Major North American professional sports leagues
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The major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada commonly refer to the highest men's professional competitions of team sports in those countries. The four leagues traditionally included in the definition are Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL). Other prominent leagues include
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
(MLS) and the Canadian Football League (CFL). MLB, NBA, NFL, and NHL are commonly referred to as the "Big Four." Each of these is the wealthiest professional club competition in its sport worldwide, and along with the English Premier League they make up the top five sports leagues by revenue in the world. In addition, the sports of these four leagues were all developed in their modern forms in North America, and all except American football have become popular internationally. Because the leagues enjoy a significant place in popular culture in the U.S. and Canada, the best players from these leagues often become cultural icons in both countries. Each of the Big Four leagues, as well as
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
and the Canadian Football League, averages at least 15,000 fans in attendance per game as of 2018. The two indoor leagues, the NHL and NBA, play in arenas that average under 19,000 seats, resulting in the CFL holding the third highest average attendance of the six leagues, at close to 24,000 per game, after the NFL and MLB. Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada#Attendance The Big Four leagues currently have 30–32 teams each, most of which are concentrated in the most populous metropolitan areas of the United States and Canada. Unlike the promotion and relegation systems used in sports leagues in various other regions around the world, North American sports leagues are
closed league In sports, a closed league is a type of sports league where the number and identity of the teams taking part in the sports league activities does not change from year to year due to the performance of the member teams. A closed league is the oppos ...
s that maintain the same teams from season-to-season. Expansion of the league usually occurs by adding newly formed teams, though mergers with competing leagues have also occurred. Teams do not leave the league unless they are disbanded (which has not happened since 1954) or merged with another team (which has not happened since
1978 Events January * January 1 – Air India Flight 855, a Boeing 747 passenger jet, crashes off the coast of Bombay, killing 213. * January 5 – Bülent Ecevit, of Republican People's Party, CHP, forms the new government of Turkey (42nd go ...
). Relocation can change the name of a team, but it is generally still considered to be the same entity. Baseball, American football, and ice hockey have had professional leagues continuously for over 100 years; early leagues such as the
National Association of Professional Base Ball Players The National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP), often known simply as the National Association (NA), was the first fully- professional sports league in baseball. The NA was founded in 1871 and continued through the 1875 se ...
, Ohio League, and National Hockey Association formed the basis of the modern MLB, NFL, and NHL, respectively. Basketball was invented in 1891, and its first professional league formed in the 1920s. The
Basketball Association of America The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948–49, the BAA absorbed most of National Basketball League (NBL) and rebranded as the National Ba ...
, founded in 1946, formed the basis of the NBA in 1949 and has lasted for over 75 years.
Soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
(or association football) was first professionalized in 1894, but leagues suffered greatly from lack of sustainability and seldom lasted more than a decade. The sport's greatest successes were in the form of the
American Soccer League (1921–1933) The American Soccer League, established in 1921, was the first of four different professional soccer sports leagues in the United States to use the ASL name. It was formed by the merger of teams from the National Association Football League and ...
, the original North American Soccer League (1968–1984) or NASL, and, currently,
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
(1996–present). MLS is the seventh highest attended professional soccer league worldwide.MLSsoccer.com, The expansion, refs, Cascadia: MLS Commissioner Don Garber covers it all in annual address, February 27, 2013, http://www.mlssoccer.com/news/article/2013/02/27/expansion-refs-cascadia-commissioner-garber-covers-it-all-march-soccer-addre The term "major league" is usually limited to professional team sports. Individual professional sports competitions such as PGA Tour golf and
NASCAR Cup Series The NASCAR Cup Series is the top racing series of the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing (NASCAR). The series began in 1949 as the Strictly Stock Division, and from 1950 to 1970 it was known as the Grand National Division. In 1971, ...
auto racing are also very popular and serve as those sports' most prominent competitions with levels of media coverage, competition, and fan following comparable to the major professional team sports.
Amateur An amateur () is generally considered a person who pursues an avocation independent from their source of income. Amateurs and their pursuits are also described as popular, informal, autodidacticism, self-taught, user-generated, do it yourself, DI ...
competitions such as
college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...
and college basketball, at the upper echelons, also enjoy strong media coverage and fan followings but are generally recognized as inferior to the major professional leagues in level of play because of the inherent limits of the amateur sports system.


"Big Four" leagues


Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball is the highest level of play of baseball in North America and the world, and the oldest of the major American leagues. It consists of the National League (founded in 1876) and the American League (founded in 1901). With the establishment of the American League in 1901 also came the trademarking of "Major League Baseball". Cooperation between the two leagues began in 1903 inasmuch as the two league champions began playing a " World Series". In 1904, however, there was no World Series played because one of the league champions refused to play. During the offseason, the owners of each league voted to have the league champions automatically play one another in the World Series and it would be 90 years before another World Series wasn't played, in 1994, due to a work stoppage. The two leagues merged on an organizational level in 2000 with the elimination of separate league offices; they have shared a single
Commissioner A commissioner (commonly abbreviated as Comm'r) is, in principle, a member of a commission or an individual who has been given a commission (official charge or authority to do something). In practice, the title of commissioner has evolved to in ...
since 1920. There are currently 30 member teams, with 29 located in the U.S. and 1 in Canada. Traditionally called the "
National Pastime A national sport is considered to be an intrinsic part of the culture of a nation. Some sports are ''de facto'' (not established by law) national sports, as sumo is in Japan and Gaelic games are in Ireland and field hockey in Pakistan, while othe ...
", baseball was the first professional team sport in the U.S.


National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association is the premier basketball league in the world, and the youngest of the major American leagues. It was founded as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, and adopted its current name in 1949, when the BAA merged with the rival National Basketball League. Four teams from the rival
American Basketball Association The American Basketball Association (ABA) was a major men's professional basketball league from 1967 to 1976. The ABA ceased to exist with the ABA–NBA merger, American Basketball Association–National Basketball Association merger in 1976, ...
joined the NBA with the ABA–NBA merger in 1976. It currently has 30 teams, 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. The NBA is watched by audiences both domestically and internationally. It is the most popular league of the four worldwide.


National Football League

The National Football League is a professional American football
league League or The League may refer to: Arts and entertainment * ''Leagues'' (band), an American rock band * ''The League'', an American sitcom broadcast on FX and FXX about fantasy football Sports * Sports league * Rugby league, full contact footba ...
and was founded in 1920 as a combination of various teams from regional leagues such as the Ohio League, the New York Pro Football League, and the Chicago circuit as a successor to Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit. For its first two seasons, 1920 and 1921, it was known as the "American Professional Football Association" (APFA) before changing its name to the current name in 1922. The NFL partially absorbed the
All-America Football Conference The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the ...
in 1949 and
merged Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are business transactions in which the ownership of companies, other business organizations, or their operating units are transferred to or consolidated with another company or business organization. As an aspect ...
with the
American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...
in 1970. It has 32 teams, all located in the United States. NFL games are the most attended of domestic professional leagues in the world in terms of per-game attendance, and the most popular in the U.S. in terms of television ratings and merchandising. Its championship game, the
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
, is the most watched annual event on U.S. television, with Super Bowl XLIX being the single most-watched program in U.S. television history. The NFL is the only one of the major leagues not to have a presence in Canada, where the Canadian Football League (see below) is the premier professional league in a similar but not identical
gridiron football Gridiron football,"Gridiron football"
''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Ret ...
sport of Canadian football.


National Hockey League

The National Hockey League is the premier professional ice hockey league in the world, and it is the only one of the four major leagues to have been founded in Canada. It was formed in 1917 as a successor to the Canadian National Hockey Association (founded in 1909), taking all but one of the NHA's teams. The NHL partially absorbed the rival World Hockey Association in 1979. There are 32 teams, with 25 in the U.S. and 7 in Canada. The most popular sports league in Canada, and widely followed across the northern and northeastern U.S., the NHL has expanded westward and southward in recent decades to attempt to gain a more national following in the United States, in cities such as Denver, San Jose, Dallas, Miami,
Nashville Nashville is the capital city of the U.S. state of Tennessee and the seat of Davidson County. With a population of 689,447 at the 2020 U.S. census, Nashville is the most populous city in the state, 21st most-populous city in the U.S., and the ...
, Phoenix, Raleigh,
Tampa Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County ...
, and Las Vegas with varying success. Ice hockey still remains much more popular in the northern states of the U.S. closer to Canada, such as the Upper Midwest, New England and the mid-Atlantic States of New Jersey, New York (the New York Metropolitan area has 3 NHL teams compared to 2 for each of the other 3 leagues) and Pennsylvania, than in the rest of the United States. The NHL has more Canadian teams (seven) than MLB, the NBA, and
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
combined (five).


Other notable professional leagues

Nate Silver of the ESPN-owned website '' FiveThirtyEight'' has argued that there is a case to be made for the inclusion of
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
and the Canadian Football League in the major professional sports leagues of North America.


Major League Soccer

Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
(MLS) is the top-level men's professional
soccer Association football, more commonly known as football or soccer, is a team sport played between two teams of 11 players who primarily use their feet to propel the ball around a rectangular field called a pitch. The objective of the game is ...
league in the United States. As of the league's next season in 2023, MLS has 29 teams, with 26 in the United States and 3 in Canada. The league began play in 1996, its creation a requirement by
FIFA FIFA (; stands for ''Fédération Internationale de Football Association'' ( French), meaning International Association Football Federation ) is the international governing body of association football, beach football and futsal. It was found ...
for awarding the United States the right to host the
1994 World Cup The 1994 FIFA World Cup was the 15th FIFA World Cup, the world championship for men's national association football, soccer teams. It was hosted by the United States and took place from June 17 to July 17, 1994, at nine venues across the countr ...
. MLS was the first major Division I outdoor soccer league in the U.S. since the
North American Soccer League The North American Soccer League may refer to: *North American Soccer League (1968–1984), a former Division I league *North American Soccer League (2011–2017) The North American Soccer League (NASL) was a professional men's soccer league b ...
(NASL) operated from 1968 to 1984. MLS has increased in popularity following the adoption of the Designated Player Rule in 2007, which allowed MLS to sign stars such as
David Beckham David Robert Joseph Beckham (; born 2 May 1975) is an English former professional footballer, the current president and co-owner of Inter Miami CF and co-owner of Salford City. Known for his range of passing, crossing ability and bending fr ...
and Thierry Henry. In 2017, MLS reported an average attendance of 22,112 per game, with total attendance exceeding 8.2 million overall, both breaking previous MLS attendance records, while 2018 saw Atlanta United FC break multiple single-game attendance records, with crowd figures of over 70,000 among the highest team attendances worldwide. With an average attendance of over 20,000 per game, MLS has the third-highest average attendance of any sports league in the U.S. after the NFL and MLB, fourth-highest in North America after the NFL, MLB, and CFL, and is the seventh-highest attended professional soccer league worldwide. The Canadian Soccer Association does not sanction MLS as a first-division league, with that title going instead to the Canadian Premier League (CPL). However, MLS is generally acknowledged as having a higher quality of play than the CPL, and has significantly more media coverage and economic success.


