LAUSANNE, Switzerland -- 8 March 2018 -- Targeting 275 million French speakers worldwide and 1 billion players and fans over the next decade, the World Baseball Softball Confederation (WBSC) today launched a version of its website (wbsc.org/fr) in French, the official language of the Olympic Movement, as baseball and softball have been steadily on the rise in French-speaking territories.

 

The addition of the French platform makes WBSC's website and content now available in six languages, including English, Japanese, Korean, Spanish and Traditional Chinese, allowing potentially more than 2 billion people globally to navigate the World Baseball Softball website in their own native or second language.

 

 

WBSC President Riccardo Fraccari hailed the development of WBSC's French platform as a major boost for the positioning of baseball and softball a major global sport and potential long-term Olympic sport.

 

"We are proud to provide this service to the French-speaking communities and our National Federations in Europe, Africa and around the world," said Fraccari, a French speaker. "WBSC has a responsibility to our athletes and to our sport to do everything we can to increase the global popularity of our sport and to make every effort to secure baseball and softball's long-term Olympic future. So wherever the Games are held, baseball and softball events will deliver consistent added value and wider appeal to the Olympic Programme."

 

WBSC has recently added a wave of initiatives to stimulate and demonstrate the global growth and appeal of baseball/softball worldwide. These actions include the launch of an urban/street discipline, Baseball5™, a Mini Baseball Softball discipline, a new Softball World Cup flagship brand, a new WBSC Europe continental structure, and joining China's popular social media platform Weibo.

 

Founded at the 2014 WBSC Congress, the Francophone Association of Baseball Softball (AFBS) has since been working to promote and develop baseball and softball in a network of 77 French-speaking countries.

 

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