Major North American professional sports leagues
Major professional sports league, or simply major league, is the term used in North America to refer to the highest professional division in any team sport. The term "major league" was probably first used in reference to the top flight of professional American baseball.[citation needed] The designation of major league is as opposed to minor league, which are lower division and/or developmental leagues below the major league in the national sport-tier hierarchy; and amateur leagues, in which the athletes receive no salary. The designation as to whether a league is a major or minor league is made by the national or international governing body for that sport, not by the popular perception of that sport (e.g., TV ratings or number of articles in the daily newspaper). In any country or region, the top major leagues generally will have the best athletes, the largest-capacity stadiums, the largest and most active fan bases, the most lucrative television contracts, and, therefore, the largest revenues and player salaries. In North America, the top major leagues are generally accepted to be: the NFL, MLB, the NBA, and the NHL. Prominent major leagues outside the "Big Four" are Major League Soccer (MLS), the Canadian Football League (CFL), the National Lacrosse League (NLL), Major League Lacrosse (MLL), the WNBA and the Arena Football League (AFL); in Mexico, the Primera Division of the FMF holds dominant sway over that country's sporting landscape.
Unlike similar sports leagues around the world (with Australian leagues as a notable exception), those in the United States and Canada do not use the system of promotion and relegation. Rather, their structures are characterized by the use of franchises and closed membership; the same teams compete in the leagues each year. The Mexican football (soccer) league uses a promotion and relegation system.
Note that in North America, the term "major league" is usually limited to team sports, even though individual-driven spectator sports such as golf, tennis and auto racing are also very popular.
The Big Four
Thus, the most commonly accepted list of the top four major leagues in North America is:
- The National Football League (32 teams as of 2007, founded in 1920). The NFL partially absorbed the All-America Football Conference in 1949 and merged with the American Football League in 1970.
- Major League Baseball (30 teams as of 2007, constituent leagues began cooperation in 1903). MLB is divided into the American League (founded in 1901) and the National League (founded in 1876). The two are effectively merged on an organizational level and have shared a single Commissioner since 1920.
- The National Basketball Association (30 teams as of 2007, founded in 1946). The NBA partially absorbed the rival National Basketball League in 1949. The NBA partially absorbed the rival American Basketball Association in 1976.
- The National Hockey League (30 teams as of 2007, founded in 1917). The NHL partially absorbed the rival World Hockey Association in 1979.
Since the four major leagues listed above are those listed as the top four major leagues, the sports they play (baseball, basketball, American football and ice hockey) are often referred to as the top four "major professional sports" or even just the top four "major sports" in North America ("the Big 4"). As of 2005, thirteen American metropolitan areas have at least one team in each of the top four major leagues; these cities are sometimes said to have a Grand Slam.
The best players can become cultural icons to tens of millions of North Americans because the leagues enjoy a dominant place in U.S. popular culture combined with a significant (and dominant with the NHL) place in Canadian popular culture.
Finances
The top four major leagues each have revenues that can be many times greater than the payrolls of less popular major leagues in North America. In terms of overall league revenue, the NFL, MLB and the NBA (in that order) rank as the three of the four most lucrative sports leagues in the world, the fourth being the Premier League of English soccer. Based on June 2006 exchange rates the NHL ranks as the world's fifth most lucrative league - it was only slightly behind the Premier League until 2007 however the English league's new TV deal combined with the British pound's rapid appreciation against the U.S. dollar have created a substantial disparity between the Premiership and the NHL, and may even pull Premiership revenues ahead of the NBA's. Also, the Premier League has only 20 clubs - at roughly US$185 million the Premier League's average annual per-team revenues are expected to pull ahead of MLB in 2007-08 on the strength of its new TV deal, and will only be about $5 million behind the NFL. [1]
However, when comparing the finances of a North American professional league to those of a European soccer league, it is perhaps worth noting that like all of the more prominent European leagues, the top clubs of the English Premier League derive significant revenues from competitions sanctioned by UEFA, the governing body of European soccer. The most lucrative competition being the UEFA Champions League with the UEFA Cup also being significant. The English league clubs also compete in two major knock-out competitions against teams from lower English leagues - these being the Football League Cup (against teams from The Football League only and technically still sanctioned by that league) and the FA Cup (against several hundred professional, semi-professional and amateur teams and sanctioned by The Football Association, the governing body for English soccer and the Premier League). All matches in these competitions take place within the same time frame as the Premier League's "regular season" except for the finals of the Champions League, UEFA Cup and FA Cup which take place a week or two after the Premiership season ends. By contrast, other than the odd exhibition game teams in the Big Four North American leagues do not play in competitions not sanctioned by the league itself, or play games against teams from other leagues, thus almost all sports-derived revenue for a North American professional franchise (including from such sources as merchandise sales) can be said to be derived from the club's league membership. On the other hand, the English Premier League determines its league champion solely on the basis of "regular season" standing - it does not have championship play-offs after the regular season like the North American leagues, which are a major source of revenue especially for the teams that qualify.