Canadian Football League

The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football. The league was organized in 1956 as a cooperative agreement between two regional leagues, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union (which dated to 1907) and the Western Interprovincial Football Union (which was founded in 1936), and became independent from Canadian Rugby Union in 1958. The league now consists of nine teams, all based in Canada. The
Grey Cup The Grey Cup (french: Coupe Grey) is both the championship game of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the trophy awarded to the victorious team playing in the namesake championship of professional Canadian football. The game is contested be ...
is awarded annually to the champion every November and is the highest attended sporting event in the nation. The oldest extant teams, the
Hamilton Tiger-Cats The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are a professional Canadian football team based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. They are currently members of the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL). The Tiger-Cats play their home games at Tim Hortons Fiel ...
and the Toronto Argonauts, trace their origins to the late 1860s and early 1870s, which ranks them amongst the oldest professional sports teams of any kind still in existence on the continent. From 1993 to 1995, the CFL attempted expansion into the United States to cities without NFL teams, but all the clubs folded, while the management structure of the Baltimore Stallions was moved to a relaunched Montreal Alouettes franchise. The CFL is the second most popular league in Canada, after the NHL. It has the third highest average attendance of the northern North American leagues, behind the NFL and MLB; in 2010 the average attendance was 26,781, with a total attendance of 1,928,225.


Traits of these major leagues


Overview

Major professional sports leagues are distinguished from other sports leagues in terms of business and economic factors, popularity of the league, and quality of play. The following table compares the Big Four leagues, plus CFL and the MLS, on certain attributes that collectively attempt to indicate whether the league has "major league" status. The table includes the longevity and stability of the league, as measured by the year founded, the last time the league underwent expansion and contraction, the number of teams in the league, and the popularity of the league, as measured by annual revenues and average attendance. "Big Four" Other


Revenues

The top four major leagues each have revenues that can be many times greater than the payrolls of less popular sports leagues in the two nations. In terms of overall league revenue, the NFL, MLB and the NBA rank as the top three most lucrative sports leagues in the world, with the English Premier League and the NHL ranked at fourth and fifth place.


Television exposure

The major sports leagues have their games televised on the Big Four U.S. broadcast TV networks—
ABC ABC are the first three letters of the Latin script known as the alphabet. ABC or abc may also refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media Broadcasting * American Broadcasting Company, a commercial U.S. TV broadcaster ** Disney–ABC Television ...
, CBS, NBC, and
Fox Foxes are small to medium-sized, omnivorous mammals belonging to several genera of the family Canidae. They have a flattened skull, upright, triangular ears, a pointed, slightly upturned snout, and a long bushy tail (or ''brush''). Twelve sp ...
—enjoy strong TV viewer ratings, and earn significant revenues from these TV contracts. All of the top four major sports leagues have had television contracts with at least one of the original "big three" U.S. broadcast television networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC) since those networks' early years, indicative of the sports' widespread appeal since their inception, continuing today additionally with Fox. In Canada, the NHL has been broadcast on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation since 1952. In Canada, there is only one MLB team and one NBA team, and no Canadian NFL team exists; therefore, the U.S. national telecasts for those three leagues are usually simulcast by a Canadian broadcaster. The NFL has the largest TV contracts, and earns over $6 billion annually from its contracts with Fox, CBS, NBC, ESPN and DirecTV for the 2014 through 2022 seasons. MLB earns $1.5 billion annually from its contracts for the 2014 through 2021 seasons with ESPN, Fox, and Turner Sports (TBS). The NBA's nine-year television deal beginning with the 2016–17 season with ABC/ESPN and TNT generates annual league TV revenues of $2.7 billion. The NHL's current U.S. television deal with ABC/ESPN and Turner Sports took effect with the 2021–22 season and runs through 2027–28; while the NHL did not announce the amount, outside reports indicated that Disney (parent of ABC and ESPN) was paying about $400 million and Turner about $225 million annually. This $625m annual contract for American rights is in addition to the $433m annual fee Rogers Sportsnet pays for Canadian rights. All four major sports leagues have launched a network of their own— NBA TV in the U.S. in 1999 and in Canada in 2001, the NFL Network in 2003, the NHL Network in Canada in 2001 and in the U.S. in 2007, and the MLB Network in 2009. All networks remain in operation today except for the Canadian NHL Network, which was shut down shortly before the league's 2015–16 season. Teams in the MLB, NBA, and NHL—which play several days per week—negotiate contracts with local broadcasters to air most of their games, both terrestrial networks and regional sports networks. Some teams (such as the New York Yankees) may even partially or fully own the cable network upon which their games are broadcast, and often receive more revenue from local broadcasts than any other source. NFL teams, which generally play once per week, do not negotiate local broadcast contracts, but are allowed to negotiate their own television deals for preseason games with syndication and broadcast stations. MLS matches are shown in English on ESPN and Fox Sports, and in Spanish on Univision. MLS's eight-year contracts for U.S. rights for the 2015–2022 seasons earn a combined $105 million annually. The CFL's current television deal with ESPN and its Canadian counterparts, the English-language
TSN TSN may refer to: Science and technology * Translin, DNA binding protein involved in microRNA function * Taxonomic serial number, a stable and unique taxonomic serial number issued by the Integrated Taxonomic Information System * The Science Netwo ...
and French-language RDS, pays the CFL at least $50 million per year for both Canadian and American rights.


Attendance

Major professional sports leagues generally have significantly higher average attendance than other sports leagues. The following table shows the average attendance of all professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada that have an average attendance of 15,000 or higher. The table uses seasons played in 2019 or earlier because COVID-19 pandemic restrictions significantly reduced capacity for many games in seasons starting in 2020 or later.


Franchise valuations

Major-league franchises are generally worth very large amounts of money, due in large part to high revenues earned by the league's teams. These franchise valuations are reflected in periodic analyses of teams' values, as well as by the expansion fees commanded by the leagues. The highest value franchises in the respective leagues tend to be located in the largest markets (e.g., MLB's New York Yankees, NHL's New York Rangers), whereas the lowest value franchises tend to be in smaller markets (e.g., NFL's
Buffalo Bills The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. ...
, NBA's
New Orleans Pelicans The New Orleans Pelicans are an American professional basketball team based in New Orleans. The Pelicans compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division and play their hom ...
). The NHL has the largest multiples between the highest-value and lowest-value teams, with the New York Rangers worth 5.5 times as much as the Arizona Coyotes. Recent expansion franchises have commanded huge entry fees, which represent the price the new team must pay to gain its share of the existing teams' often guaranteed revenue streams. The Houston Texans paid $700 million to join the NFL in 2002. By comparison, the Charlotte Bobcats (now the Hornets) paid $300 million to join the NBA. The Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Rays (originally Devil Rays) paid $130 million each to join MLB. The most recent NHL entry, the Seattle Kraken (which started play in 2021), paid $650 million to join the league, a 30% increase from the $500 million paid by the Vegas Golden Knights to join the league in 2017. The Golden Knights' fee was a dramatic increase from the $80 million paid by each of the previous two teams to enter the NHL, the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild. Two of the six most recently announced Major League Soccer expansion teams, 2019 entrant FC Cincinnati and 2020 arrival
Nashville SC Nashville Soccer Club is a Major League Soccer team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The team began play in the league in 2020 as a continuation of the USL club of the same name and plays its home matches at Geodis Park. It is principally owned ...
, each paid a $150 million expansion fee, a significant increase from the $100 million that New York City FC paid to join MLS in 2015. MLS has since announced plans to expand to 30 teams by 2023, and set the expansion fee for the 28th and 29th teams (ultimately Sacramento Republic FC and St. Louis City SC) at $200 million. The 30th team, ultimately unveiled as 2022 entry Charlotte FC, reportedly paid $325 million. For comparison, the Ottawa Redblacks paid C$7 million to join the Canadian Football League.


Franchise stability

All of the top four major leagues exhibit stability in most of their franchises. No team from the top four leagues has collapsed outright since the 1970s. The last team to cease operations was the NHL's
Cleveland Barons The name Cleveland Barons has been used by three professional hockey teams and one junior team. *Cleveland Barons (NHL), the National Hockey League team that played between 1976 and 1978 *Cleveland Barons (1937–1973), the original American Hockey ...
in 1978, when financial pressures forced a merger with the Minnesota North Stars. MLB voted in 2001 to contract from 30 teams to 28, but ran into opposition and never executed the contraction plan. Unlike many leagues in other countries which use a system of promotion and relegation, franchises in these leagues are stable, and do not change annually. Relocation of teams is generally uncommon compared to minor leagues. However, all of the top four major leagues have had at least one franchise relocate to another city since 2004. Among the Big Four leagues, the NFL has had the highest number of recent relocations, relocating three teams over the course of the late 2010s. The NHL is the most recent to expand, having added the Las Vegas-based Vegas Golden Knights in 2017 and the Seattle Kraken in 2021 (none of the other Big Four leagues have added expansion teams since 2004). Since 2005, in contrast to the Big Four leagues, MLS has operated on a policy of continuous expansion; after bottoming out at 10 teams in 2004, it has never gone more than one season without adding one or two expansion teams, with further expansion teams already scheduled through 2023 and no indication that the league will cease awarding expansion teams. By 2023, MLS will have nearly tripled in size from its 2005 minimum, with 29 teams. The league has contracted three teams in its history: teams in Miami and Tampa Bay folded in 2002, and the Los Angeles-based Chivas USA squad folded in 2014. MLS has had one franchise relocate, the
San Jose Earthquakes The San Jose Earthquakes are an American professional soccer team based in San Jose, California. The Earthquakes compete as a member club of the Western Conference of Major League Soccer (MLS). Originally as the San Jose Clash, the franchise ...
, which became the
Houston Dynamo Houston Dynamo FC (formerly officially, but still commonly, called the Houston Dynamo) is an American professional soccer club based in Houston. The Dynamo compete in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member of the Western Conference. Establi ...
in 2006; the Earthquakes returned as an expansion club in 2008, inheriting the pre-relocation history of the original Earthquakes. All seven CFL franchises between Vancouver and Toronto have been in place since the BC Lions were founded in 1954. The league has had problems in the two markets east of Toronto; both Montreal and Ottawa have each seen two CFL teams fail since the 1980s, although both cities have active teams as of the 2014 season (the cities are now represented by the Alouettes and Redblacks, respectively). Among existing teams, none has ever formally relocated from one city to another; the Alouettes, however, inherited a management structure from the Baltimore Stallions, a team from the league's unsuccessful 1990s-era
South Division South Division may refer to: * South Division (AFL), a division of the Arena Football League * South Division (CFL), a former division of the Canadian Football League * South Division (NAHL), a division of the North American Hockey League * South ...
. The CFL has had either eight or nine teams in operation since its inception except for the 1994 and 1995 seasons in which the league temporarily expanded into the United States. In the fifty years between 1903 and 1953, MLB experienced no franchise changes (no new franchises, no franchises ceasing operations, and no franchises moving), the longest such period of stability of any Big Four league.


