four aforementioned countries? Will this Baseball European Champions League be a closed circuit? Or will clubs from France or Spain (to name a few) have the opportunity to earn a promotion to the new league? I bet Spain will be ticked off as that country earned a spot in the European Champions Cup by winning the Confederations Cup.

Will each country have the right to decide which teams will represent them? For example in the Netherlands, the winner of the regular competition earned a ticket for the European Champions Cup, next to the Dutch champion. Will this still be the case, or will the two clubs that reached the championship series in each country be the representatives?

As stated before, the WBSC Europe will come with more info in the coming weeks.

EDIT: According to a well informed source, nothing is engraved in stone yet. According to this source, there is only an intention to establish this new format. Not quite the same as the WBSC Europe wants us to believe.

To be continued…