Promotion And Relegation
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In
sports league A sports league is a group of sports teams or individual athletes that compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur sports, amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and ...
s, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed
season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and pol ...
. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues. In a system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in the lower division are ''promoted'' to the higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are ''relegated'' to the lower division for the next season. In some leagues,
playoffs The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be eithe ...
or qualifying rounds are also used to determine rankings. This process can continue through several levels of divisions, with teams being exchanged between adjacent divisions. During the season, teams that are high enough in the
league table Standings or rankings are listings which compare sports teams or individuals, institutions, nations, companies, or other entities by ranking them in order of ability or achievement. A table or chart (such as a league table, a ladder or a leaderb ...
that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the ''promotion zone'', and those at the bottom are in the ''relegation zone'' or Reg zone (
colloquially Colloquialism (), also called colloquial language, everyday language or general parlance, is the linguistic style used for casual (informal) communication. It is the most common functional style of speech, the idiom normally employed in conversa ...
the ''drop zone'' or ''facing the drop''). An alternate system of league organization, used primarily in Australia, Canada, Singapore and the United States, is a closed model based on licensing or
franchise Franchise may refer to: Business and law * Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business to franchisees * Franchise, a privilege to operate a type of business such as a cable television p ...
s. This maintains the same teams from year to year, with occasional admission of
expansion team An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also ...
s and relocation of existing teams, and with no team movement between the major league and minor leagues.


Overview

The number of teams exchanged between the divisions is almost always identical. Exceptions occur when the higher division wishes to change the size of its membership, or has lost one or more of its clubs (to financial insolvency or expulsion, for example) and wishes to restore its previous membership size, in which case fewer teams are relegated from that division, or (less often) more teams are accepted for promotion from the division below. Such variations usually cause a "knock-on" effect through the lower divisions. For example, in 1995 the
Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...
voted to reduce its numbers by two and achieved the desired change by relegating four teams instead of the usual three, whilst allowing only two promotions from Football League Division One. Even in the absence of such extraordinary circumstances, the pyramid-like nature of most European sports league systems can still create knock-on effects at the regional level. For example, in a higher league with a large geographical footprint and multiple feeder leagues each representing smaller geographical regions, should most or all of the relegated teams in the higher division come from one particular region then the number of teams to be promoted or relegated from each of the feeder leagues may have to be adjusted, or one or more teams playing near the boundary between the feeder leagues may have to transfer from one feeder league to another to maintain numerical balance. The system is said to be the defining characteristic of the "European" form of
professional sports league organization Professional sports leagues are organized in numerous ways. The two most significant types are one that developed in Europe, characterized by a tiered structure using promotion and relegation in order to determine participation in a hierarchy of ...
. Promotion and relegation have the effect of allowing the maintenance of a hierarchy of leagues and divisions, according to the relative strength of their teams. They also maintain the importance of games played by many low-ranked teams near the end of the season, which may be at risk of relegation. In contrast, the final games of a low-ranked US or Canadian team serve little purpose, and in fact losing may be beneficial to such teams because they offer a better position in the next year's
draft Draft, The Draft, or Draught may refer to: Watercraft dimensions * Draft (hull), the distance from waterline to keel of a vessel * Draft (sail), degree of curvature in a sail * Air draft, distance from waterline to the highest point on a vesse ...
. Although not intrinsic to the system, problems can occur due to the differing monetary payouts and revenue-generating potential that different divisions provide to their clubs. For example, financial hardship has sometimes occurred in leagues where clubs do not reduce their wage bill once relegated. This usually occurs for one of two reasons: first, the club can't move underperforming players on, or second, the club is gambling on being promoted back straight away and is prepared to take a financial loss for one or two seasons to do so. Some leagues (most notably English football's
Premier League The Premier League (legal name: The Football Association Premier League Limited) is the highest level of the men's English football league system. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the English Foo ...
) offer " parachute payments" to its relegated teams for the following year(s). The payouts are higher than the prize money received by some non-relegated teams and are designed to soften the financial hit that clubs take whilst dropping out of the Premier League. However, in many cases, these parachute payments just serve to inflate the costs of competing for promotion among the lower division clubs as newly relegated teams retain a financial advantage. In some countries and at certain levels, teams in line for promotion may have to satisfy certain non-playing conditions in order to be accepted by the higher league, such as financial solvency, stadium capacity, and facilities. If these are not satisfied, a lower-ranked team may be promoted in their place, or a team in the league above may be saved from relegation. While the primary purpose of the promotion and relegation system is to maintain competitive balance, it may also be used as a disciplinary tool in special cases. On several occasions, the Italian Football Federation has relegated clubs found to have been involved in match fixing. This occurred most recently in 2006, when the season's initial champions Juventus were relegated to Serie B, and two other teams were initially relegated but then restored to Serie A after appeal (see 2006 Serie A scandal).


