Former Baseball United CEO takes on global amateur baseball at Perfect Game

HOUSTON: Kash Shaikh, the former chairman, CEO, and co-founder of Dubai-based Baseball United, has been appointed chief marketing officer and head of international at Perfect Game, the world’s largest platform for elite youth baseball and softball.

Having built the region’s first professional baseball league, Shaikh is now expanding opportunities in the sport at youth level across the world.

Shaikh will lead Perfect Game’s global marketing, partnerships, and international expansion, with full responsibility for the company’s growth outside the US.

Perfect Game operates on a larger scale than other amateur baseball platforms, producing nearly 10,000 events each year and serving hundreds of thousands of players across the US. It has become the primary pipeline for talent identification in baseball, with more than 15,000 alumni drafted into the Major League Baseball system, and over 2,400 former Perfect Game participants going on to play at the MLB level.

More than 90 percent of all players in 2025 selected in the MLB draft had competed in Perfect Game events — including every first-round pick.

Its reach, data, and relationships across college baseball and the MLB give it unmatched influence over how the next generation of players is discovered and developed.

Shaikh will now focus on building pathways for players outside the US to access this system. The average MLB salary now exceeds $5 million per year, with top players such as Shohei Ohtani signing contracts valued at over $700 million.

Shaikh said: “After building the first professional baseball league in Dubai and the surrounding region, one thing became very clear: You can’t sustainably grow the game from the top down, you have to build it from the ground up.