If a league’s endemic partners are doing the bare minimum, their brand is on players’ gloves, bats, helmets, protective equipment, and even the bases they slide into.
When those partners do their job particularly well, they become part of the sport’s culture that follows athletes from their first childhood games all the way through the pros.
Mizuno has partnered with Athletes Unlimited since just before the launch of AU Pro Softball in 2020 and has provided softballs and batting helmets for the first two AUSL seasons. Franklin Sports began its journey with the AUSL in 2019, providing the league with both batting and sliding gloves and recently extended its commitment through 2030.
Finally, Easton and Rawlings were announced as the official bat, glove, and base of the AUSL in May, but took the partnership a step further by bringing its Gold Glove Award back to professional softball for the first time since 2019.
“The Gold Glove Award is the most prestigious award with MLB on the baseball side, and so it just felt like all of the… pieces were aligning with MLB also coming in and supporting AUSL,” said Julie Tobyansen, director of softball marketing for Rawlings/Easton. “This was the right time to do it.”
@theauslofficial Some names are part of the game’s DNA 🥎🔥 Rawlings & Easton 🤝🏼 AUSL Trusted by elite athletes. Built for the moments that matter.
♬ original sound – AUSL 🥎
It also acknowledges what athletes have come to expect from the brands they’re using from game to game. The Carolina Blaze’s Karlyn Pickens, the Texas Volts’ NiJaree Canady, and the Utah Talons’ Taylor Tinsley are all Easton/Rawlings-sponsored AUSL rookies whom the company wanted to ensure made the transition from college to the pros with the best equipment—working with them on custom gloves and hosting a “glove day” for other players at spring camp in Vero Beach. The Talons’ Jordan Woolery, the Portland Cascade’s Megan Grant, and the Oklahoma City Spark’s Maya Brady are all also Easton-supported, often hitting balls over the fence with bats similar to those they used at UCLA—in the stadium bearing company pioneer James Easton’s name.
Even the Gold Glove has been awarded to college softball players since 2022, including Easton/Rawlings athletes such as the Talons’ Jayda Coleman and the Volts’ Rachel Garcia.
Kathryn Quirk, strategic brand partnerships leader for Franklin Sports, noted that while her company has had access to MLB athletes for more than 40 years—with Philadelphia Phillies Hall of Famer Mike Schmidt helping create its first batting glove—it lacked similar input from softball players. Franklin has been a national sponsor of USA Softball and has partnered with other softball leagues in the past, but notes that its steady communication with AUSL players has made a discernible difference in its product on the field.
Working with Brady, the Chicago Bandits’ Erin Coffel, teammate Skylar Wallace, and the Blaze’s Baylee Klingler, Franklin has tailored its glove sizing to players’ hands. While Franklin produces a women’s softball glove with a narrow fit, Quirk noted that feedback from AUSL players at spring camp included a preference for the looser adult-fit baseball glove from some players and the need for a shortened thumb and differently situated padding for others.
The results, fully branded gloves for each team, showed up in the batter’s box and on the basepaths during the regular season, but get a chrome, silver, and gold makeover as Franklin prepares custom gloves for the All-Star Cup.
“We want to get it right, and the women’s fit was something that was a priority… to know that it’s not one size fits all,” Quirk said, noting that Franklin’s softball product manager is a former player and current youth coach. “[She is] very much aware of what girls want and how they grow and how things differ from the male perspective, and that’s something we take very seriously.”
With more eyes on softball than ever before, the details matter. Coming into the AUSL season, the league’s broadcast partners at ESPN had a record 2.2 million fans on average watch the NCAA Women’s College Softball World Series—finishing with a 28% year-over-year spike in viewership for the entire tournament. The AUSL, meanwhile, increased its viewership 183% on ESPN channels from 2025.
It’s why Franklin also features its logo prominently in stadiums for broadcast and came up with colorways for its batting and sliding gloves that pop on screen with players’ uniforms. While Rawlings/Easton typically focused a greater share of its softball marketing efforts on college because it represented “the pinnacle of the sport” and huge audiences on ESPN, Tobyansen said the company put jewel-graphic artwork on the AUSL’s bases and increased social media focus on their athlete partners’ new bats and gloves prior to launch because “that’s kind of how the buzz starts to happen: What’s Maya Brady swinging? What’s Megan Grant swinging?”
Mizuno, meanwhile, has its RunBird logo on every ball a player hands to a fan, every batting helmet that stands at the plate, and prominently at an annual youth clinic in Rosemont. Leah Majeski, marketing manager for team sports for Mizuno USA, said the brand realizes there’s an opportunity to put the brand’s products in front of as many softball fans and kids as possible, but it’s an ancillary benefit of supporting the league.
By partnering with the AUSL, Mizuno completes the journey along with its players. It’s there at the beginning for Mizuno-sponsored youth and high-school travel ball teams. It remains a supplier for college programs like Duke, Nebraska, and Texas—as well as USA Softball. Finally, with AUSL, it has the chance to watch players live out their dreams, follow them for Mic’d Up segments on social media, and say goodbye to Mizuno athletes like the Blaze’s Valerie Cagle when they retire.
“The success of professional softball gives youth athletes the opportunity to continue following their favorite players after college while inspiring them to dream of becoming professional softball players themselves,” Mizuno USA’s Majeski said. “From the beginning, we believed AU had the potential to succeed, and we wanted to be part of that journey.”
Jason Notte is a sports business and marketing reporter for Athletes Unlimited. You can follow him on Instagram @notteham.