International sport

Promotion and relegation is used in international sports leagues such as in
Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...
, and many other parts of the world, association football(Soccer), basketball, american football, baseball, handball, hockey etc leagues. It may be used in international sports tournaments. In tennis, the Davis Cup and
Fed Cup The Billie Jean King Cup (or the BJK Cup) is the premier international team competition in women's tennis, launched as the Federation Cup in 1963 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the International Tennis Federation (ITF). The name was cha ...
have promotion and relegation, with a 'World Group' (split into two divisions in the Fed Cup) at the top and series of regional groups at a lower level. The World Groups in both use a
knockout tournament A knockout (abbreviated to KO or K.O.) is a fight-ending, winning criterion in several full-contact combat sports, such as boxing, kickboxing, muay thai, mixed martial arts, karate, some forms of taekwondo and other sports involving striking, a ...
format, with the first-round losers entering play-offs with winners from regional groups to avoid relegation. In international tournaments, this format allows teams from countries in which a sport is less well established to have competitive matches, while opening up the possibility of competing against higher ranked nations as a sport grows. Other international tournaments which employ promotion and relegation include the
Ice Hockey World Championships The Ice Hockey World Championships are an annual international men's ice hockey tournament organized by the International Ice Hockey Federation (IIHF). First officially held at the 1920 Summer Olympics, it is the sport's highest profile annua ...
,
Bandy World Championship The Bandy World Championship is a competition between bandy-playing nations' men's teams. The tournament is administrated by the Federation of International Bandy. It is distinct from the Bandy World Cup, a club competition, and from the W ...
s,
Floorball World Championships The Men's World Floorball Championship is an international floorball competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the members of the International Floorball Federation (IFF), the sport's global governing body. It is distinct from t ...
, the
UEFA Nations League The UEFA Nations League is a biennial international football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the member associations of UEFA, the sport's European governing body. The first tournament began in September 2018. The ...
, the
CONCACAF Nations League The CONCACAF Nations League ( es, Liga de Naciones CONCACAF, french: Ligue des Nations de la CONCACAF) is an international association football competition contested by the senior men's national teams of the member associations of CONCACAF, the ...
, the
World Cricket League The ICC World Cricket League (WCL) was a series of international one-day cricket tournaments for national teams without Test status (i.e., teams of Associate status) administered by the International Cricket Council. All Associate Members of ...
and the European Team Championships in athletics.


Historical comparisons


Early baseball leagues in the United States

In baseball, the earliest American sport to develop professional leagues, the
National Association of Base Ball Players The National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) was the first organization governing American baseball. (The sport was spelled with two words in the 19th century.) The first convention of sixteen New York City area clubs in 1857 effecti ...
(NABBP) was established in 1857 as a national governing body for the game. In many respects, it would resemble England's Football Association when founded in 1863. Both espoused strict amateurism in their early years and welcomed hundreds of clubs as members. Baseball's National Association was not able to survive the onset of
professionalism A professional is a member of a profession or any person who works in a specified professional activity. The term also describes the standards of education and training that prepare members of the profession with the particular knowledge and skil ...
. It responded to the trend – clubs secretly paying or indirectly compensating players – by establishing a "professional" class for 1869. As quickly as 1871, most of those clubs broke away and formed the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP). That new, professional Association was open at a modest fee, but it proved to be unstable. It was replaced by the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in 1876, which has endured to the present day. The founders of the new League judged that in order to prosper, they must make baseball's highest level of competition a franchise based system with exclusive membership, a strict limit on the number of teams, and each member having exclusive rights to their local market. The modest National League guarantee of a place in the league year after year would permit the owners to monopolize fan bases in their exclusive territories and give them the confidence to invest in infrastructure, such as improved ballparks. In turn, those would guarantee the revenues to support traveling halfway across a continent for games. Indeed, after its first season, the new league banked on its still doubtful stability by expelling its members in New York and Philadelphia (the two largest cities), because they had breached agreements to visit the four western clubs at the end of the season. The NL's dominance of baseball was challenged several times but only by entire leagues, after its first few years. Eight clubs, the established norm for a national league, was a prohibitively high threshold for a new venture. Two challengers succeeded beyond the short-term, with the National League fighting off a challenge from 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 ...
after a decade (concluded 1891). In 1903 it accepted parity with the
American League The American League of Professional Baseball Clubs, known simply as the American League (AL), is one of two leagues that make up Major League Baseball (MLB) in the United States and Canada. It developed from the Western League, a minor league ...
and the formation of the organization that would become
Major League Baseball Major League Baseball (MLB) is a professional baseball organization and the oldest major professional sports league in the world. MLB is composed of 30 total teams, divided equally between the National League (NL) and the American League (AL), ...
. The peace agreement between the NL and the AL did not change the "closed shop" of top-level baseball but entrenched it by including the AL in the shop. This was further confirmed by the Supreme Court's 1922 ruling in ''
Federal Baseball Club v. National League ''Federal Baseball Club v. National League'', 259 U.S. 200 (1922), is a case in which the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the Sherman Antitrust Act did not apply to Major League Baseball. Background After the Federal League folded in 1915, most of ...
'', giving MLB a legal monopoly over professional baseball in the US. The other
major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada 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 Bas ...
have followed the MLB model of a franchise based system.


