Wild card (sports)

Non-qualifier place in a tournament A wild card (also wildcard or wild-card and also known as an at-large berth or at-large bid) is an invitation to a tournament or a playoff berth awarded to a team or individual that does not qualify via an automatic bid. In some events, wildcards are chosen freely by the organizers. Other events have fixed rules. Some North American professional sports leagues compare the records of teams which did not qualify directly by winning a division or conference. International sports In international sports, the term is perhaps best known in reference to two sporting traditions: team wildcards distributed among countries at the Olympic Games and individual wildcards given to some tennis players at every professional tournament (both smaller events and the major ones such as Wimbledon). Tennis players may even ask for a wildcard and get one if they want to enter a tournament on short notice. For Summer Olympic Games, some National Olympic Committees, whose nations are underrepresented after qualifications, may be granted wild card quotas, which are termed Universality Places, in some eligible sports. In Olympic and World Championship competitions in track