Number and locations of franchises

Each of the Big Four leagues has at least 30 teams (the NFL has had 32 teams since 2002 and the NHL added its 32nd team in 2021), and each has had at least 29 teams since the year 2000. Major League Soccer has 28 teams; it adopted a policy of continuous expansion at a rate of one to two new franchises a year since 2005, and was set to reach its long-range target of 30 teams in 2023 before the Sacramento expansion bid was placed on hold. The CFL has nine franchises, with a tenth team potentially joining in the early 2020s. All of the top four major leagues grant some sort of territorial exclusivity to their owners, precluding the addition of another team in the same area unless the current team's owners consent, which is generally obtained in exchange for compensation, residual rights, or both. For example, to obtain the consent of the Baltimore Orioles to place an MLB team in Washington (about away), a deal was struck under the terms of which television and radio broadcast rights to Nationals games are handled by the Orioles franchise. Regarding territorial rights, the main concern for many team owners is television revenue, although the possibility of reduced ticket sales remains a concern for some teams. Because the NFL shares all of its television revenue equally, and most of its teams sell out their stadiums, some NFL owners are seen as less reluctant to share their territories. For example, the return of the NFL to
Baltimore Baltimore ( , locally: or ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Maryland, fourth most populous city in the Mid-Atlantic, and the 30th most populous city in the United States with a population of 585,708 in 2020. Baltimore was d ...
in 1996 attracted no serious opposition from the Washington Redskins organization. As of 2022, 49 metropolitan areas (42 in the U.S., seven in Canada) have at least one team in the Big Four leagues. Austin FC, which started play in 2021, is the first and only MLS team in a market not also occupied by at least one Big Four team. The CFL has one team, the Saskatchewan Roughriders, in a market not served by any other major league (the
Hamilton Tiger-Cats The Hamilton Tiger-Cats are a professional Canadian football team based in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada. They are currently members of the East Division of the Canadian Football League (CFL). The Tiger-Cats play their home games at Tim Hortons Fiel ...
, while having their city to themselves, are on the outskirts of both the
Buffalo-Niagara Region The Buffalo Niagara Region is an economic region that is part of the Great Lakes region of North America, comprising much of Western New York in the United States. The Regional Institute of the University at Buffalo has defined the region as incl ...
and the
extended Extension, extend or extended may refer to: Mathematics Logic or set theory * Axiom of extensionality * Extensible cardinal * Extension (model theory) * Extension (predicate logic), the set of tuples of values that satisfy the predicate * Exte ...
Greater Toronto Area The Greater Toronto Area, commonly referred to as the GTA, includes the City of Toronto and the regional municipalities of Durham, Halton, Peel, and York. In total, the region contains 25 urban, suburban, and rural municipalities. The Greater T ...
). The newest market any of the Big Four leagues have entered is the Las Vegas Valley, which received the Vegas Golden Knights in 2017 and the Las Vegas Raiders in 2020.


United States

Major leagues have franchises placed nationwide, with multiple franchises in each of the United States' four census regions—Northeast, Midwest, South, and West. Major leagues tend to place franchises only in the largest, most populated metropolitan areas. Most major league teams are in metro areas having populations over two million. All but seven continental U.S. metropolitan areas over one million people host at least one major sports franchise. All five U.S.-based major leagues each currently have at least two teams in both the New York/North Jersey area and the Los Angeles/Anaheim market. MLB, which historically (as a result of its history as two rival leagues) had a team in each component league in Boston, Philadelphia and St. Louis up until the mid-20th century, still has AL and NL teams in Chicago and the San Francisco Bay Area. 13 American metropolitan areas have a complete set of one or more teams in each of the Big Four leagues; 11 of those 13 also have teams in MLS. MLB, more than any other major league, focuses its teams in the largest markets. MLB is the only major league that does not have any teams in markets with fewer than 1.75 million people; both it and the NFL have teams in every U.S. market with over 4 million people. The NHL is the major league that least follows the general trend, due to the fact that a disproportionate number of its franchises are in cities with cold winters. The NHL lacks teams in a number of southern metropolitan areas with populations of over 3 million (Houston, Atlanta, San Diego) but has five teams in northern metropolitan areas with fewer than 1.25 million people, all of which are in or adjacent to Canada (the lone American team in a metro area of that size being the Buffalo Sabres). While only one MLB team, the San Diego Padres, is located in a market that has no other major league teams, seven NBA teams are located in cities devoid of any additional "Big Four" franchises: Memphis Grizzlies, Oklahoma City Thunder,
Orlando Magic The Orlando Magic are an American professional basketball team based in Orlando, Florida. The Magic compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member of the league's Eastern Conference Southeast Division. The franchise was establ ...
, Portland Trail Blazers, Sacramento Kings, San Antonio Spurs and Utah Jazz ( Salt Lake City). Four of these seven NBA-only cities also lack an MLS team (Memphis, Oklahoma City, Sacramento, San Antonio; Sacramento was scheduled to become home to an MLS team in 2023, but this move has since been placed on hold). The NFL has one major exception. The
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...
survive in major league sports' smallest metropolitan area (300,000 population) thanks to a unique community ownership, proximity to the neighboring Milwaukee market (giving a combined metro area of over two million), a league business model that relies more heavily on equally-distributed television revenue that puts small-market teams at less of a disadvantage, and the loyalty of their
Cheesehead Cheesehead is a nickname in the United States for a person from Wisconsin or for a fan of the Green Bay Packers NFL football franchise. Current usage Wisconsin is associated with cheese because the state historically produced more dairy produc ...
fan base. The only Packers home games that have failed to sell out since 1960 were games during the 1987 players' strike that were played with replacement players; neither the Packers nor the NFL consider those games to have interrupted the team's ongoing streak of sellouts. Green Bay is one of two NFL teams, the other being the Jacksonville Jaguars, that are the only major league franchises in their metropolitan area. Both MLB and the NFL have had two prolonged recent exceptions in which the league was absent from one of the U.S.'s ten most populous metropolitan areas; from 1972 to 2004, ninth-place Washington, D.C. had no MLB team, and from 1995 to 2016, second-place Los Angeles had no NFL teams. The NHL's national footprint is a relatively recent situation. Historically, the league was concentrated in the northeast, with no teams south of New York City or west of Chicago from 1935 until 1967. The league expanded its footprint westward in a 1967 expansion but, other than the unsuccessful Atlanta Flames, avoided the South until making a major expansion into the territory in the 1990s. Both the NBA and MLS have higher concentrations of teams in the western United States than the other major leagues. Whereas the NBA's teams tend to be somewhat more evenly distributed across the United States, MLS's presence in areas of the southern United States has historically been sparse; after MLS folded its two Florida-based teams after the 2001 season, it did not re-enter the South until
Orlando City SC Orlando City SC is an American professional soccer club in Orlando, Florida, that competes as a member of the Eastern Conference in Major League Soccer (MLS). Orlando City SC began play in 2015 as the 21st franchise in MLS, succeeding the USL ...
joined the league in 2015, with Atlanta United FC following in 2017. With the addition of
Minnesota United FC Minnesota United FC is an American professional soccer club based in Saint Paul, Minnesota that plays in the Western Conference of Major League Soccer. The club began play in 2017 as the league's 22nd club, and replaced the North American Socc ...
in 2017 and Inter Miami CF in 2020, MLS remains absent from two markets with an otherwise complete set of the Big Four leagues: Detroit and Phoenix. The CFL had a total of six teams in the United States over a three-year period between 1993 and 1995, all in medium-sized markets that lacked an NFL team at the time; of the seven markets those teams occupied, three (Baltimore, San Antonio and Sacramento) had other major league franchises at the time, and two would later receive a major team (Memphis and Las Vegas). The league also played occasional games in the United States in the 1950s and 1960s. The largest metropolitan area without a major professional sports franchise depends on the definition of "metropolitan area". Among areas defined by the United States Census Bureau as Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs), California's
Inland Empire The Inland Empire (IE) is a metropolitan area and region inland of and adjacent to coastal Southern California, centering around the cities of San Bernardino and Riverside, and bordering Los Angeles County to the west. It includes the cities o ...
is the largest without a major franchise. However, it is part of Greater Los Angeles, a region defined by the US Census as a Combined Statistical Area (CSA), and is thus part of the Los Angeles television market. The largest CSA without a major franchise is the
Hampton Roads Hampton Roads is the name of both a body of water in the United States that serves as a wide channel for the James River, James, Nansemond River, Nansemond and Elizabeth River (Virginia), Elizabeth rivers between Old Point Comfort and Sewell's ...
area of southeastern Virginia, spilling over into a small part of North Carolina. The largest TV market without a major franchise is the HartfordNew Haven market, covering all of Connecticut except Fairfield County (the state's closest to New York City); Hartford's last major league squad, the NHL's Whalers, left in 1997.


Canada

The
NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
has been the dominant professional sports league in Canada, and was first established in Canada in 1917. The NHL was initially based entirely in eastern Canada; by 1925, Hamilton and Quebec City no longer had NHL teams, while Ottawa would leave in 1934, by which point American teams were slowly being added. The first Canadian expansion team would come in 1970 with a team in Vancouver; the NHL later added teams in Edmonton, Winnipeg and Quebec City (through absorption of WHA franchises),
Calgary Calgary ( ) is the largest city in the western Canadian province of Alberta and the largest metro area of the three Prairie Provinces. As of 2021, the city proper had a population of 1,306,784 and a metropolitan population of 1,481,806, makin ...
(via relocation from Atlanta) and Ottawa (via expansion) to go with the still-extant Toronto and Montreal teams. The distinctive place hockey holds in Canadian culture allowed these franchises to compete with teams in larger cities for some time. However, the teams in Winnipeg and Quebec City were eventually moved to larger media markets in the U.S. The NHL returned to Winnipeg in 2011 with the
Atlanta Thrashers The Atlanta Thrashers were a professional ice hockey team based in Atlanta. Atlanta was granted a franchise in the National Hockey League (NHL) on June 25, 1997, and became the League's 28th franchise when it began play in the 1999–2000 seaso ...
relocating to become the current version of the Winnipeg Jets. Excluding the CFL, the NHL is the only major league to have teams in Edmonton, Calgary, Winnipeg or Ottawa, all markets with fewer than 1.25 million, smaller than any U.S. NHL market except Buffalo. However, those Canadian cities benefit from the country's very high level of hockey fandom. A 2013 study by Nate Silver estimated that all of these markets had roughly the same numbers of avid hockey fans as U.S. markets with several times their total population. The Canadian Football League has teams in all seven current NHL markets, in addition to Hamilton, Ontario, and Regina, Saskatchewan. At least eight of these nine markets have hosted CFL teams every year since the league's officially listed inception in 1958, and no other Canadian market has ever had a CFL team of its own. In 2015, the CFL commenced Northern Kickoff, originally slated to be one preseason game and later expanded to a regular season game as well, both of which were played in Fort McMurray, an oil sands boomtown with a metro area population of less than 70,000, the smallest market to host major professional football in the modern era. Fort McMurray is in relatively close proximity to Edmonton, which was expected to boost attendance, but fewer than 5,000 fans attended the regular season game, and no games have been held in the city since. Regular season games have been played in
Moncton Moncton (; ) is the most populous city in the Provinces and territories of Canada, Canadian province of New Brunswick. Situated in the Petitcodiac River Valley, Moncton lies at the geographic centre of the The Maritimes, Maritime Provinces. The ...
in 2010, 2011, 2013 and 2019 to gauge expansion to the Maritime provinces in the Touchdown Atlantic; the expansion team, the
Atlantic Schooners The Atlantic Schooners were a conditional Canadian Football League (CFL) expansion team that was to begin play in 1984 in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia. However, team ownership could not secure funding for a stadium and the franchise application was w ...
, has been proposed twice, once unsuccessfully in the 1980s, and another in the late 2010s that is still being considered. Hamilton, in addition to hosting the 2013 Touchdown Atlantic, played the rest of their 2013 season in Guelph during the construction of Tim Hortons Field. The first Major League Baseball team in Canada was the Montreal Expos, who began play in 1969. In 2005, they moved to Washington, D.C. and became the Washington Nationals. The Toronto Blue Jays, who began play in 1977, became the first team outside the United States to win the World Series in 1992 and 1993. The NBA expanded into Canada in 1995 when the Vancouver Grizzlies and the Raptors joined the league. The Grizzlies moved to Memphis in 2001. MLS has teams in Vancouver, Toronto, and Montreal. The NFL is the only major league to have no team based in a Canadian city; the closest teams to Canada are the
Buffalo Bills The Buffalo Bills are a professional American football team based in the Buffalo metropolitan area. The Bills compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. ...
and
Detroit Lions The Detroit Lions are a professional American football team based in Detroit. The Lions compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) North Division. The team play their home games at Ford ...
, both representing cities located on the U.S.–Canada border. The Lions play in
downtown Detroit Downtown Detroit is the central business district and a residential area of the city of Detroit, Michigan, United States. Locally, downtown tends to refer to the 1.4 square mile region bordered by M-10 (Lodge Freeway) to the west, Interstate 75 ( ...
, from Windsor, Ontario. The Bills' stadium is located south of the Canada–U.S. border. From 2008 to 2013, the Bills played 8 games in Toronto as part of the Bills Toronto Series which included one regular season game per year. On August 22, 2019, the
Oakland Raiders The Oakland Raiders were a professional American football team that played in Oakland from its founding in 1960 to 1981 and again from 1995 to 2019 before relocating to the Las Vegas metropolitan area where they now play as the Las Vegas Raide ...
played the
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...
in a preseason game at IG Field in Winnipeg.