Early football leagues in England

In contrast to baseball's
NABBP The National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) was the first organization governing American baseball. (The sport was spelled with two words in the 19th century.) The first convention of sixteen New York City area clubs in 1857 effecti ...
, the first governing body in English football survived the onset of professionalism, which it formally accepted in 1885. Perhaps the great geographical concentration of population and the corresponding short distances between urban centres was crucial. Certainly it provided the opportunity for more clubs' developing large fan bases without incurring great travel costs. Professional football did not gain acceptance until after the turn of the 20th century in most of
Southern England Southern England, or the South of England, also known as the South, is an area of England consisting of its southernmost part, with cultural, economic and political differences from the Midlands and the North. Officially, the area includes ...
. The earliest league members travelled only through the Midlands and
North North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating Direction (geometry), direction or geography. Etymology T ...
. When The Football League (now the
English Football League The English Football League (EFL) is a league of professional football clubs from England and Wales. Founded in 1888 as the Football League, the league is the oldest such competition in the world. It was the top-level football league in Engl ...
) was founded in 1888, it was not intended to be a rival of
The Football Association The Football Association (also known as The FA) is the Sports governing body, governing body of association football in England and the Crown Dependencies of Jersey, Bailiwick of Guernsey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man. Formed in 1863, it is the ...
but rather the top competition within it. The new league was not universally accepted as England's top-calibre competition right away. To help win fans of clubs outside The Football League, its circuit was not closed; rather, a system was established in which the worst teams at the end of each season would need to win
re-election The incumbent is the current holder of an office or position, usually in relation to an election. In an election for president, the incumbent is the person holding or acting in the office of president before the election, whether seeking re-ele ...
against any clubs wishing to join. A rival league, the
Football Alliance The Football Alliance was an association football league in England which ran for three seasons, from 1889–90 to 1891–92. History In 1888, the same year the Football League was founded, The Combination was established by clubs who had been ...
, was formed in 1889. When the two merged in 1892, it was not on equal terms; rather, most of the Alliance clubs were put in the new
Football League Second Division The Football League Second Division was the second level division in the English football league system between 1892 and 1992. Following the foundation of the FA Premier League, the Football League divisions were renumbered and the third ti ...
, whose best teams would move up to the First Division in place of its worst teams. Another merger, with the top division of the Southern League in 1920, helped form the Third Division in similar fashion. Since then no new league has been formed of
non-league Non-League football describes football leagues played outside the top leagues of a country. Usually, it describes leagues which are not fully professional. The term is primarily used for football in England, where it is specifically used to d ...
clubs to try to achieve parity with The Football League (only to play at a lower level, like independent professional leagues in American baseball today). For decades, teams finishing near the bottom of The Football League's lowest division(s) faced re-election rather than automatic relegation. But the principle of promotion and relegation had been firmly established, and it eventually expanded to the
football pyramid In sports leagues, promotion and relegation is a process where teams are transferred between multiple divisions based on their performance for the completed season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are often called open leagues. ...
in place today. Meanwhile, The FA has remained English football's overall governing body, retaining amateur and professional clubs rather than breaking up.