If one were to strictly exclude all team revenues not derived from competition sanctioned directly by the league when doing a comparison, then even with its new TV deal the Premier League would likely rank fourth worldwide in gross revenue (behind the NBA) and third in per-club revenue (behind MLB) from 2007-08. However, such an exclusion would be highly questionable since an English soccer club's access to these lucrative "outside" sources are largely dependent on performance in the Premier League. As with the lucrative play-offs in North America, qualification for all Champions League positions and most of the less lucrative UEFA Cup places is determined solely by league standing. A club's membership in the Premier League also entitles to enter the domestic cups at later (and thus more lucrative) stages - in the case of the League Cup a team's qualification for European competition is also relevant in determining what stage it will enter.
Other major leagues
MLS
Major League Soccer is the most popular major league in North America after the NHL in terms of popularity, attendance, facilities, and media coverage.[citation needed] While soccer is a giant of sports participation in the U.S. (particularly among youth of grade school age), it has yet to achieve the same level of success as a spectator sport at the professional level. The most popular year was the league's inaugural season in 1996, which posted impressive attendance numbers. After bottoming out, MLS has now experienced consistent growth, stabilization, and a recent expansion over the past couple of years, as well as a huge amount of publicity and coverage with the landmark signing of world soccer superstar David Beckham in 2007 for $50 million in direct salary plus $200 million in other income over five years. Beckham's addition has been followed by other stars such as returning American captain Claudio Reyna, Mexican legend Cuauhtemoc Blanco, Colombian striker Juan Pablo Angel, and beloved Argentinian Guillermo Barros Schelotto. Furthermore, it has new national TV deals with ESPN, HDNet, Fox Soccer Channel, and Univision (Telefutura). Lastly, two new soccer-specific stadiums opened in 2007, these being DSG Park and BMO Field, while Red Bull Park and Sandy Stadium are scheduled for 2008. MLS has also changed the name of some of its professional teams to closely resemble the style of team names in more popular leagues overseas; for instance, the Dallas Burn changed their name to FC Dallas to more closely reflect the tradition of soccer around the world. [1]
CFL
The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football and the second most popular sports league in Canada after the NHL.[2] Average per-game CFL attendance ranks sixth of all professional leagues in the world, and third in North America. The CFL championship trophy, the Grey Cup, was first awarded in 1909 and has a rich history comparable to the NHL's Stanley Cup.
The CFL was founded in 1958, however most of the teams competed in its two main antecedent
leagues in the decades prior to that year. It was only in 1981 that these organizations (then known
as the Eastern and Western Football Conferences) were legally dissolved into the CFL. Of the eight current
teams, seven have competed continuously in the same city since 1954 or earlier. The oldest extant
teams (Hamilton and
The CFL can be prone to receiving a negative perception from gridiron football fans because of its close proximity and relative similarity to the NFL, the world's richest sports league. Although the U.S. league has the highest per-game attendance of any sports league in the world, the primary source of the disparity between CFL and NFL team revenues is the leagues' television contracts (the U.S. television market is ten times that of Canada). However, the CFL plays on a larger field and with substantially different rules compared to the NFL, and as a result exploits a largely different pool of talent, where speed is typically valued over size.
AFL
The Arena Football League is the highest level of play in Indoor/Arena styles of gridiron football. Since commencing play in 1987, the league has stabilized and overcome the perception that it was merely a fad. In recent years, the AFL has seen attendance increase dramatically. Typically, a team will play in hockey or basketball arenas. The league has recently signed a new television deal wih ESPN after its NBC contract expired. Unlike the NFL or CFL, the AFL has a formal minor league system in the form of arenafootball2.
MLL/NLL
Major League Lacrosse and the National Lacrosse League are other major leagues in North America, though they have not yet achieved MLS' level of success. MLL is outdoor, starting in the year 2001 it is much younger, and plays in many college football and MLS stadiums, while the NLL is indoor, older, and plays in many NBA, NHL, and smaller arenas. Which is more successful is debatable, though each have some level of success.