Ownership restrictions

All four major leagues have strict rules regarding who may own a team, and also place some restrictions on what other sort of activities the owners may engage in. The major leagues generally do not allow anyone to own a stake in more than one franchise, to prevent the perception of being in a
conflict of interest A conflict of interest (COI) is a situation in which a person or organization is involved in multiple interests, financial or otherwise, and serving one interest could involve working against another. Typically, this relates to situations i ...
. This rule was adopted after several high-profile controversies involving ownership of multiple baseball teams in the 1890s. Additionally, the NHL's "
Original Six The Original Six () are the teams that comprised the National Hockey League (NHL) between 1942 and 1967. The six teams are the Boston Bruins, Chicago Black Hawks, Detroit Red Wings, Montreal Canadiens, New York Rangers, and Toronto Maple Leafs ...
" period, from 1942 to 1967, was marked by the Norris family owning a controlling stake in half of the league's teams, a factor in the league's stagnation during that period. With the exception of the NFL, every other major league has had at least one case since 2000 where the league itself has taken ownership or control of a franchise: * MLB — Purchased the Montreal Expos in 2001 and moved the franchise to Washington, D.C. as the Nationals in 2005 before selling the team to a local group in 2006. MLB also took over the operations of the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2011, citing financial and governance issues stemming from the divorce of the team's co-owners, before
Frank McCourt Francis McCourt (August 19, 1930July 19, 2009) was an Irish-American teacher and writer. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his book ''Angela's Ashes'', a tragicomic memoir of the misery and squalor of his childhood. Early life and education Frank McC ...
sold the Dodgers to an ownership group in March 2012. * NHL — Took over the Buffalo Sabres in 2002 after owner
John Rigas John James Rigas (November 14, 1924 – September 30, 2021) was an American businessman who was one of the founders of Adelphia Communications Corporation, which at its peak was one of the largest cable TV companies in the United States. He wa ...
was arrested for
embezzlement Embezzlement is a crime that consists of withholding assets for the purpose of conversion of such assets, by one or more persons to whom the assets were entrusted, either to be held or to be used for specific purposes. Embezzlement is a type ...
, and sold the team to Tom Golisano in 2003. The NHL also seized the
Phoenix Coyotes The Arizona Coyotes are a professional ice hockey team based in the Phoenix metropolitan area. The Coyotes compete in the National Hockey League (NHL) as a member of the Central Division in the Western Conference and currently play at the Mull ...
in
2009 File:2009 Events Collage V2.png, From top left, clockwise: The vertical stabilizer of Air France Flight 447 is pulled out from the Atlantic Ocean; Barack Obama becomes the first African American to become President of the United States; 2009 Iran ...
to prevent its owner from selling it to a buyer who intended to relocate the team, and sold the team to a Phoenix-area group in 2013. * NBA — Purchased the New Orleans Hornets from its owner in December 2010, and sold the team to owner Tom Benson in April 2012. * MLS — Purchased Chivas USA from Jorge Vergara in 2014 and folded the team after the 2014 season. A new L.A. franchise,
Los Angeles FC Los Angeles Football Club, commonly referred to as LAFC, is an American professional Association football team based in Los Angeles. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member club of the league's Western Conference. The club ...
, began play in 2018 as an expansion team and did not inherit Chivas USA's history. * CFL — Seized the Ottawa Renegades from owner Bernard Glieberman in 2006, suspended the franchise, then sold it to
Jeff Hunt Jeff Hunt is a Canadian businessman who is an owner of the Ottawa Redblacks football club of the Canadian Football League and the Ottawa 67's hockey club of the Ontario Hockey League. He started a carpet-cleaning firm called Canway. His firm wa ...
, who reactivated it in 2014 as the Ottawa Redblacks. The CFL also accepted ownership in 2019 of the Montreal Alouettes from owner Robert Wetenhall in order to keep it operating until the league announced Sid Spiegel and Gary Stern as the team's new owners in January 2020. The NFL (nor any of its predecessors) has not taken over operations of any team since 1962, when the
American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...
took over the nearly bankrupt
Titans of New York The history of the New York Jets American football team began in 1959 with the founding of the Titans of New York, an original member of the American Football League (AFL); they began actual play the following year. The team had little success i ...
in an effort to prevent the team from folding; in 1963, a new ownership group bought the franchise and it became the
New York Jets The New York Jets are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Jets compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) East division. The J ...
. The NFL has stronger ownership restrictions. The NFL forbids ownership by groups of over 24 people or publicly-traded corporations, except the grandfathered
Green Bay Packers The Green Bay Packers are a professional American football team based in Green Bay, Wisconsin. The Packers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the National Football Conference (NFC) NFC North, North division. It ...
. Additionally, the league requires that at least one member of the ownership group hold a 30% interest, with stringent limits on the amount of debt that a new ownership group can take on. The NFL also forbids its owners from owning any other professional American football teams; this rule has not always been in place (as the NFL owners previously owned
minor league Minor leagues are professional sports leagues which are not regarded as the premier leagues in those sports. Minor league teams tend to play in smaller, less elaborate venues, often competing in smaller cities/markets. This term is used in Nor ...
teams in the 1940s) but was in place by the 1980s, when the DeBartolo family was scrutinized for owning both the San Francisco 49ers and USFL's
Pittsburgh Maulers Pittsburgh Maulers may refer to: * Pittsburgh Maulers (1984), United States Football League team * Pittsburgh Maulers (2022) The Pittsburgh Maulers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. The Maulers compet ...
(as different members of the family owned each team, the league allowed the DeBartolos to keep the 49ers). Arena Football League teams were exempt from this rule during that league's existence. NFL owners were long prohibited from owning major league baseball, basketball and hockey teams unless they were in the NFL team's home market, or not located in other NFL cities. This last set of restrictions was lifted in October 2018; many owners believed that cross-ownership restrictions had outlived their purpose, and they had largely been disregarded since Stan Kroenke, who purchased the then-St. Louis Rams and moved them to Los Angeles while simultaneously owning assets in Denver, became a majority NFL owner in 2010. Additionally, media reports theorized that the cross-ownership ban materially reduced the sale price of the Carolina Panthers earlier in 2018, with several NBA team owners reportedly interested in bidding but barred by then-current NFL rules. The cross-ownership restrictions originally covered soccer, but a 1982 federal court decision in a lawsuit filed against the NFL by the original NASL went in favor of the NASL, thereby exempting soccer from these restrictions. MLS has adopted a different league structure and operates as a single-entity league, a structure that survived a lawsuit from the players in '' Fraser v. Major League Soccer''. During the first few years of the league, MLS for the sake of stability allowed individuals to operate multiple teams. MLS ownership arrangements have evolved, however, with operation of the league's 28 current and 2 future teams now spread among 30 ownership groups, with no member of any ownership group having a stake in more than one group. Seven out of nine clubs in the CFL are held by some form of partnership or corporation; of those seven, two (Saskatchewan and Edmonton) are publicly held corporations in and of themselves, two (Toronto and Hamilton) are partially owned by public conglomerates, and three (Calgary, Ottawa and Montreal) are held by closely held partnerships. Only one, the BC Lions, is held by an individual owner. The ninth team, the Winnipeg Blue Bombers, operates under the shell of the Winnipeg Football Club, a nonprofit sports club with no clear ownership structure or share capital.