Use in other competitions

Promotion and relegation has been used in several eSports leagues.
Blizzard Entertainment Blizzard Entertainment, Inc. is an American video game developer and publisher based in Irvine, California. A subsidiary of Activision Blizzard, the company was founded on February 8, 1991, under the name Silicon & Synapse, Inc. by three graduat ...
's video game ''
StarCraft II ''StarCraft II'' is a military science fiction video game created by Blizzard Entertainment as a sequel to the successful ''StarCraft'' video game released in 1998. Set in a fictional future, the game centers on a galactic struggle for dominance ...
'' has a "ladder" that uses a promotion and relegation system, where individual players and pre-made teams can be promoted and relegated during the first few weeks of a league season, which generally lasts around 11 weeks, with promotion and relegation taking place based on a skill rating, which is in turn based on wins and losses. However, this form of
matchmaking Matchmaking is the process of matching two or more people together, usually for the purpose of marriage, in which case the matchmaker is also known as a marriage broker. The word is also used in the context of sporting events such as boxing, in ...
is not typically used for StarCraft II e-sports tournaments, which have various kinds of structures depending on the organizer, the most important being the
ESL Pro Tour The ESL Gaming GmbH, doing business as ESL (formerly known as Electronic Sports League), is a German esports organizer and production company that produces video game competitions worldwide. ESL was the world's largest esports company in 2015, ...
. The most professional ''
League of Legends ''League of Legends'' (''LoL''), commonly referred to as ''League'', is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by '' Defense of the Ancients'', a custom map for ''Warcraft III'', ...
'' leagues like the
League of Legends Championship Series The League Championship Series (LCS) is the top level of professional ''League of Legends'' in the United States and Canada. The esports league is run by Riot Games and has ten franchise teams. Each annual season of competition is divided i ...
and
League of Legends Champions Korea ''League of Legends'' Champions Korea (LCK) is the primary competition for ''League of Legends'' esports in South Korea. Contested by ten teams, the league runs two seasons per year and serves as a direct route to qualification for the annual ...
use a promotion and relegation system, although the LCS moved away from this in 2018 for North America LCS and 2019 for the European LCS (which was renamed to the
League of Legends European Championship The ''League of Legends'' EMEA Championship (LEC) is the professional ''League of Legends'' esports league run by Riot Games in the EMEA ( Europe, the Middle East and Africa) region, in which ten teams compete. Each annual season of play is divi ...
). The '' Counter-Strike: Global Offensive'' Majors use a similar system where in the top eight finishers of one of the bi-annual Majors are designated with the "Legends" seed and automatically qualified for the next Major tournament. The best six eliminated teams in the second stage (known as ''New Legends Stage'') of the Major must play a "qualifying" stage (known as ''New Challengers Stage'') with another ten teams from the Minors in order to compete at the ''New Legends Stage''. From 1993 until 2003, the
Eurovision Song Contest The Eurovision Song Contest (), sometimes abbreviated to ESC and often known simply as Eurovision, is an international songwriting competition organised annually by the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), featuring participants representing pr ...
used various systems of relegation to reconcile the number of countries wishing to participate (approximately 30 at the time) with the number of performances allowed considering time constraints of a live television program. The addition of a semi-final in 2004 allowed for more than 26 songs, but in 2008 automatic qualification of the previous year's top 10 to the final was removed. In Brazilian carnival's
samba school A samba school ( pt, Escola de samba) is a dancing, marching, and drumming (Samba Enredo) club. They practice and often perform in a huge square- compounds ("quadras de samba") and are devoted to practicing and exhibiting samba, an Afro-Brazilian ...
contest, a similar system is adopted, with the schools from lower divisions, or "groups", the highest tier being currently called the "Special Group" (''Grupo Especial''). Schools parade in order of groups and ranking from last year contest, with the better ranked inside a group and the higher-tier groups having the privilege of going latter (this means the team has the opportunity of fixing issues with costumes and allegorical floats as well as more rehearsal time). The number of promoted and relegated schools, four until 1997, has been diminishing as time passes, becoming two from 1998 to 2007 and being only one nowadays. There has never been an official reason for that, but it is a fact that the relegated schools have more to lose nowadays, such as access to the
Cidade do Samba Cidade do Samba (Portuguese language, Portuguese, ''Samba City''), formally known as Cidade do Samba Joãozinho Trinta, is a complex of buildings in the neighborhood of Gamboa, Rio de Janeiro, Gamboa, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It is used for Samba s ...
("Samba City") facilities. There have been reported several interferences on the contest's final result, especially when traditional schools are involved.


