This is not a drill: Olympic softball is coming to Oklahoma City
The 2028 Games in Los Angeles have decided to relocate softball to Devon Park.
Olympic softball is coming to Oklahoma City.
You heard that correctly.
The Olympics are coming to Oklahoma City.
Big news came out Friday that Oklahoma City will host part of the canoe competition in the 2028 Olympics, which are being hosted by Los Angeles. But in some surprising news, Oklahoma City is also going to be hosting the softball competition.
This is huge.
I can't overstate that enough: to have two Olympic competitions in Oklahoma City, it’s unbelievable news for the city, for the state. But obviously, the softball world here should be head over heels about the fact that Olympic competition in softball will be here in Oklahoma City at Devon Park in 2028.
Let's talk a little bit about how this all happened.
Ever since LA was awarded the 2028 Games, there was a belief that the canoe slalom event might come to Oklahoma City because Los Angeles, like most major cities, does not have a whitewater venue that can host something like canoe slalom. OKC does. So it was long believed that that event would come to RiverSport OKC, that the Oklahoma River facility would host that event.
That was made official Friday in a statement by LA28, which is the organizing committee for the Games in LA.
But in that announcement, we also found out that Los Angeles has decided to relocate the softball competition to Oklahoma City as well. Now, everybody in Oklahoma City knows nowhere has as good a softball facility as Oklahoma City. It has been that way for many years, and since the most recent expansion added an upper deck to Devon Park, added an improved press area for TV and all sorts of media, it’s just risen even higher beyond the rest of the competition.
But with the Games being in Southern California, that’s a hotbed for softball. People here in Oklahoma know well just how good softball is in the southern part of California. You can start with UCLA, but you can obviously look at the myriad high school and youth programs that have sent fantastic players into the sport of softball all over the country, including here in Oklahoma. Many of the best players who have been on the best teams that we've seen at OU and OSU have been California natives.
California as a softball mecca? No doubt about that.
So, when I started to hear some talk from people that, “Well, maybe LA28 will send softball to Oklahoma City as well,” I thought it seemed like a bit of a pipe dream because there are softball facilities in Southern California. If it's softball specific, it may not be big enough, but there would surely be baseball facilities that could be converted.
That's what we saw in the Olympics in the 2020 that became 2021 because of the pandemic. In Tokyo, we saw a converted baseball facility used for softball. I figured that Southern California with their rich softball roots would figure out a way to have the softball competition in LA or somewhere in the surrounding area.
But today in the announcement from LA28, they basically said, “Listen, we don't have a big enough softball facility; 2,000 seats is the max for a softball0specific facility in Southern California.”
No surprise there. That's pretty big in the world of softball. You don't see many jumbo-sized on-campus facilities like at Oklahoma. You can look at Alabama, Arkansas. There are a few places that start to get into the 4,000 and 5,000 seats, but they're rare. So 2,000 seats for a softball-specific facility in LA, not totally surprising.
But LA deciding that they just didn't have a facility that they felt like they could convert or wanted to convert to softball to allow for the kind of crowd that they expect. That was something that the announcement from LA28 mentioned is that they expect big crowds.
As we know, softball in the Olympics has not been consistent ever since it first went into the Games in 1996 in Atlanta. Softball had a run of four Olympics, and then it got removed from the sport roster and has been on and off since then. It will return in 2028; host cities can add special designations for sports that may not be on the full roster and softball was one that LA28 decided to add.
But then looking around Southern California, LA28 realized that they did not have anything close to what Oklahoma City offers.
Now this also speaks to a big-picture view of the Olympics. It's now allowed, the International Olympic Committee has allowed, host cities to go outside their city to find facilities in order to hold down the costs of venues, the cost of running the Olympics, which has continued to increase. If you don't have a facility and you have to build it out of scratch, then is it able to be used?
In Southern California, if they decided to build a softball facility that was somewhere in the vicinity of what Oklahoma City has, 8,000, 10,000 seats, my guess is that they could use it for other things. I am very doubtful that it would be empty or just abandoned entirely. That would not happen to a softball facility in Southern California. I'm very certain of that.
But when you're talking about Southern California, you're also talking about very high property prices. Just all the variables that come into play when it comes to building massive sport facilities.
So LA28 decided that was not in the cards for them.
And now the Olympics are coming to Oklahoma City.
It's a little bit weird to me to say that, to think that, because you think about all the Olympic cities that are out there. Paris is about to host this summer's Olympic games. The cities where the Olympics go are the biggest of the big. They're international. They're places that people aspire to travel to in their lives.
So for Oklahoma City, one of the smaller markets that's ever hosted any Olympic event, to have one that we expected in canoe slalom and another that is a bit of a surprise?
I talked to a source in city hall just a little bit ago, exchanged some text messages, and this was a surprise. They did not expect that it would happen quite like this. I'm sure in recent days as they talked over it, it became more and more clear that it would happen. But because of the RiverSport facility that Oklahoma City has invested so heavily in, that canoe slalom would come was widely expected. But the softball move?Definitely not something that I think a lot of people would have thought was for sure going to happen.
So for it to have happened, it’s unbelievable news for Oklahoma City.
This is a nod toward generations of Oklahoma City residents who agreed to build things, improve things, and maybe they didn't always quite know where it was going. When what was then Hall of Fame Stadium was built, it was largely by USA Softball and some civic money. But over the years, millions of dollars have been invested by, yes, USA Softball, but even more so by taxpayers in Oklahoma City agreeing again and again to do improvements.
At the time, those improvements were done in large part to keep the Women's College World Series in Oklahoma City, to make it an event that would put down roots here. And that's been what's happened. The NCAA and Oklahoma City have a contract for the Women's College World Series that runs through 2035. So that event is here for the long term, and I wouldn't be surprised if after 2035 that contract gets renewed. I don't know if it's another 15 years, another 20, or if it's something shorter in the 10, but it's going to continue to be renewed because nobody has a facility like Oklahoma City.
So to the residents of Oklahoma City, the civic leaders in Oklahoma City who over the years said, “This is important, we need to do this,” thank you, thank you, thank you.
Voters for saying yes, a huge thank you to you because again, nobody knew what was going to happen, that the Olympics would be a possibility.
But Oklahoma City had a chance to provide a world-class facility for Olympic softball, and lo and behold, the Olympics are coming to Oklahoma City in 2028.