Challenges from rival leagues

All of the majors have bested at least one rival league formed with the intention of being just as "big" as the established league, often by signing away star players and by locating franchises in cities that were already part of the existing league. In many cases, the major leagues have absorbed the most successful franchises from their failing rivals, or merged outright with them. Baseball's National League withstood three challenges in its first quarter century of existence. The
American Association American Association may refer to: Baseball * American Association (1882–1891), a major league active from 1882 to 1891 * American Association (1902–1997), a minor league active from 1902 to 1962 and 1969 to 1997 * American Association of Profe ...
began in 1882 in several lucrative markets without an NL team. For several years, the AA was a viable competitor to the NL, and the NL and AA champions competed in an informal World Series. Four of the AA's teams defected to the NL in its later years, before the AA expired in 1891. Labor problems led to the formation of the
Players' League The Players' National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs, popularly known as the Players' League (PL), was a short-lived but star-studded professional American baseball league of the 19th century. The PL was formed by the Brotherhood of Prof ...
for the 1890 season; it attracted a significant percentage of the baseball talent and caused the NL and AA significant financial harm, but it lacked financial backing and folded after only one season. The minor Western League moved several franchises in NL cities and cities abandoned by the NL for the 1900 and 1901 seasons, and renamed itself the American League in direct competition with the NL. The NL and AL made peace in 1903; the resulting agreement formed what today is known as Major League Baseball. MLB withstood the challenge of the Federal League in 1914. Various Negro leagues peaked from the 1920s to the 1940s, and on barnstorming tours the Negro league players showed themselves to be MLB players' competitive equals, but after
Jackie Robinson Jack Roosevelt Robinson (January 31, 1919 – October 24, 1972) was an American professional baseball player who became the first African American to play in Major League Baseball (MLB) in the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line ...
broke the
color barrier Racial segregation is the systematic separation of people into racial or other ethnic groups in daily life. Racial segregation can amount to the international crime of apartheid and a crime against humanity under the Statute of the Internati ...
in 1947, the influx of black stars into the major leagues drained the Negro leagues of talent. MLB prevented the Continental League from getting off the ground in 1961–62 by placing teams in four of that league's proposed cities by either expansion or relocation. The NFL has fought off the most rivals throughout the years, and to this day faces a competing start-up league every few years. One strong rival to the NFL was the
All-America Football Conference The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the ...
of 1946–1949; three of their seven teams merged with the NFL for the 1950 season, and two of the three still exist in the NFL. Four (all unrelated) rivals were named ''American Football League;'' the last
American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...
existed from 1960 to 1970, winning the last two of the four pre-merger
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
games, before merging with the NFL in 1970. The NFL has beaten back other significant rival football leagues, often placing expansion or relocation teams in those cities following that league's demise: the
World Football League The World Football League (WFL) was an American football league that played one full season in 1974 and most of its second in 1975. Although the league's proclaimed ambition was to bring American football onto a worldwide stage, the farthest t ...
of 1974–1975 (the NFL added two teams in 1975), the United States Football League of 1983–1985 (the NFL relocated one team to a USFL market in 1988), and the Canadian Football League's American franchises of 1993–1995 (the NFL added three teams in the mid 1990s, including one in the CFL's most successful U.S. market). All told, 13 of the NFL's current 32 franchises were absorbed from a rival league—all 10 AFL franchises of the 1960s, two from the AAFC, and one from the 1936 AFL. The NBA was formed in 1949 after three years of competition between the large-market
Basketball Association of America The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948–49, the BAA absorbed most of National Basketball League (NBL) and rebranded as the National Ba ...
(from which the NBA traces its existence) and the industrial-based National Basketball League. The NBA also had to fend off two incarnations of the American Basketball League, the
first First or 1st is the ordinal form of the number one (#1). First or 1st may also refer to: *World record, specifically the first instance of a particular achievement Arts and media Music * 1$T, American rapper, singer-songwriter, DJ, and rec ...
being an Eastern circuit that predated the NBA, and the
second The second (symbol: s) is the unit of time in the International System of Units (SI), historically defined as of a day – this factor derived from the division of the day first into 24 hours, then to 60 minutes and finally to 60 seconds ...
existing from 1961 to 1963, after
Abe Saperstein Abraham Michael Saperstein (; July 4, 1902 – March 15, 1966) was the founder, owner and earliest coach of the Harlem Globetrotters. Saperstein was a leading figure in black basketball and baseball from the 1920s through the 1950s, primarily bef ...
was repeatedly denied an NBA expansion team. The NBA later fought off the challenge of the
American Basketball Association The American Basketball Association (ABA) was a major men's professional basketball league from 1967 to 1976. The ABA ceased to exist with the ABA–NBA merger, American Basketball Association–National Basketball Association merger in 1976, ...
from 1967 to 1976, in part by expanding from nine to eighteen teams. The NBA then absorbed four of the ABA's most successful franchises in a 1976 merger, and adopted several of the ABA's rule variations, most notably the three-point shot. The NHL began its existence competing with the Western Canada Hockey League and its predecessor, the Pacific Coast Hockey Association; both had folded by 1926, leaving the NHL as the sole major North American hockey league. The NHL fended off two challenges in the 1960s and 1970s. The NHL prevented the old Western Hockey League from achieving parity in the quality of players, salaries and attendance by doubling in size from six to twelve teams in 1967, including into the WHL markets of Los Angeles and San Francisco, and added two more teams in 1970, including a former WHL team in Vancouver. During its existence from 1972 to 1979, the World Hockey Association challenged the dominance of the NHL. The WHA initially attracted stars by offering higher salaries than the NHL and successfully invalidating the NHL's reserve clause, forcing NHL teams to keep up. The bidding war brought financial distress to both leagues. With the WHA and several NHL teams faced with collapse, the NHL negotiated a merger of the leagues whereby the four strongest WHA teams joined the NHL. The CFL has been historically protected from the competing leagues that the NFL faced, in part because of threats of parliamentary legislation to stop any CFL competitor from being allowed to play in Canada. The
Canadian Football Act The ''Canadian Football Act'' (1974), also known in its long title as ''An Act respecting Canadian Professional Football'', was a proposed Act by the Parliament of Canada in April 1974 designed to give a government-protected monopoly over profe ...
, proposed in 1974 but never passed, would have given the CFL a government-endorsed monopoly on professional
gridiron football Gridiron football,"Gridiron football"
''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Ret ...
in Canada by prohibiting any other league from playing its games in the country; the mere introduction of the bill in Parliament prompted the WFL's
Toronto Northmen Toronto ( ; or ) is the capital city of the Canadian province of Ontario. With a recorded population of 2,794,356 in 2021, it is the most populous city in Canada and the fourth most populous city in North America. The city is the ancho ...
to move to the United States before playing a single game and later the first USFL was discouraged from establishing teams in Canada with the threat to reintroduce the Act in 1982. In the context of the modern North American sports market as a whole, however, CFL has faced and survived numerous challenges from upstart US-based leagues seeking to establish themselves as a second-tier gridiron football league relative to the NFL and thus competing with the CFL for player talent and consumer exposure. The vast majority of these leagues (such as the first USFL, UFL,
XFL XFL may refer to: Sports * XFL (2001), a defunct American football league that played its only season in 2001 * XFL (2020), a professional American football league Vehicles * Bell XFL Airabonita, a 1940 U.S. Navy experimental interceptor aircra ...
and its later reincarnation, and AAF) have all been short-lived; all but the current XFL and the second USFL (which started play in 2022) have folded, with the current XFL currently (as of mid-2022) being reorganized. Similarly, the CFL itself played the role of a competitor to the NFL during its mid-1990s expansion out of Canada and into the US market, which was also short lived.


Fixed league membership

In general, sports leagues in the United States and Canada are
closed league In sports, a closed league is a type of sports league where the number and identity of the teams taking part in the sports league activities does not change from year to year due to the performance of the member teams. A closed league is the oppos ...
s that never developed any system of promotion and relegation like those in Europe. A major professional sports team stays at the top level of the sport, regardless of their performance. A major factor in this development was the greater distances between cities, with some teams separated by at least half the continent, which in turn resulted in higher traveling costs. When the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs was established in 1876, its founders judged that in order to prosper, they must make baseball's highest level of competition a "closed shop", with a strict limit on the number of teams, and with each member having exclusive local rights. This guarantee of a place in the league year after year would permit each club owner to monopolize fan bases in their respective exclusive territories and give them the confidence to invest in infrastructure, such as improved ballparks. This in turn would guarantee the revenues needed to support traveling across the continent. With the introduction of TV exposure and other sources of increased revenue during the 20th century, team owners have no incentive to risk giving up this annual income in favor of establishing an "open shop system" where they could be relegated to a lower league that does not generate that kind of lucrative money. There has been discussion of
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
adopting promotion and relegation, but MLS is not pursuing the option. Eight current MLS teams—
Seattle Sounders FC Seattle Sounders Football Club is an American professional men's soccer club based in Seattle. The Sounders compete as a member of the Western Conference of Major League Soccer (MLS). The club was established on November 13, 2007, and began ...
,
Portland Timbers The Portland Timbers are an American professional men's soccer club based in Portland, Oregon. The Timbers compete in Major League Soccer (MLS) as a member club of the league's Western Conference. The Timbers have played their home games at P ...
, Vancouver Whitecaps FC,
CF Montréal CF Montréal is a Canadian professional soccer club based in Montréal, Québec, Canada. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) in the Eastern Conference. Founded in 1992 as the Montreal Impact (french: Impact de Montréal, links=no), ...
,
Orlando City SC Orlando City SC is an American professional soccer club in Orlando, Florida, that competes as a member of the Eastern Conference in Major League Soccer (MLS). Orlando City SC began play in 2015 as the 21st franchise in MLS, succeeding the USL ...
,
Minnesota United FC Minnesota United FC is an American professional soccer club based in Saint Paul, Minnesota that plays in the Western Conference of Major League Soccer. The club began play in 2017 as the league's 22nd club, and replaced the North American Socc ...
, FC Cincinnati, and
Nashville SC Nashville Soccer Club is a Major League Soccer team based in Nashville, Tennessee. The team began play in the league in 2020 as a continuation of the USL club of the same name and plays its home matches at Geodis Park. It is principally owned ...
—were promoted from lower leagues through the traditional expansion process, without regard to on-pitch record; instead new teams are brought into MLS based on the financial strength of their ownership and market.
Sacramento Republic FC Sacramento Republic FC is an American professional soccer team based in Sacramento, California, that plays in the Western Conference of the USL Championship, the second level in US soccer. Co-founded by Warren Smith and Joe Wagoner in 2012, the ...
was scheduled to become the ninth such MLS team in 2023 until its lead investor pulled out of the expansion deal.


