BARCELONA, Spain — Riccardo Fraccari has run international baseball since 2009, first as president of the IBAF and then as the first elected president of the World Baseball Softball Confederation, the body he created in 2013 with softball’s Don Porter. He was in Barcelona this month to watch the first of two qualifiers for the 2027 Premier12 — the tournament that will award two of the six places in Olympic baseball at Los Angeles 2028.
He spoke with World Baseball Network at Camp Municipal de Béisbol Carlos Pérez de Rozas.
The field is getting bigger
The 2027 Premier12 expands from 12 teams to 16, and it is now the main road to the Olympics. Two qualifiers fill the four new places — Barcelona, which Spain and Italy won, and Zhongshan, China, next month.
“The next edition of the Premier12 will be an increase of four teams,” Fraccari said. “I saw very high level, high quality of the game. This means that European baseball is growing a lot.”
Riccardo Fraccari on the Premier12 expanding to 16 teams
Fourteen programs have played across the three previous editions, and ten of them have played all three. Spain had never qualified. Italy had been once, in the inaugural 2015 tournament.
Barcelona, where it started
The 1992 Summer Games awarded baseball’s first Olympic medals in this city. Cuba won gold, Chinese Taipei silver, Japan bronze. The Carlos Pérez de Rozas field sits on Montjuïc inside the Olympic Ring and, according to the WBSC, served as a training ground that summer.
“We are in the city where we started the journey of Olympic baseball in ‘92,” Fraccari said. “It’s very emotional to come back.”
“We started the journey of Olympic baseball here in 1992”
Porter led the International Softball Federation for 26 years and got softball into the Atlanta Games in 1996. He was the WBSC’s co-president alongside Fraccari until 2014, and died in 2020 at 90.
Zhongshan is the other half
The second Olympic qualifier runs Nov. 26-28 at Panda Heritage Stadium in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province: Nicaragua, Czechia, China and Great Britain, single round-robin, top two into the 16-team field.
“In China is another important thing, because we enter also in a continent like China,” Fraccari said. “And we have other two European teams, because we have Great Britain and Czech Republic, plus Nicaragua. It will be another fantastic tournament.”
Riccardo Fraccari on the Zhongshan qualifier and baseball’s global reach
Between the two qualifiers, four of the eight teams competing are European.
Eleven world tournaments
Asked about loanDepot park in Miami, which hosted the 2026 World Baseball Classic final, Fraccari widened the frame.
“Not only this — international baseball all over,” he said. “This year we have eleven world tournaments. It’s not only one city. We have in Asia, for example, the final of the Premier12 in Tokyo. This shows that we are not only one country. Really, baseball is global.”
“Baseball is global” — Riccardo Fraccari on the WBSC’s world tournaments
The 2027 Premier12 runs across four stages. Taipei Dome hosts an opening-round group and a second-round group. The Super Round and medal games are at Tokyo Dome, which has hosted the final of all three previous editions.
Where he’s looking next
The line that got the least attention in the interview is the one worth watching.
“Not only in America, but also in Europe — you see here two European qualifiers,” Fraccari said. “And there are also not only in Europe, but there are in the Middle East. And now we are focused on the Arab countries. This shows that as a governing body, we are trying to develop all of our baseball.”
“Not only in America” — Riccardo Fraccari on where baseball is growing
There is a record behind that. The Saudi Baseball and Softball Federation joined the WBSC in 2021 and was ratified by Congress in 2022, positioning itself under Saudi Vision 2030 with the stated goal of becoming the catalyst for baseball and softball development across the Arab world. Jordan’s federation was approved after a WBSC-backed Baseball5 program at the Azraq refugee camp. The UAE’s national team program now runs through Baseball United, the professional league founded for the Middle East and South Asia, which has also partnered with the Saudi federation on national team development.
Baseball5 — the five-a-side street version the WBSC launched in 2018, which needs nothing but a ball — is how most of that development has started.
What it adds up to
Under Fraccari, the WBSC secured baseball and softball’s return to the Olympics for Tokyo 2020, created the Premier12, added the Under-12 and Under-21 World Cups, and launched Baseball5. Baseball returns to the Games in Los Angeles in 2028 at Dodger Stadium, July 13-19, with six teams.
Three of those six places are taken: the United States as host, and Venezuela and the Dominican Republic as the top two teams from the Americas at the 2026 World Baseball Classic. One goes to the highest-finishing Asian team at the 2027 Premier12, one to the highest-finishing team from Europe or Oceania, and one to the winner of a final qualifying tournament by March 2028.
Spain and Italy are now in that field. Two more join them from Zhongshan next month.
The view from the host federation
Pablo Carpio, president of the Real Federación Española de Béisbol y Sófbol, has worked international events himself — he was a scoring director at the 2015 and 2019 Premier12 tournaments. This month he watched the federation he runs qualify for the first time.
“He has improved, he has boosted baseball and softball internationally like never before, and nobody did,” Carpio said of Fraccari. “We have to say thanks to Riccardo Fraccari and to the World Baseball Softball Confederation, because they granted for us this event here in Barcelona. This is a signal of confidence.”
Pablo Carpio on Riccardo Fraccari and the growth of international baseball
Carpio is also clear-eyed about what qualifying actually buys. Spain is not going to Los Angeles. It is going to the tournament where Los Angeles is decided, against the Netherlands, Czechia, Great Britain, Australia and the rest.
“We cannot stop dreaming,” he said. “Organizing a qualifier here was the first step, the first dream, the first goal to reach. We got it. The second step was tonight, winning this qualifier.”
“A dream made true” — RFEBS president Pablo Carpio on Spain reaching the Premier12
Fraccari has been building toward a moment like that one since 2009, when he took over a federation whose sport had just been voted out of the Olympics. Seventeen years later he’s standing in the city where those Olympics started, watching a country that had never qualified for anything punch its ticket.
The next one opens on Thanksgiving. Nicaragua, Czechia, China and Great Britain play a single round-robin from Nov. 26 to 28 at Panda Heritage Stadium in Zhongshan, Guangdong Province, for the last two places in the field. Top two advance.
Thanksgiving belongs to football in this country. But the winter leagues are in full swing by then, and the last two places in the Premier12 field get decided on the other side of the world while the turkey’s in the oven. Set an alarm.