Another setback for Italian baseball

After it was announced that ASD Parma, and Nettuno were in financial problems, the Godo Knights announced that they would withdraw from the IBL.  Godo was replaced by Novarra baseball.

Yesterday, Nettuno announced to merge the two teams that are playing in the IBL. In 2014, Nettuno 2 filled the void that was left after Mastiff baseball from Grosetto withdrew from the IBL.

Despite some organizational problems this went well for a few years, but recently one of the oldest baseball clubs in Italy got into financial problems. Apparently, maintaining two teams cost a lot of money. Next to that the results of both teams were rather modest.

Now, in an attempt to build a team with which the club can compete in the IBL again, the teams will merge to one. Due to this decision the IBL will contain seven teams instead of eight in the upcoming season, so the format must be adapted.

The number of Italian players is not very big. Therefore Nettuno will try to cooperate with local companies to keep those players in Nettuno. So in other words, the club is asking for sponsor money.

Two years after Nettuno helped the FIBS and IBL to keep eight teams in the league, the club has made a decision for the good of itself. Who can blame them? For two years there was a very strange situation in which one club had two teams in the highest Italian baseball league; and all this as a result of the financial hard time that Italian baseball is going through.