Player development

All of the major North American professional sports leagues use a draft system to assign prospective players to teams. The NFL, NHL and NBA all use their respective drafts to ensure a certain measure of parity between franchises, so that teams with losing records pick early in the draft, while the league champions pick last in each round. (In the NFL, the relationship is directly linear, so that the worst team always gets the first overall pick; the NHL and NBA, in efforts to thwart tanking, use a draft lottery to determine the early draft order.) Three of the top four major leagues possess sophisticated player development systems. The vast majority of MLB players are developed through the minor league baseball system. Prospective players generally are drafted, and are then assigned to the appropriate minor league level for development. With the growth of college baseball, more players opt to play at the collegiate level and delay entry into the MLB draft; college baseball players with professional aspirations will usually also play
collegiate summer baseball Collegiate summer baseball leagues are amateur baseball leagues in the United States and Canada featuring players who have attended at least one year of college and have at least one year of athletic eligibility remaining. Generally, they operat ...
to gain experience and exposure while maintaining their college eligibility. Individual teams' large scouting staffs have given way to smaller staffs and subscriptions to commercial player scouting services. Entering the majors directly from high school or college is rare, and most of the few that have were quickly reassigned to the minors. MLB clubs also sign many players from Latin American countries, and have also recruited many players from the Japanese leagues. Most of the NBA's talent comes from college and
high school basketball Basketball is a team sport in which two teams, most commonly of five players each, opposing one another on a rectangular court, compete with the primary objective of shooting a basketball (approximately in diameter) through the defender's h ...
, although minimum age rules have ended the NBA's practice of drafting players directly from high school beginning in
2006 File:2006 Events Collage V1.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2006 Winter Olympics open in Turin; Twitter is founded and launched by Jack Dorsey; The Nintendo Wii is released; Montenegro 2006 Montenegrin independence referendum, votes to declare ...
. The NBA's developmental league, now known as the
G League The NBA G League, or simply the G League, is the National Basketball Association's (NBA) official minor league basketball organization. The league was known as the National Basketball Development League (NBDL) from 2001 to 2005, and the NBA Dev ...
, was implemented in 2001 by the NBA to perform the role of a
farm system In sports, a farm team, farm system, feeder team, feeder club, or nursery club is generally a team or club whose role is to provide experience and training for young players, with an agreement that any successful players can move on to a higher ...
in helping with player development and market reach, but NBA teams more frequently recruit talent from overseas professional leagues, mostly in Europe with a few players being recruited from leagues in Latin America, China, and Australia. Prior to the development of the G League, the
Continental Basketball Association The Continental Basketball Association (CBA) (originally known as the Eastern Pennsylvania Basketball League, and later as the Eastern Professional Basketball League and the Eastern Basketball Association) was a men's professional basketball m ...
had served as a minor league to the NBA. The National Football League is the only one of the four major sports leagues that does not have a formalized farm system. The source for almost all NFL players is
college football College football (french: Football universitaire) refers to gridiron football played by teams of student athletes. It was through college football play that American football rules first gained popularity in the United States. Unlike most ...
, but NFL also has International Player Pathway Program for potential international prospects. Drafted players from college immediately join the main team; if they fail to make the regular season roster, a limited number of players may be assigned to the
practice squad In sports, the practice squad, also called the taxi squad or practice roster, is a group of players signed by a team but not part of their main roster. Frequently used in gridiron football, they serve as extra players during the team's practices, ...
. NFL teams rarely recruit players from other gridiron football leagues. American football also has the least global reach for prospects, with one exception being several players from other codes of football primarily as kickers and punters. The league's teams backed the World League (later known as
NFL Europe NFL Europe League (simply called NFL Europe and known in its final season as NFL Europa League) was a professional American football league that functioned as the developmental minor league of the National Football League (NFL). Originally f ...
) in the 1990s and 2000s, and purchased teams in the Arena Football League for a period in the 2000s. As of 2019, the
National Football League Players Association The National Football League Players Association, or NFLPA, is a labor union representing National Football League (NFL) players. The NFLPA, which has headquarters in Washington, D.C., is led by president J. C. Tretter and executive director De ...
explicitly opposes having an official minor league in the same model as the other major sports, mainly because of the risk of injury. Each NHL team has an affiliate in North America's top-tier
minor hockey league The Junior Hockey League (JHL) (russian: Молодежная Хоккейная Лига (МХЛ), Molodezhnaya Hokkeinaya Liga), sometimes translated as the ''Minor'' or ''Youth'' Hockey League, is a major junior ice hockey league in Eurasia ...
, the American Hockey League, and most have an affiliation with teams in the ECHL. For decades, the traditional route to the NHL has been through junior hockey and the
Canadian Hockey League The Canadian Hockey League (CHL; french: Ligue canadienne de hockey ‒ LCH) is an umbrella organization that represents the three Canada-based major junior ice hockey leagues. The CHL was founded in 1975 as the Canadian Major Junior Hockey L ...
(CHL). Beginning in the 1970s, NHL teams began drafting and signing prospects from Europe, and a growing number of NHL hopefuls are forgoing the CHL in favor of NCAA Division I college hockey. Additionally, USA Hockey also sanctions junior hockey leagues, such as the United States Hockey League and
North American Hockey League The North American Hockey League (NAHL) is one of the top junior hockey leagues in the United States and is in its 48th season of operation in 2022–23. It is the only Tier II junior league sanctioned by USA Hockey, and acts as an alternati ...
, that allow players to develop while also retain NCAA eligibility in order to make the NHL. Almost all draft picks are initially assigned to an affiliate in their NHL team's minor league system for development. MLS teams sign players from their youth academies, from the
MLS college draft The MLS SuperDraft is an annual Draft (sports), college draft for teams of Major League Soccer in the United States and Canada. It takes place in January and is used by teams to select players who have graduated from college or otherwise been s ...
, and from overseas. MLS teams rely on their youth academies, which are now a requirement for all MLS clubs. MLS clubs can operate youth teams as young as 13–14 years old. Some youth academy teams participate in lower-tier leagues. MLS also holds an annual draft in which top college soccer players are selected. MLS has in the recent past had a formal relationship with the United Soccer League, which operates (among other leagues) the Division II USL Championship (USLC) and Division III USL League One (USL 1). For several years in the 2010s, MLS teams were nominally required to field a reserve team in a USL league, either by direct ownership or affiliation with a separately owned team, although this requirement was never strictly enforced. MLS relaunched its reserve league in 2022 as MLS Next Pro, a third-level league featuring 20 MLS reserve teams and one independently owned team (
Rochester New York FC Rochester New York FC, formerly known as the Rochester Rhinos, are an American professional soccer team based in Rochester, New York, United States. Founded in 1996, as the Rochester Raging Rhinos, they changed their name to Rochester Rhinos t ...
). Of the nine current and future MLS teams that did not field a side in Next Pro's first season, all but
CF Montréal CF Montréal is a Canadian professional soccer club based in Montréal, Québec, Canada. The club competes in Major League Soccer (MLS) in the Eastern Conference. Founded in 1992 as the Montreal Impact (french: Impact de Montréal, links=no), ...
and
D.C. United D.C. United is a professional soccer club based in Washington, D.C. that competes in the Eastern Conference of Major League Soccer, the top tier of American soccer. Domestically, the club has won four MLS Cups (league championships), four Suppo ...
will field reserve sides in Next Pro in 2023. This setup allows developing MLS players to gain playing experience. The CFL's draft is limited to Canadian citizens, plus non-citizens who were raised in Canada. In addition to university/college football, the CFL draft also draws players from the long-established
Canadian Junior Football League The Canadian Junior Football League (CJFL) is a national Major Junior Canadian football league consisting of 19 teams playing in five provinces across Canada. The teams compete annually for the Canadian Bowl. Many CJFL players move on to profess ...
and its component leagues. The league also draws from the same pool of free agents as the NFL, with players who do not make the NFL often going north to seek work in the CFL. The CFL requires free agents to sign contracts, and thus stay in the league, for a minimum of two years. Unique to the CFL is the concept of the ''negotiation list'', which allows CFL teams to unilaterally declare exclusive rights to any given player. Described as an "enduring mystery," the negotiation list forces players to accept the offer they are given, usually at league minimum, with no leverage to negotiate with other teams; there is no order or limits to the negotiation list, and teams can add or remove players to a 45-position negotiation list without their permission and at any time, regardless of age. Since
2018 File:2018 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2018 Winter Olympics opening ceremony in PyeongChang, South Korea; Protests erupt following the Assassination of Jamal Khashoggi; March for Our Lives protests take place across the United ...
, ten of the 45 players must be publicly announced.


High player salaries

The average annual salary for players in the four major leagues is about US$2.9 million in 2008, although player salaries can range from $500,000 for backup players to as much as $40 million (up to around $60 mil in the NFL and the NBA by 2021, not counting endorsements and sponsorship deals) for superstars. NFL, MLB, and NBA, have the biggest and longest contracts in the history of professional sports. NBA players have the highest average player salaries of the four leagues; however, their teams also have the smallest rosters. The NFL has the highest average team payroll. However, NFL rosters are far larger (55 players) than the other three leagues (many players on NFL rosters see little actual game play), and teams play far fewer games, making their players on average the lowest paid of the Big Four major leagues. After a brief lockout during the 2011 off-season, the owners and union signed a new CBA that imposed a hard salary cap of $120 million in the 2011 season, but temporarily suspended the salary floor, which returned in the 2013 season at 89% of the cap. MLB is now alone among the major leagues in that it lacks any form of a salary cap and has enacted only modest forms of
revenue sharing Revenue sharing is the distribution of revenue, the total amount of income generated by the sale of goods and services among the stakeholders or contributors. It should not be confused with profit shares, in which scheme only the profit is share ...
and luxury taxes. Compared to the other leagues, there is a far greater disparity between MLB payrolls. The New York Yankees had the highest payroll of any American sports team in 2006 when they paid $194 million in players' salaries – nearly twice the NFL salary cap and nearly thirteen times the payroll of the Florida Marlins who spent about $15 million (significantly less than the mandatory minimum team payrolls in the NFL and NHL). For the
2010–11 NHL season The 2010–11 NHL season was the 94th season of operation (93rd season of play) of the National Hockey League (NHL). The Boston Bruins defeated the Vancouver Canucks in the Stanley Cup Finals four games to three, being the sixth Cup win in Bruin ...
, the average player salary was slightly above the pre-lockout level of US$1.8 million. In the same season, the league's salary cap was US$59.4 million per team, with the salary floor set at US$16 million under the cap. For the , the cap has been set as US$79.5 million, with the floor at US$58.8 million. MLS has lower average salaries and smaller payrolls than the other leagues. MLS kept a strict rein on player salaries until 2007, when MLS introduced the Designated Player Rule, which allows MLS teams to pay higher wages for star players. David Beckham was the first player signed under this rule. The highest MLS payroll in 2019 was Toronto FC, with $24.5 million. The league's average salary is about $423,232 per year. MLS' minimum player salary will increase from $63,542 to $85,502 for most players. The CFL has a relatively smaller annual player salary and salary cap compared to the other leagues. The average salary in 2018 is $113,000 and the salary cap in 2018 is CAD $5.2 million.. As recently as the 1990s, loopholes in the salary cap allowed CFL teams to pay select marquee players a salary comparable to their NFL counterparts, but financial problems forced the league to close those loopholes. Starting quarterbacks, typically the highest paid players on a CFL roster, can make as much as CAD $750,000.


Dominance of the sport

Each of the top four major leagues are the premier competitions of their respective sport on the world stage. Major League Baseball is increasingly luring away the stars from the Japanese leagues, the European hockey leagues have become a major source of star talent for National Hockey League clubs, and the National Basketball Association frequently recruits talent from professional leagues in Europe, Latin America, Australia and China. All four leagues are considered to be the top league in their respective sports, not only in revenue, but also in quality of talent, player salaries, and worldwide interest. However, of the four major leagues, the NFL has the least presence outside both countries; it is mainly an American and Canadian interest. Basketball is a strong spectator and participation sport in parts of the world, and the NBA is unquestionably the top basketball league. Hockey (Europe) and baseball (East Asia, Latin America, Caribbean) have loyal followings in some of the world's other regions as well. Selling league broadcasting rights to foreign markets is another way for the leagues to generate revenue, and all the leagues have tried to exploit revenue streams outside of their home market. The NHL is the top professional hockey league in the world, and the NHL attracts top players from European leagues. The NHL played
exhibition game An exhibition game (also known as a friendly, a scrimmage, a demonstration, a preseason game, a warmup match, or a preparation match, depending at least in part on the sport) is a sporting event whose prize money and impact on the player's or ...
s against European teams in the "NHL Premiere" series (2007–11), the
NHL Challenge The NHL Challenge series allows select NHL teams to travel outside North America to conduct training camp and participate in exhibition games. Although the games are played on the larger European ice surface, they are officiated by NHL referees an ...
(2000-10), and the Victoria Cup (2008–09), and NHL teams have won 24 games to the European teams' four. During the height of the
Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because the ...
the Soviet League had comparable talent to the NHL, but since the decline of Communism in Eastern Europe in the late 1980s, NHL teams have enticed away most of the elite players from Europe due to higher salaries.
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
is not the premier soccer competition in the world, or even in the Americas, in terms of competition success, revenues, and players. MLS teams compete with top teams from North America, Central America and the Caribbean in the
CONCACAF Champions League The CONCACAF Champions League, known officially as the Scotiabank CONCACAF Champions League for sponsorship reasons, is an annual continental club football competition organized by CONCACAF. The tournament is contested by clubs from North Ameri ...
; before
Seattle Sounders FC Seattle Sounders Football Club is an American professional men's soccer club based in Seattle. The Sounders compete as a member of the Western Conference of Major League Soccer (MLS). The club was established on November 13, 2007, and began ...
won in
2022 File:2022 collage V1.png, Clockwise, from top left: Road junction at Yamato-Saidaiji Station several hours after the assassination of Shinzo Abe; 2022 Sri Lankan protests, Anti-government protest in Sri Lanka in front of the Presidential Secretari ...
, every edition since the current format was introduced in the 2008–09 season was won by a Mexican club. MLS has annual revenues of 1.2 billion, the Big five European soccer leagues ( England, Germany, Spain, Italy, and France) have annual revenues in excess of $1 billion as well. The top players from MLS often move to Europe in search of tougher competition and higher salaries. However, MLS has steadily improved in international stature in recent years. The league implemented the Designated Player Rule in 2007, allowing MLS to attract and retain international stars such as
David Beckham David Robert Joseph Beckham (; born 2 May 1975) is an English former professional footballer, the current president and co-owner of Inter Miami CF and co-owner of Salford City. Known for his range of passing, crossing ability and bending fr ...
. MLS attendance has increased to the point where MLS average attendance is among the top ten soccer leagues worldwide. The introduction of soccer-specific stadiums had improved revenue growth. In the late 1940s and 1950s, the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the U.S. National Football League (NFL) operated on roughly equal footing financially, with even some U.S.-born star
players Players may refer to: Art, entertainment, and media * ''Players'' (1979 film), a film starring Ali MacGraw * ''Players'' (2012 film), a Bollywood film * ''Players'' (Dicks novel), a novel by Terrance Dicks, based on the television series ''Doc ...
joining CFL teams. The situation changed along with the rise of the
American Football League The American Football League (AFL) was a major professional American football league that operated for ten seasons from 1960 until 1970, when it merged with the older National Football League (NFL), and became the American Football Conference. ...
(AFL) founded in 1959. By the end of the 1960s, revenue from the U.S. television market and absorption of the AFL helped the NFL become much more successful than its Canadian counterpart. By the 1980s, the CFL became virtually unknown outside of Canada. Attempts to promote the CFL included the failed CFL USA experiment in the 1990s. In 2009, a record number of 6.1 million viewers watched the CFL's annual
Grey Cup The Grey Cup (french: Coupe Grey) is both the championship game of the Canadian Football League (CFL) and the trophy awarded to the victorious team playing in the namesake championship of professional Canadian football. The game is contested be ...
championship game, while 151.6 million viewers watched the NFL's annual
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
championship game that same year.


