Letter from the Commissioners: 2025 Forfeits
As we head toward the back half of our 10th season here at MLQ, we must admit it has been a bittersweet one.
On one hand, we have seen teams giving their all – week in and week out – to help us put out the high-level product for which we as a league strive. This has led to some incredibly competitive, dramatic series that we have been able to capture with an elevated production value across the board thanks to our new scorebug technology. We also continue to take strides in providing the type of venues worthy of the effort and skill being displayed on the pitch, and we are excited to show you all what the Nardin Academy in Buffalo, N.Y. has to offer for the MLQ Championship in August.
But on the other hand, we have hit unprecedented hurdles over the course of the 2025 season. Two of our historic franchises, the Austin Outlaws and New Orleans Curse, failed to get their seasons off the ground. Player shortages also led to forfeits by the Ottawa Black Bears*, Toronto Raiders, and Cleveland Riff. In total, 42 matches across 14 series that were originally scheduled to be played this summer were not. To put this into context, only nine matches were not played in total across the first nine seasons of MLQ.
We take this situation very seriously. This many scheduled matches going unplayed is unfair to our players who participate in the league, our fans who follow along every summer, and our partner organizations that help us make MLQ what it is. And while there may have been outside factors at play – a late USQ Cup, a European World Cup that many players attended, a July 4 holiday falling squarely up against a weekend – in what happened this season, we feel that it would be personally irresponsible to solely blame them. Instead, we intend to look inward as we look forward to the future of the league.
We could have done more to stay on top of the demographic flows of the sport in recent years. It is becoming readily apparent that as more veteran players retire from the sport, it is nearly impossible to sustain a franchise in a geographic location not being propped up by local college programs, and we could have done more to plan for this before it all came to a head at once this season. We also have never constructed a truly penal forfeit policy, because, quite simply, we never had forfeits. We now realize the freedom this gives teams to pick and choose the series they attend.
Going forward into 2026, we intend to focus heavily on these issues. We will be reevaluating all of our franchises for current and long-term sustainability. We will be reaching out to USQ to work together to further recruitment and growth initiatives for the sport. And we will be adjusting our forfeit policy to make it less likely that a season like this one happens again.
We understand that your support for our league is built on trust. We like to believe we have done as much as we can over the past decade to earn that trust, and we hope to continue to prove worthy of it going forward. As always, we thank you for continuing on this journey with us. We could not do it without you.
Sincerely,
Ethan Sturm and Amanda Dallas
Major League Quadball Co-Commissioners
* Ottawa forfeited their U.S. series due to player safety concerns created by the U.S. government’s current administration.
