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.
25 Years at #1: Your best source of news about the Olympics is www.aroundtherings.com, for subscribers only
Recent Articles
Sinner-Alcaraz, the duel that came to succeed the three phenomenons
Beyond the final result, Roland Garros left the feeling that the Italian and the Spaniard will shape the great duel that came to help us through the duel for the end of the Federer-Nadal-Djokovic era.
Table tennis: Brazil’s Bruna Costa Alexandre will be Olympic and Paralympic in Paris 2024
She is the third in her sport and the seventh athlete to achieve it in the same edition; in Santiago 2023 she was the first athlete with disabilities to compete at the Pan American level and won a medal.
Rugby 7s: the best player of 2023 would only play the medal match in Paris
Argentinian Rodrigo Isgró received a five-game suspension for an indiscipline in the circuit’s decisive clash that would exclude him until the final or the bronze match; the Federation will seek to make the appeal successful.
Rhonex Kipruto, owner of the world record for the 10000 meters on the road, was suspended for six years
The Kenyan received the maximum sanction for irregularities in his biological passport and the Court considered that he was part of a system of “deliberate and sophisticated doping” to improve his performance. He will lose his record and the bronze medal at the Doha World Cup.
Katie Ledecky spoke about doping Chinese swimmers: “It’s difficult to go to Paris knowing that we’re going to compete with some of these athletes”
The American, a seven-time Olympic champion, referred to the case of the 23 positive controls before the Tokyo Games that were announced a few weeks ago and shook the swimming world. “I think our faith in some of the systems is at an all-time low,” he said.
