Australian Baseball League FAQ

The Australian Baseball League (ABL) is the top level of professional baseball in Australia. The current league relaunched in 2010 as a joint venture between Baseball Australia and Major League Baseball, and it runs during the Australian summer as a partner league that gives affiliated minor league players and Australian talent a place to compete outside the North American season.

ABL stands for Australian Baseball League, the country's premier professional baseball competition.

Major League Baseball helped launch and fund the modern ABL in 2010 but withdrew its financial backing after the 2015-16 season. Since then the league has been owned by Baseball Australia and governed under the Australian Baseball Federation, which oversees its clubs, schedule, and rules.

The ABL plays during the Australian summer, with the season typically running from November through January or February. That timing lets the league use Minor League Baseball players whose own season has just finished, since the Australian summer lines up with the North American off-season.

The ABL currently consists of four teams: Adelaide Giants, Brisbane Bandits, Perth Heat, and Sydney Blue Sox.

No. Earlier ABL seasons featured up to eight clubs, including Canberra Cavalry and Melbourne Aces, plus international entries such as Geelong-Korea and the Auckland Tuatara in some years. Canberra and Melbourne both left the league after the 2024 season, leaving the ABL with its current four-team lineup.

Regular season schedules have varied by year, but ABL clubs typically play several dozen games against each other over the course of the Australian summer season, with the schedule culminating in a championship series.

There are two main pathways into the ABL. Major League Baseball affiliated organizations assign some of their minor league players to ABL clubs during the MLB off-season, giving them extra development reps. Alongside that, Australian players sign directly with ABL clubs through tryouts and domestic recruitment, which the league tracks publicly through its own signings and weekly roster announcements.

ABL salaries are modest and meant to supplement, not replace, other income. Pay has historically run in the range of about 3,000 to 4,000 Australian dollars for a season, distributed through a tiered pay scale that groups players of similar experience at the same rate. As of 2023, the highest individual salary on record in the league was reported at 5,400 Australian dollars.

Yes. Each ABL club operates under a total roster salary cap of 100,000 Australian dollars, which keeps spending controlled across the league's four teams.

ABL games stream through Baseball+ (plus.baseball.com.au), the league's official streaming platform, accessible via a web browser or the Baseball+ app on Google Play and the Apple App Store. For the 2025-26 season, DAZN also acquired broadcast rights to ABL games in Japan and Taiwan.

To watch, sign up for an ABL Access Pass through Baseball+, either on the website or the mobile app, which gives you live and on demand access to games. Viewers in Japan and Taiwan also have the option to watch through DAZN's ABL broadcast rights for the 2025-26 season.

Yes. Baseball+ is available internationally as well as in Australia, and DAZN separately carries ABL games in Japan and Taiwan for the 2025-26 season, so the league is not limited to an Australian audience only.

Perth Heat play their home games at Empire Ballpark in Thornlie, Western Australia. The venue has carried various naming rights sponsors over the years and has also been known as NSR Hire Ballpark. It is owned by the Government of Western Australia and operated by Baseball WA, and it opened in 2004 with a capacity of roughly 3,000.

Perth Heat is owned by the Black Pearl Sports Group, which acquired the club's license for the 2025-26 season. The same ownership group also owns the Sydney Blue Sox, giving it control of two of the ABL's four current franchises.

Perth Heat players are paid under the same league wide structure as every other ABL club: a tiered pay scale historically in the 3,000 to 4,000 Australian dollar per season range, within the league's 100,000 Australian dollar roster salary cap. Perth Heat does not publish a separate pay scale of its own.

Perth Heat games are available through Baseball+, the ABL's official streaming service, using an ABL Access Pass on the website or mobile app. Perth Heat is one of the league's founding clubs, so its games are covered the same way as any other ABL matchup.

For live Perth Heat games, use the Baseball+ app or website and select Perth Heat's fixtures from the ABL schedule. Games stream live as they are played, with the option to also watch replays on demand afterward. International viewers in Japan and Taiwan can also find ABL games, including Perth Heat matchups, on DAZN for the 2025-26 season.

Organized Australian baseball dates back to the Claxton Shield, a state-based competition first held in 1934. An earlier national league also called the Australian Baseball League ran from 1989 to 1999. The current ABL launched for the 2010-11 season as a joint venture between Baseball Australia and Major League Baseball, effectively replacing the old Claxton Shield tournament with a club-based, city-branded competition.

The first Australian Baseball League launched in 1989 and folded after the 1998-99 season due to mounting financial debts. Australian baseball then reverted to the state-based Claxton Shield format until the current ABL relaunched in 2010.

Yes. Even though the modern ABL replaced the old Claxton Shield tournament starting in the 2010-11 season, the physical Claxton Shield trophy itself has continued to be presented to the league's champion each year, keeping a lineage that traces back to 1934.

Yes, ABL games are played with a designated hitter, similar to the American League side of MLB, so pitchers do not have to bat.

Rules here have changed over time. Earlier ABL seasons capped the number of international, or import, players a club could carry, such as a four-import limit in the league's 1990s incarnation. Starting with the 2018-19 season, Baseball Australia scrapped fixed import caps as part of a broader push to internationalize the league, so today's rosters mix Australian and international professionals without that specific limit, still inside the league's overall roster salary cap.

With the ABL down to four clubs, the regular season alone decides who plays for the title: the top two teams advance directly into the ABL Championship Series, a best-of-three series between the two finalists. That is simpler than the multi-round finals bracket the league used in seasons when it had six or more teams.

The ABL has fed talent into MLB for over a decade. Past MVP Ronald Acuna Jr. played in the league early in his career, and All-Stars including Liam Hendriks, Yusei Kikuchi, Andrew Kittredge, Shota Imanaga, and Cristopher Sanchez have all spent time in the ABL, alongside familiar names like Rhys Hoskins, Didi Gregorius, and Kevin Kiermaier.

Eight Australians have gone on to the Major Leagues after playing in the ABL since its 2010 relaunch: Shane Lindsay, Liam Hendriks, Warwick Saupold, James Beresford, Lewis Thorpe, Aaron Whitefield, Curtis Mead, and Jack O'Loughlin.

Yes. Perth-born reliever Liam Hendriks pitched for his hometown Perth Heat during the ABL's first, 2010-11 season while he was still a minor leaguer. He went on to become one of MLB's top closers, making multiple All-Star teams and finishing his career as the winningest Australian in saves.

The Adelaide Giants play their home games at Dicolor Australia Stadium at West Beach in Adelaide, South Australia.

The Brisbane Bandits play their home games at Viticon Stadium in Brisbane, Queensland.

The Sydney Blue Sox play their home games at Blue Sox Stadium in Sydney, New South Wales.

Yes. Australia's national team draws heavily from ABL rosters and MLB-affiliated Australians. The national team has competed in every World Baseball Classic since the tournament began, reaching the quarterfinals for the first time in 2023.

Yes, Australia automatically qualified for the 2026 World Baseball Classic by finishing in the top four of its pool at the 2023 tournament. In 2026, Australia was drawn into Pool C alongside Japan, South Korea, Czechia, and Chinese Taipei, and did not advance past the pool stage after a run-differential tiebreaker loss to South Korea.

The ABL bills itself as the premier English-speaking winter baseball league, and its rosters include players affiliated with organizations from MLB, Nippon Professional Baseball, the KBO League, the Chinese Professional Baseball League, and various independent leagues, alongside Australian talent.