MLB's Moonshot: Building a Fan Base in Europe, One Swing at a Time ⚾️
Participation offers one of the most powerful forms of engagement sport can unlock. That is why Major League Baseball is right to be encouraging more people to take swings.
23 April 2025
Walk into Moonshot in west London on a Friday night and the scene is part batting cage, part bar, part arcade. Friends take turns swinging in high-tech cages. Burgers and beers are passed around. A scoreboard lights up. There is laughter when someone connects. Louder laughter when someone completely misses.
It looks like fun. And that is the point.
Competitive socialising has become one of the most influential trends in sport and hospitality.
Just look at how Topgolf turned driving ranges into social hubs, Sixes brought cricket into the mix, or F1 Arcade made Formula 1 hands-on. These are not just places to watch sport. They are places to feel part of it.
Baseball, perhaps more than any of them, suits this format. The act of swinging a bat is simple to grasp and surprisingly difficult to master. That contrast is part of its charm. When a clean hit happens, it creates a moment worth remembering. For someone who has never watched a full game, it can plant the seed of interest and create a lifelong fan.
While Major League Baseball does not run these venues, it sees their value.
Places like Moonshot and The 108 offer physical access points to a sport with limited presence in the UK and Europe. They create familiarity through experience, which is often more powerful than promotion.
Ben Ladkin, Managing Director of MLB Europe, and a previous guest on the Sports Pundit Podcast, explains the league’s strategy through three interconnected pillars: content, events, and participation.
“We certainly lean into all three of those pillars… they all benefit each other,” he said. “If someone sees a brilliant piece of content that inspires them to play or inspires them to come along to the series, or they go to the series and then they start following our social channels, it's all very much interlinked.”
A person does not need to know the rules of baseball to enjoy stepping into a cage. They do not need to support a team to share a clip on Instagram. But once they have held a bat and made contact, they are far more likely to want to see the sport in its professional form. What begins as a group activity can lead to something deeper.
This pattern is already familiar in other sports. Running, cycling, and triathlon thrive on active participation. People do not simply watch the Tour de France or Ironman, they train, register, and compete. The line between spectator and participant has blurred as fandom and identity begin to overlap. Even short casual encounters, like a round in a batting cage, can unlock a sense of connection.
“We want to build a really good business over here, but that starts with increasing that fan base,” Ladkin said. “And so a lot of our activity is around making sure we're catering to all of our avid fans and the fans that we do have, but also looking at those different sorts of elements of culture that will give people roots into fandom.”
That culture extends far beyond the diamond. It appears in music, food, fashion, and film. A Yankees cap in a music video, a hot dog that feels more Chicago than Camden, a reference to Wrigley Field in Ferris Bueller’s Day Off. These details build familiarity.
In this regard, baseball holds a unique cultural advantage. While cricket may have a much larger player base in the UK, it rarely features in popular culture. Baseball does. And venues like Moonshot amplify that, from the menu to the memorabilia.
By creating touchpoints year-round, MLB’s light association with these venues helps build the foundation for future fans, while also nurturing existing ones.
The London Series will return in 2026 and with it offers scale, visibility, and media coverage. But as Ladkin makes clear, it represents only one part of the equation.
“We're very conscious that we need to be doing this all year round,” he said. “And, also it's not just a question of bringing two teams across and doing a series. We do things across those pillars that kind of are scalable and sustainable and able to build those fan bases.”
The long-term work happens elsewhere. It takes place on a Tuesday night at Moonshot or The 108. It happens when someone realises that baseball feels fast, not slow, when you are the one at the plate. It begins with a clean hit and that sweet sound of contact.
Participation offers one of the most powerful forms of engagement sport can unlock. That is why the MLB is right to be encouraging more people to take swings.