Traits of the top North American major leagues
Franchise stability
All of the top four major leagues exhibit the stability of most of their franchises. No team from any of the top four major leagues has collapsed outright in decades. Although all of the top four major leagues have had at least one franchise relocate to another city in the last decade, relocation of teams is generally uncommon compared to the less successful major leagues in North American history. It should be noted that all four of the top major leagues have had frequent franchise collapses and relocations in their early histories, but these events became much less frequent by the time these major leagues reached their "top four" status.
The major leagues in North America are different from most leagues outside North America in that there is no promotion and relegation system. The same teams compete in the leagues each year. The worst teams are not relegated each year to a second tier league, to be replaced by the best teams from the second tier league. One could even argue the worst teams are rewarded for their futility, as the worst teams receive a higher position in the following year's draft for new players, which in football and basketball, usually consists of players who have played the sport in college. A notable result of the "closed shop" aspect of the major leagues is that the franchises have average book values that are considerably more than those of the clubs of the Premier League (which as noted above has comparable average team revenues to the major North American leagues but also a relegation system).
The most recent team from one of the top four major leagues to fold outright were the original Baltimore Bullets in 1955, while the last team to cease operations were the Cleveland Barons (formerly the California Golden Seals), which were merged into the Minnesota North Stars (now the Dallas Stars) organization in 1978, two years after moving to Ohio from California. The last NHL team to fold outright were the New York Americans in 1942. (The NBA and NHL did however, merge with rival leagues in the 1970s. During these mergers only four franchises in each rival league, the American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association, survived: the remaining ABA and WHA franchises went out of business.) The last NFL team to fold were the Dallas Texans in 1952 and no MLB team has folded since 1899, when four National League teams ceased to exist.
The top four major leagues all expanded within the last decade and currently have either 30 or, in the case of the NFL, 32 teams. The newest major league team is the Charlotte Bobcats, who joined the NBA in 2004. The newest NFL team is the Houston Texans, who became the NFL's 32nd team in 2002 after the NFL was unable to find a viable ownership group and stadium plan in Los Angeles. The newest NHL teams are the Columbus Blue Jackets and Minnesota Wild, who began play in 2000, while the newest MLB teams are the Arizona Diamondbacks and Tampa Bay Devil Rays, who joined the NL and AL respectively in 1998.
Recent expansion franchises have commanded huge entry fees, which are generally held to represent the price the new team must pay to gain its share of the existing teams' often guaranteed revenue streams. The Houston Texans paid an unprecedented $700 million to join the NFL. By comparison, the Charlotte Bobcats paid $300 million to join the NBA. The Diamondbacks and Devil Rays paid $130 million each to join MLB while the Blue Jackets and Wild paid $80 million each to join the NHL.
Many sports analysts and owners believe that 30 is the optimal number of teams for a major league, which is only two below the maximum number any league has ever had. Thus, future expansion is by no means certain, especially by the NFL which is now over the 30-team threshold. The NFL is still anxious to return to Los Angeles (see below) but many believe that NFL officials would privately prefer to re-locate an existing team in order to avoid altering its current eight four-team division alignment. Even if expansion franchises could continue to command huge fees, as more teams join the leagues the owners' share of the fees is constantly reduced. Even if large markets remain without a team, a point could still be reached where one-time expansion revenues are offset by chronic stresses such as a drain on the talent pool (which could have a noticeable impact on the quality of play and thus start turning off fans) and saturation of the national television market (if the leagues are unable to negotiate higher fees from the television networks, then additional teams will simply cause the existing television revenue to be split into smaller shares).
Franchise locations
Major leagues tend to have franchises only in the largest cities and most heavily-populated market areas, although this is not always true. Most teams are in metro areas having populations over two million — all but one metropolitan area of this size or larger have at least one team. This typically means at least one franchise (and often two) per league in each of the New York City, Chicago, and Los Angeles areas. There are two major exceptions: The NFL has not had a franchise in L.A. since 1995 and the Green Bay Packers survive in professional sports' smallest metropolitan area (less than 300,000) thanks to a unique community ownership, and their proximity to the larger Milwaukee area, not to mention the loyalty of their fanbase. The Packers are the last remaining link to the NFL's small-town Midwest roots — many such teams existed in the NFL before 1934; since then only the Packers remain.
The Utah Jazz are located in the smallest television market of any U.S. team (the Green Bay Packers' television market includes the much larger city of Milwaukee 120 miles / 200 km to its south). They relocated during a turbulent period in NBA history and have enjoyed strong support from a very large geographical area devoid of other major sports teams. Utah is also the least populous state with a team.