Use of the phrase "world champions"

The perceived lack of competition from the rest of the world has contributed to the long-standing but controversial practice of the North American media referring to the major sports league champions as ''
world champions A world championship is generally an international competition open to elite competitors from around the world, representing their nations, and winning such an event will be considered the highest or near highest achievement in the sport, game, ...
''. Today, the phrase is more popular in the United States but it retains some acceptance in Canada. However, this practice is usually mocked by non-Americans. Usage of the phrase in baseball started with organization of championship series between the National League and the earlier American Association in the 1880s, later to be known as the World Series. Major League Baseball later set up the World Baseball Classic, a quadrennial international competition, in an effort to crown a true world champion. By the 1950s, the phrase ''World Champions'' was also being used by the newly formed NBA. The
Super Bowl The Super Bowl is the annual final playoff game of the National Football League (NFL) to determine the league champion. It has served as the final game of every NFL season since 1966, replacing the NFL Championship Game. Since 2022, the game ...
, the interleague championship between the NFL and American Football League, was explicitly named a "World Championship Game" for its first iteration. In hockey, the
Stanley Cup The Stanley Cup (french: La Coupe Stanley) is the championship trophy awarded annually to the National Hockey League (NHL) playoff champion. It is the oldest existing trophy to be awarded to a professional sports franchise in North America, an ...
was initially open only to Canadian teams, but in 1914, the Cup's trustees allowed American teams to compete, with the provision that the Stanley Cup winners were to be recognized as ''World's Champions''. The phrase was repeatedly engraved on the Cup, and continued to be used, when the NHL began admitting American franchises. When the NHL assumed formal control of the Cup in 1947, the resulting agreement required "that the winners of this trophy shall be the acknowledged World's Professional Hockey Champions" (in contrast to the IIHF's Ice Hockey World Championships, at the time nominally contested by amateurs, although
Eastern Bloc The Eastern Bloc, also known as the Communist Bloc and the Soviet Bloc, was the group of socialist states of Central and Eastern Europe, East Asia, Southeast Asia, Africa, and Latin America under the influence of the Soviet Union that existed du ...
nations violated the rules and used '' de facto'' professionals). When the World Hockey Association commenced play in the 1970s, they sought to challenge for the Stanley Cup, referring to the 1947 agreement. Both the NHL and the Cup trustees rejected the WHA's challenges; nevertheless, the NHL stopped calling its champions the ''World Champions'', as by this time, the Soviet Championship League was regularly beating the NHL in interleague competitions and the IIHF World Championship was officially opened up to professionals in 1976. Since then, the NHL has called their champions the ''Stanley Cup Champions''.


Holiday showcases

Several major sports leagues are showcased on a major holiday. The NFL has always played on Thanksgiving Day since its inception in 1920. The NBA has played on Christmas Day since 1947. And since 2008, the NHL has had the Winter Classic on
New Year's Day New Year's Day is a festival observed in most of the world on 1 January, the first day of the year in the modern Gregorian calendar. 1 January is also New Year's Day on the Julian calendar, but this is not the same day as the Gregorian one. Wh ...
. Furthermore, the CFL has two longstanding holiday events: the Labour Day Classic and Thanksgiving Day Classic. Baseball and soccer are not particularly associated with any holidays; however, in baseball's case, teams generally play on the major summer holidays since MLB teams play almost every day during their season, and currently themes special uniforms and ceremonies for Memorial Day,
Canada Day Canada Day (french: Fête du Canada), formerly known as Dominion Day (french: Fête du Dominion), is the national day of Canada. A federal statutory holiday, it celebrates the anniversary of Canadian Confederation which occurred on July 1, 18 ...
(for the Toronto Blue Jays), American
Independence Day An independence day is an annual event commemorating the anniversary of a nation's independence or statehood, usually after ceasing to be a group or part of another nation or state, or more rarely after the end of a military occupation. Man ...
, and the American/Canadian
Labor Day Labor Day is a federal holiday in the United States celebrated on the first Monday in September to honor and recognize the American labor movement and the works and contributions of laborers to the development and achievements of the United St ...
.


History and expansion of major leagues


United States

Professional sports leagues as known today evolved during the decades between the Civil War and World War II, when the railroad was the main means of intercity transportation. As a result, virtually all major league teams were concentrated in the northeastern quarter of the United States, within roughly the radius of a day-long train ride, within the Great Lakes and the
Northeast The points of the compass are a set of horizontal, radially arrayed compass directions (or azimuths) used in navigation and cartography. A compass rose is primarily composed of four cardinal directions—north, east, south, and west—each se ...
regions. Early professional soccer activity was concentrated almost entirely on an East Coast corridor from Baltimore to Boston, except for the
St. Louis metropolitan area Greater St. Louis is a bi-state metropolitan area that completely surrounds and includes the independent city of St. Louis, the principal city. It includes parts of both Missouri and Illinois. The city core is on the Mississippi Riverfront on t ...
. There were very few major league teams in the far west until after World War II. As travel and settlement patterns changed, so did the geography of professional sports. The NFL attempted to establish traveling teams representing the west and other far-flung regions in
1926 Events January * January 3 – Theodoros Pangalos declares himself dictator in Greece. * January 8 **Abdul-Aziz ibn Saud is crowned King of Hejaz. ** Crown Prince Nguyễn Phúc Vĩnh Thuy ascends the throne, the last monarch of V ...
and barnstormed in Los Angeles that season; the experiment did not last beyond that year. The first
west coast West Coast or west coast may refer to: Geography Australia * Western Australia *Regions of South Australia#Weather forecasting, West Coast of South Australia * West Coast, Tasmania **West Coast Range, mountain range in the region Canada * Britis ...
major-league franchise was the NFL's
Los Angeles Rams The Los Angeles Rams are a professional American football team based in the Los Angeles metropolitan area. The Rams compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member of the National Football Conference (NFC) West division. The Rams play ...
, who moved from Cleveland in 1946. The same year, the
All-America Football Conference The All-America Football Conference (AAFC) was a professional American football league that challenged the established National Football League (NFL) from 1946 to 1949. One of the NFL's most formidable challengers, the AAFC attracted many of the ...
began play, with teams in Los Angeles and San Francisco, and the
Miami Seahawks The Miami Seahawks were a professional American football team based in Miami, Florida. They played in the All-America Football Conference (AAFC) in the league's inaugural season, 1946, before the team was relocated to Baltimore. They are notable ...
. Baseball extended west in 1958 in the move of the
Brooklyn Dodgers The Brooklyn Dodgers were a Major League Baseball team founded in 1884 as a member of the American Association (19th century), American Association before joining the National League in 1890. They remained in Brooklyn until 1957, after which the ...
and
New York Giants The New York Giants are a professional American football team based in the New York metropolitan area. The Giants compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) East division. ...
. The NBA followed in 1960 with the move of the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles, while the NHL would not have a west coast presence until it expanded in 1967. Almost all of the NHL's initial franchises in the Southern and Western United States were unsuccessful and relocated. From 1982 until 1991, the Kings were the only U.S.-based NHL franchise south of St. Louis and/or west of the Twin Cities. Since then, as newer, fast-growing
Sunbelt The Sun Belt is a region of the United States generally considered to stretch across the Southeast and Southwest. Another rough definition of the region is the area south of the 36th parallel. Several climates can be found in the region — des ...
areas such as Phoenix,
Tampa Tampa () is a city on the Gulf Coast of the U.S. state of Florida. The city's borders include the north shore of Tampa Bay and the east shore of Old Tampa Bay. Tampa is the largest city in the Tampa Bay area and the seat of Hillsborough County ...
, and Dallas became prominent, the major sports leagues have expanded or franchises have relocated to service these communities.


Canada

The National Hockey League was established in 1917 in Canada. When the WHA and NHL merged, the NHL inherited teams in three Canadian cities, Edmonton, Winnipeg and Quebec City. MLB's first Canadian team was the Montreal Expos, a team that was added in 1969; MLB added the Toronto Blue Jays in 1977. MLS's first was Toronto FC, which was added in 2005; it was soon followed by the Montreal Impact and Vancouver Whitecaps. The Toronto Huskies were a charter member of the
Basketball Association of America The Basketball Association of America (BAA) was a professional basketball league in North America, founded in 1946. Following its third season, 1948–49, the BAA absorbed most of National Basketball League (NBL) and rebranded as the National Ba ...
in 1946, but that team only lasted one season; the NBA would then make a permanent expansion into Canada in 1995 when the Toronto Raptors and now- departed Vancouver Grizzlies were established.


