Softball may still be a toddler among pro sports, but it’s growing up fast. It was only in 2020 that Athletes Unlimited, a startup aiming to reinvent league sports for women, launched AUX Softball with a 5-week season, new ways of scoring, and no city-based teams. They won over athletes, sponsors and broadcasters, notching a 3-year broadcasting deal with ESPN.

But they still had to win over the fans—a critical mass of support to put the league on solid ground.

This year, AUX rebranded to Athletes Unlimited Softball League (AUSL), and launched with four teams of 15 players. Still, it didn’t generate much buzz; the announcement post didn’t even hit 700 likes on the official Instagram page. Attendance through most prior seasons were easily accommodated at a small complex in Rosemont, Illinois.

How could the league tap into fan passion when its teams didn’t have a home base or any other? The answer could be found within social media: utilize college athletes.

On April 13, former softball player and current ESPN announcer Jenny Dalton-Hill made softball history by delivering the first-ever “golden ticket” to Virginia Tech’s Emma Lemley. The symbolic ticket was an open invitation to Lemley to play professional softball as soon as her collegiate career was over, regardless of how her final season ended.

Eleven more athletes would get golden tickets, guaranteeing them a spot on one of AUSL’s four team rosters. They wouldn’t have to hang up their cleats after college. Because the players didn’t know who would get these precious offers, their joy was completely genuine, generating heartwarming and inspiring video clips. ‘Oh, I really hope this is the moment,’ LSU fielder Danieca Coffey remembers thinking just before she received her ticket. “I knew if it wasn’t this weekend, it wasn’t gonna happen.”

The golden tickets weren’t just a way to strengthen the game, they were an extremely impactful marketing ploy, sparking an excitement that sent attendance at AUSL games to new heights. In Round Rock, Texas, the Bandits and the Volts played for 6,500 fans, which is the largest softball crowd in Texas history. Additionally, 20 games were sold out during the inaugural season in 2025.

With no history of pro softball in the US, softball fandom lives in college play. Softball has been growing at the collegiate level for 43 years since it was sanctioned as an NCAA sport, and its inclusion in the 2000 and 2020 Olympics raised its popularity further.

Fans are more familiar with college players than with any pros, most of whom play internationally. Some expressed dismay that the US Olympic team had so few familiar faces.

Fans were questioning why pitchers Karlyn Pickens and NiJaree Canady weren’t included, and why iconic power hitter Joclyn Alo wasn’t wearing red, white and blue.

Old school powerhouses like catcher Dejah Mulipola and infielder Jessi Warren were on the roster, who are newer players compared to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics roster that featured older players like Monica Abbot and Cat Osterman.

The growing popularity, however, meant there were fans outraged that college players weren’t included in the AUSL because its draft date was before the final collegiate game of the year.

It’s easy to see that playing out on social media. Prior to 2025, the AUSL posts that got the most attention were tied to popular college athletes and their alma maters. One example: A post announcing the return of Alabama alumna Montana Fouts after sitting out for a year with an ACL injury yielded more than 10,000 likes. Fouts’ Instagram alone boasts 172,000 followers, but most other AUSL posts saw engagement in the low thousands.

That nearly doubled after the announcement of the college draft. Lemley’s golden ticket post alone notched more than 13,000 likes. Arkansas’ Bri Ellis—the first SEC conference player to win Softball America Player of the Year– generated similar excitement.

When AUSL was founded, fans had to choose a favorite team rather than be born into one. For most softball fans old and young, they followed their favorite collegiate players into their professional careers.

But similar to the Team USA roster, there were a lot of older players on the rosters that had graduated before AUX was even formed. With the golden tickets, AUSL pulled out the best PR move of its career.

Lemley and Ellis, crying and celebrating with their teams, showed the passion and humanity of the game.

Every college has die-hard fans that will represent their favorite athletes at every level, and the golden tickets provided buzz that got word out. Fans of the 12 college draftees and devoted alumnae of the schools were roped in the very moment their favorite players were given a ticket.

With the Golden Tickets and College draft, AUSL bridged a gap, and it changed the softball world in the best way possible.

Following the AUSL inaugural season, the teams will be placed in a city to follow a more traditional softball format, now with the addition of two more teams. It seems that another round of Golden Tickets will be here to stay for the near future, thanks to the popularity of the inaugural round.