Professional sports leagues as we know them 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. No MLB teams existed south or west of St. Louis, the NFL was confined to the Great Lakes and the Northeast, and the NBA (which didn't exist before 1946) spanned from the Quad Cities to Boston. The NHL remained confined to six cities in the Northeast, Great Lakes and eastern Canada, though during its earliest years it contested the Stanley Cup at season's end with teams from western Canada and the Pacific Northwest. College, minor league and amateur teams existed from coast to coast in all four sports, but rarely played outside of their home region for regular season games.
As travel and settlement patterns changed, so did the geography of professional sports. With the arguable exception of the western hockey teams which competed for the Stanley Cup in the early 20th century, there were no major league teams in the far west until after World War II. The first west coast major-league franchise was the NFL's Los Angeles Rams, who moved from Cleveland in 1946. The same year, the All-America Football Conference began play, with teams in Los Angeles and San Francisco (not to mention the Miami Seahawks, who became the only southern-based major league franchise, although Louisville, Kentucky had previously had shortlived baseball and football teams). Baseball would not extend west until 1958 in the controversial move of both New York-based National League franchises. The NBA would follow in 1960 with the move of the Minneapolis Lakers to Los Angeles, while the NHL would not have a west coast presence until it doubled in size in 1967. With the exception of the Los Angeles Kings, the NHL's initial franchises in the Southern and Western United States were ultimately unsuccessful — teams in Oakland, Atlanta, Kansas City and Denver all relocated. From 1982 until 1991, the Kings were the only U.S.-based NHL franchise south of St. Louis and/or west of Bloomington, Minnesota.
Since then, as newer, fast-growing Sunbelt areas such as Phoenix and Dallas became prominent, the major sports leagues expanded or franchises relocated (usually quite controversially) to service these communities. Most major areas are well-represented, with all but seven continental U.S. metropolitan agglomerations over one million people hosting at least one major sports franchise. As of 2006, the largest metropolitan area without a major professional sports franchise is California's Inland Empire. However, since this area is adjacent to the Los Angeles metro area and serves as a local market for those teams, no major league franchise is likely to move there without purporting to represent L.A. The most populous independent metropolitan area outside of a major franchise's local market is the Hampton Roads region of Virginia, nearly 200 miles from the nearest major sports teams in Washington, D.C. and Raleigh, North Carolina. It previously hosted a successful franchise in the American Basketball Association. Virginia is also the most populous state without a team within its borders.
Another large metropolitan area without any major league franchises is Las Vegas, which is expected to surpass the Hampton Roads area in metropolitan population before the 2010 Census to become the largest metropolis without a franchise. Despite the area's explosive growth, all four leagues are wary of placing a team there due to the city's legal gambling industry, which includes sports betting. In the U.S., for a professional sports organization to have any association, real or perceived, with gambling interests has been taboo ever since the 1919 Black Sox scandal. All four leagues forbid their teams or personnel to have any type of contact or association with gambling interests and any connection between professional sports and gambling, no matter how benign, quickly gains the attention of law enforcement. Additionally, the city's abundance of entertainment options might make it difficult for a Las Vegas-based team to attract a large and stable fan base. The NBA hosted its 2007 All-Star Weekend in Las Vegas, at which point both the league and the city expressed interest in locating a team there. However, NBA Commissioner David Stern says the city will need a new arena larger and more modern than the Thomas & Mack Center before it will even host another All-Star Weekend.[3] While the event was initially regarded as successful and incident-free, media reports of criminal incidents (including two shootings related to the event) that began to surface after the conclusion of the weekend may hurt the city's chances of gaining an NBA or any major league team.[4]
When the WHA and NHL merged, the NHL inherited teams in Canadian metro areas that were under one million in population at the time, these being Edmonton, Winnipeg and Quebec City. The NHL later added teams in Calgary (via relocation from Atlanta) and Ottawa (via expansion). 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 the U.S. The three remaining "small market" Canadian teams have survived largely because their markets are growing rapidly — all three metro areas in question are now over one million in population and are thus comparable in size to some of the smaller American metro areas with teams in other leagues such as Salt Lake City, Jacksonville and Memphis.