International expansion

Some of the Big Four sports leagues have looked to expand their revenues by playing overseas games in attempt to develop a wider international fan base. There has been increasing cooperation between the NBA and the Euroleague. In 2005, the two bodies agreed to organize a summer competition known as the
NBA Europe Live Tour The NBA Global Games are a series of games featuring NBA teams that are played outside the United States and Canada. Its purpose is to bring teams from the National Basketball Association (NBA) to play games against either another NBA team or a for ...
featuring four NBA teams and four Euroleague clubs, with the first competition taking place in 2006. The NBA has also played teams from
Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...
's National Basketball League, and since 2015, the league has played all-star games in the Johannesburg, South Africa, area against squads composed of NBA players who were either born on or whose parents were born on the African continent. The NFL has attempted to promote its game worldwide by scheduling selected pre-season games abroad since 1976. The NFL had promoted the game abroad through
NFL Europe NFL Europe League (simply called NFL Europe and known in its final season as NFL Europa League) was a professional American football league that functioned as the developmental minor league of the National Football League (NFL). Originally f ...
, but the latter was unprofitable and ceased operations in 2007. The NFL began its International Series, holding at least one regular-season game at Wembley Stadium in London every year since 2007. The NFL held three games at Wembley in the 2014 season. Since then, Twickenham Stadium, the home of English rugby union, has been added as a second London venue. The primary venue for London NFL games is set to switch to Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, opened in 2019 by the soccer club of that name. The new stadium hosted two of the four London games in the 2019 season. The current contract between the NFL and The Football Association, owners of Wembley Stadium, will expire after the 2020 season, while the NFL has a contract with Tottenham Hotspur (aka Spurs) for games through 2027. The Spurs stadium, in which the NFL made a modest investment, is designed to be capable of hosting both forms of football on a single weekend if necessary. The
CFL The Canadian Football League (CFL; french: Ligue canadienne de football—LCF) is a professional sports league in Canada. The CFL is the highest level of competition in Canadian football. The league consists of nine teams, each located in a ci ...
, under commissioner Randy Ambrosie, began actively recruiting
gridiron Gridiron may refer to: Sports and games * Gridiron, a term for the field marked with yard-lines on which American and Canadian codes of football are played ** Gridiron football, umbrella term used to refer to the several codes of football which ...
players from Mexico and Europe as part of its "CFL 2.0" initiative in 2019.


Relations between leagues

Although they are competitors, at times the "Big Four" leagues also cooperate. Some owners have teams in multiple leagues. In the early years of professional basketball, the American Basketball League, the ''de facto'' major league of the 1920s, was backed primarily by NFL owners. There are common business and legal interests; the leagues will often support one another in legal matters since the courts' decisions might establish precedents that affect them all. One recent example was the
Supreme Court A supreme court is the highest court within the hierarchy of courts in most legal jurisdictions. Other descriptions for such courts include court of last resort, apex court, and high (or final) court of appeal. Broadly speaking, the decisions of ...
decision in 2010 in ''
American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League ''American Needle, Inc. v. National Football League'', 560 U.S. 183 (2010), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the ability of teams in the National Football League to conspire for purposes of a violation of §1 of the Sherman Antitru ...
'', in which the NFL (which ultimately lost the case) received ''
amicus curiae An ''amicus curiae'' (; ) is an individual or organization who is not a party to a legal case, but who is permitted to assist a court by offering information, expertise, or insight that has a bearing on the issues in the case. The decision on ...
'' briefs from the NBA, NHL, and MLS. The leagues' commissioners occasionally meet in person, most recently in 2009. The leagues also cooperate in the construction and use of facilities. Many NBA and NHL teams share arenas, and, in years past, such sharing was very common for MLB and NFL teams. Multi-purpose stadiums were built to accommodate multiple sports in the later half of the 20th century; the last multi-purpose stadium in the NFL, what is now Rickey Henderson Field at RingCentral Coliseum, hosted its last NFL game in
2019 File:2019 collage v1.png, From top left, clockwise: Hong Kong protests turn to widespread riots and civil disobedience; House of Representatives votes to adopt articles of impeachment against Donald Trump; CRISPR gene editing first used to experim ...
. Even in situations where separate stadiums have been constructed for each team (as is generally the norm in the 21st century), the individual stadiums may be constructed adjacent to each other and share parking space and other infrastructure. More recently, MLS teams have used NFL and CFL stadiums as either full-time home fields (much less so now, due to the league's insistence on soccer-specific stadiums) or for special event games; in reverse, in at least one case, an NFL team (the Los Angeles Chargers) used a soccer-specific MLS stadium on a temporary basis from 2017 to 2019 while a larger stadium was built for them. In recent years, two MLS teams have shared stadiums permanently with NFL teams that were explicitly built to host both sports. The Seattle Sounders share Lumen Field with the
Seattle Seahawks The Seattle Seahawks are a professional American football team based in Seattle. The Seahawks compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) West, which they rejoined in 2002 as ...
; the Seahawks were owned by Paul Allen, also a member of the Sounders ownership group, until his death in 2018. Atlanta United FC shares
Mercedes-Benz Stadium Mercedes-Benz Stadium is a multi-purpose stadium located in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Opened in August 2017 as a replacement for the Georgia Dome, it serves as the home stadium of the Atlanta Falcons of the National Football League (NFL) ...
with the
Atlanta Falcons The Atlanta Falcons are a professional American football team based in Atlanta. The Falcons compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's National Football Conference (NFC) South division. The Falcons joined th ...
, with both teams under the ownership of Arthur Blank. Charlotte FC shares
Bank of America Stadium Bank of America Stadium is a 74,867-seat football stadium located on in uptown Charlotte, North Carolina, United States. It is the home facility and headquarters of the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League and Charlotte FC of Major ...
with the Carolina Panthers; both teams are owned by
David Tepper David Alan Tepper (born September 11, 1957) is an American billionaire hedge fund manager. He is the owner of the Carolina Panthers of the National Football League (NFL) and Charlotte FC in Major League Soccer (MLS). Tepper is the founder and pre ...
. In Canada, Vancouver Whitecaps FC share BC Place with the CFL's BC Lions. The Seattle, Atlanta, and Vancouver stadiums are designed to have reduced seating capacity for most MLS games. Charlotte's stadium was renovated to allow for lower capacity soccer crowds before the MLS team debuted in 2022. Additionally, the New England Revolution shares Gillette Stadium with the
New England Patriots The New England Patriots are a professional American football team based in the Greater Boston area. They compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the league's American Football Conference (AFC) AFC East, East divisio ...
, New York City FC shares Yankee Stadium with the New York Yankees MLB team, which also owns part of NYCFC, and Toronto FC shares BMO Field with the CFL's Toronto Argonauts, with both teams now owned by the company that also owns Toronto's
NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
and
NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
teams. Also notable in recent years have been the NHL's Winter Classic and Heritage Classic, which have been held in NFL, CFL, and MLB, as well as college football, stadiums. A unique situation is the TD Place Complex in
Ottawa Ottawa (, ; Canadian French: ) is the capital city of Canada. It is located at the confluence of the Ottawa River and the Rideau River in the southern portion of the province of Ontario. Ottawa borders Gatineau, Quebec, and forms the core ...
; the same structure serves as the indoor Ottawa Civic Centre (which hosted the NHL's Senators in the 1990s), while on the roof of that arena was seating for Frank Clair Stadium (at that time home of the CFL's
Ottawa Rough Riders The Ottawa Rough Riders were a Canadian Football League team based in Ottawa, Ontario, founded in 1876. Formerly one of the oldest and longest-lived professional sports teams in North America, the Rough Riders won the Grey Cup championship nine ...
; by 2014 the stadium was renovated into TD Place Stadium and is now home to the CFL's Ottawa Redblacks). In the early years of the NFL and to a lesser extent the NHL, it was not uncommon for teams to share nicknames with their MLB counterparts. For example, until 1957 New York City played host to baseball and
football Football is a family of team sports that involve, to varying degrees, kicking a ball to score a goal. Unqualified, the word ''football'' normally means the form of football that is the most popular where the word is used. Sports commonly c ...
Giants. MLB's
Pittsburgh Pirates The Pittsburgh Pirates are an American professional baseball team based in Pittsburgh. The Pirates compete in Major League Baseball (MLB) as a member club of the National League (NL) Central division. Founded as part of the American Associati ...
shared its nickname with an NFL team (which ultimately became the
Pittsburgh Steelers The Pittsburgh Steelers are a professional American football team based in Pittsburgh. The Steelers compete in the National Football League (NFL) as a member club of the American Football Conference (AFC) North division. Founded in , the Steel ...
) as well as a now-defunct early NHL team, while the Canadian football team Hamilton Tigers shared a team name with an NHL team. The most recent example of two major teams sharing a franchise name was between 1960 and 1987; when the NFL's Chicago Cardinals relocated to
St. Louis, Missouri St. Louis () is the second-largest city in Missouri, United States. It sits near the confluence of the Mississippi River, Mississippi and the Missouri Rivers. In 2020, the city proper had a population of 301,578, while the Greater St. Louis, ...
, it was allowed to keep the Cardinals name despite the established existence of a baseball team of the same name. In 1997, the NFL loaned $3 million to the CFL after the latter's failed expansion into the United States market in the early 1990s left it in financial danger. In 2015, the NHL partnered with MLB's digital arm
Major League Baseball Advanced Media MLB Advanced Media (MLBAM) is a limited partnership of the club owners of Major League Baseball (MLB) based in New York City and is the Internet and interactive branch of the league. Robert Bowman, former president and CEO of MLBAM, indicated in ...
(MLBAM) to assume the operations of its digital properties; the league's television network NHL Network was also taken over by the staff of MLB Network and re-located to its facilities. The
NBA Finals The NBA Finals is the annual championship series of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Eastern and Western Conference champions play a best-of-seven game series to determine the league champion. The team that wins the series is awa ...
of the NBA and the
Stanley Cup Finals The Stanley Cup Finals in ice hockey (also known as the Stanley Cup Final among various media, french: Finale de la Coupe Stanley) is the National Hockey League's (NHL) championship series to determine the winner of the Stanley Cup, North America ...
of the NHL are the championship series of their respective leagues, which occur in June. Oftentimes, there is partial overlap between the two series and in such cases their game days are staggered so as not to interfere with each other.


See also

*
Professional sports leagues in the United States Professional sports leagues in the United States include several major leagues as well as other professional and semi-professional leagues. Major leagues The major sports leagues tend to have the greatest fan interest, have national TV contracts, ...
*
Prominent women's sports leagues in the United States and Canada The prominent women's sports leagues in the United States and Canada represent the elite level of women's sports competition for women athletes in North America. The majority of professional women's leagues are found in the United States. Top wo ...
* Major professional sports teams of the United States and Canada *
List of shared franchise names in North American professional sports Many North American professional sports franchises have used the same team name. The list below are names that have been shared by two or more professional sports teams. Format Name – location (sport, ''status'') ''Name'' refers to the tea ...
* Sports in the United States * Sports in Canada *
Sports in Mexico Sport pertains to any form of competitive physical activity or game that aims to use, maintain, or improve physical ability and skills while providing enjoyment to participants and, in some cases, entertainment to spectators. Sports can, t ...
*
List of American and Canadian cities by number of major professional sports franchises This is a list of metropolitan areas in the United States and Canada categorized by the number of major professional sports franchises in their metropolitan areas. Major professional sports leagues The major professional sports leagues, or simpl ...
* List of professional sports leagues * List of attendance figures at domestic professional sports leagues – a summary of total and average attendances for the major sports leagues from around the world. * List of professional sports leagues by revenue


Footnotes


References


External links


North American Pro Sports Teams
– Lists every league that has operated in Canada and / or the United States. Grouped by city.
''USA Today'' Salary Database
– Lists and sorts team payroll by year for all teams in MLB,
NFL The National Football League (NFL) is a professional American football league that consists of 32 teams, divided equally between the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The NFL is one of the major ...
,
NBA The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United St ...
,
NHL The National Hockey League (NHL; french: Ligue nationale de hockey—LNH, ) is a professional ice hockey league in North America comprising 32 teams—25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. It is considered to be the top ranked professional ...
, and
Major League Soccer Major League Soccer (MLS) is a men's professional soccer league sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation, which represents the sport's highest level in the United States. The league comprises 29 teams—26 in the U.S. and 3 in Canada ...
. {{DEFAULTSORT:Major Professional Sports Leagues In The United States And Canada ^ ^