Argentinian football and the average performance system

From 1957 to 1966 and from 1983 to the present, the
Argentine First Division Argentines (mistakenly translated Argentineans in the past; in Spanish language, Spanish (Grammatical gender, masculine) or (Grammatical gender, feminine)) are people identified with the country of Argentina. This connection may be resident ...
has used a system called ''Promedios'' based on the average performance over a number of seasons. Originally the previous two seasons, and later three or four seasons, clubs avoid relegation by having a high coefficient, which is obtained by dividing the points achieved in the last three seasons by the number of matches played in the same period. Teams with the lowest points coefficient at the end of the season are relegated to the
Primera B Nacional Primera Nacional (usually called simply Nacional B, in English "National B Division", and known as Primera B Nacional until the 2019–20 season) is the second division of the Argentine football league system. The competition is made up of 37 tea ...
. This system has both positive and negative aspects, since all of the matches played for the championship in the last seasons are included in the coefficient for the clubs. Teams have an incentive to score points in every match of the season, meaning teams that are not challenging for the title or fighting relegation in the current season want to win even in the final matches to reduce the risk of relegation in the next season; examples are
Club Atlético Banfield Club Atlético Banfield is an Argentine sports club based in the Banfield district of Greater Buenos Aires. It was founded on 21 January 1896, by the British–origin inhabitants of that city (mostly English, and some Scots and Irish). The club ...
being champion of the Torneo Apertura in 2009 and last place in the next championship, the Torneo Clausura 2010, without being relegated until the end of the Torneo Apertura 2010 with a second-to-last place finish. Similarly, River Plate finished last in the Torneo Apertura 2008 and after two bad campaigns and a mediocre one was relegated in the Torneo Clausura 2011 despite being in fifth place and qualifying for the
2011 Copa Sudamericana The 2011 Copa Sudamericana de Clubes (officially the 2011 Copa Bridgestone Sudamericana de Clubes for sponsorship reasons) was the 10th edition of the Copa Sudamericana, South America's secondary international club football tournament organize ...
. This system forces the newly promoted teams to fight relegation from the very beginning of the season. It also allows teams with a low budget with previous good campaigns to compete in international competitions without having to prioritize the championship to avoid relegation; examples of this are
Club Atlético Lanús Club Atlético Lanús () is an Argentina, Argentine sports club from the Lanús district of Greater Buenos Aires. Founded in 1915, the club's main sports are association football, football and basketball. In both sports, Lanús plays in Argentin ...
, winner of the
2013 Copa Sudamericana The 2013 Copa Sudamericana (officially the 2013 Copa Total Sudamericana for sponsorship reasons) was the 12th edition of the Copa Sudamericana, South America's secondary international club football tournament organized by CONMEBOL. The winner qu ...
, or
Club Atlético Talleres Club may refer to: Arts, entertainment, and media * ''Club'' (magazine) * Club, a '' Yie Ar Kung-Fu'' character * Clubs (suit), a suit of playing cards * Club music * "Club", by Kelsea Ballerini from the album ''kelsea'' Brands and enterprises ...
, winner of the 1999 Conmebol Cup. The Uruguayan First Division adopted the same system in 2016. Also, a similar system was used only in the 1999 edition of
Campeonato Brasileiro Série A The Campeonato Brasileiro Série A (; English: "Brazilian Championship A Series"), commonly referred to as the Brasileirão (; English: "Big Brazilian"), and also known as Brasileirão Assaí due to sponsorship with Assaí Atacadista, is a Br ...
.


See also

* List of association football leagues without promotion and relegation *
List of unrelegated association football clubs Several association football clubs succeed in playing at the highest level of their domestic league without being relegated for several years, if at all. This page lists the clubs that managed to stay in top flight for an extended period of time ...
*
List of association football clubs with multiple consecutive promotions or relegations This is a list of association football clubs with multiple consecutive promotions or relegations. For an association football club to achieve three consecutive promotions is somewhat rare, to achieve subsequent further promotions even rarer. Man ...
*
Yo-yo club A yo-yo club is a sporting side that is regularly promoted and relegated. The phrase is most typically used in association football in the United Kingdom, especially in reference to promotion to and relegation from the Premier League. The name ...


Notes and references


Notes


References


External links


Rec.Sport.Soccer Statistics Foundation
Source for historical information on promoted and relegated football clubs. {{DEFAULTSORT:Promotion And Relegation Association football terminology Sports terminology