Although Calgary and Edmonton remain the two smallest television markets of any of the major leagues as of 2006, any "small market" disadvantage in the two Albertan cities has been largely off-set in recent years by the fact that the oil-driven Albertan economy is one of the fastest growing in the world, and not uncoincidentally Alberta also has an unusually large proportion of high-income earners. High resource prices have contributed to a rapid appreciation of the Canadian dollar against its U.S. counterpart, mitigating the financial problems brought on by unfavourable exchange rates which plagued many Canadian franchises in the 1990s. Alberta's GDP per capita is the highest of any Canadian province or U.S. state even after exchange rates are taken into account. Alberta's total GDP is over C$200 billion as of 2005 and expected to exceed US$200 billion in 2006, surpassing Indiana which, perhaps not coincidentally, also has two teams. Alberta's economy is well over twice the size of Utah's (less than $90 billion as of 2006), thus it is not difficult to explain how Alberta can support two major league teams if Indiana can also support two and Utah can support one.
The first Major League Baseball team in Canada was the Montreal Expos, who began play in 1969 and were one of the most unprofitable franchises in the sport. They became the Washington Nationals in 2005. The Toronto Blue Jays, who began play in 1977, have done much better.
The Toronto Huskies were a charter member of what is now known as the NBA, but they only lasted from 1946 to 1947. The NBA returned to Toronto in 1995 when the Raptors joined the league. The same year, the Vancouver Grizzlies began play: they moved to Memphis in 2001.
The NHL has operated on both sides of the Canadian-American border since 1924, and there were strong American-based clubs even before the NHL was founded in 1917. The first US-based club to compete for the Stanley Cup was the Portland Rosebuds of the Pacific Coast Hockey League, who lost the 1916 series to the Montreal Canadiens (then of the National Hockey Association). The next year, the PCHA's Seattle Metropolitans took the Cup away from the Canadiens. The Boston Bruins are the oldest US-based franchise in the NHL, having played in the league since 1924.
The NFL has never attempted to enter the Canadian market, leaving Canada to the Canadian Football League, which plays under significantly different rules than those used in the United States. The CFL was formed in the 1950s from the merger of two competing leagues, one based in the west and the other in the east. The CFL briefly expanded south of the border in the mid-1990s: the venture was unsuccessful, although the Baltimore Stallions (aka "CFL Colts") did draw respectable crowds and win a Grey Cup before becoming the third (and current) incarnation of the Montreal Alouettes in the wake of the Cleveland Browns' decision to move to Baltimore. The CFL and NFL forged a working relationship less than a year later, with the NFL providing an interest-free loan to the CFL in exchange for the right to sign CFL players entering the option year of theit contracts. Recently, there has been speculation that an NFL franchise would be located in Toronto, to balance out a new team in Los Angeles. No other U.S. metro area with more than half of Toronto's population lacks an NFL team.
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. To prevent the perception of being in a conflict of interest, the major leagues generally do not allow anyone to own a stake in more than one franchise, a rule adopted after several high-profile controversies involving ownership of multiple baseball teams in the 1890s. Notably, Major League Soccer has been unable to adopt this sort of league structure — it operates as a single entity league and for the sake of stability has been forced to allow soccer enthusiasts such as the late Lamar Hunt to own multiple teams at least for now (see below). However, there was one recent exception to this rule in the major leagues — after being blocked in their bid to eliminate or "contract" two franchises in 2001, Major League Baseball purchased the Montreal Expos from its owners. Although MLB eventually relocated the team to Washington, D.C., the franchise (now known as the Nationals) remained owned by the other 29 MLB clubs. In May 2006, the team was sold to a local group lead by Theodore N. Lerner.
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 and/or residual rights regarding the new franchise. For example, to obtain the consent of Baltimore Orioles owner Peter Angelos to place an MLB team in Washington (which is about 35 miles from Oriole Park at Camden Yards), a deal was struck under the terms of which television and radio broadcast rights to Nationals games are handled by the Orioles franchise, who formed a new network (the Mid-Atlantic Sports Network) to produce and distribute the games for both franchises on local affiliates and cable/satellite systems.
Some major leagues, such as the NFL have even stronger ownership restrictions. The NFL currently forbids large ownership groups or publicly-traded corporations from purchasing NFL teams. This policy allows the league office to deal with individual owners instead of boards of directors, although the Packers' ownership group was grandfathered into the current policy. The NFL also forbids its majority owners from owning any sports teams (except for soccer teams and Arena Football League teams) in other NFL cities, and prohibits owners from investing in casinos or being otherwise involved in gambling operations. (NFL owners may freely own soccer teams without league restrictions because Lamar Hunt won a court challenge stemming from his investment in the old North American Soccer League. When he died in December 2006, he owned 2 teams in Major League Soccer, based in Dal