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 leagues or divisions, and a North American originated model characterized by its use of franchises, closed memberships, and minor leagues. Both these systems remain most common in their area of origin, although both systems are used worldwide.
Etymology The term league has many different meanings in different areas around the world, and its use for different concepts can make comparisons confusing. Usually a league is a group of teams that play each other during the season. It is also often used for the name of the governing body that oversees the league, as in America's Major League Baseball or England's Football League. Because most European football clubs participate in different competitions during a season, regular-season home-and-away games are often referred to as league games and the others as non-league or cup games, even though the separate competitions may be organized by the same governing body. Also, there is a rugby football code called rugby league, which is distinct from rugby union.
Structure of North American leagues (franchise and minor league system)
Professional sports leagues in North America comprise a stipulated number of teams, known as franchises, which field one team each.Rader, Benjamin G.; 2002; Baseball:A History of America's Game; Second Edition; University of Illinois Press The franchises have territorial rights, usually exclusive territories large enough to cover major metropolitan areas, so that they have no local rivals. New teams may enter the competition only by a vote of current members; typically, a new place is put up for bid by would-be owners. The "franchise system"Shropshire, Kenneth L. "The sports franchise game: Cities in pursuit of sports franchises, events, stadiums and arenas" was introduced in baseball with the formation of the National League in 1876Before 1876, baseball clubs joined the professional class (1869–1870) or the professional association by announcing their intentions and paying any required fees, an open system. and later adopted by the other North American leagues.
Although member teams are corporate entities separate from their leagues, they operate only under league auspices. North American teams do not play competitive games against outside opponents.
The leagues operate in a closed membership system and do not have promotion and relegation. It is organized in a way that assures the teams' continued existence in the league from year to year. On occasion a league may decide to grow by admitting a new expansion team into the league. Most of the teams in the four major North American leagues were created as part of a planned league expansion or through the merger of a rival league. Only one team in the National Hockey League (the Montreal Canadiens), for example, existed before becoming part of the NHL. The rest of the teams were created ex novo as expansion teams or as charter members of the World Hockey Association, which merged with the NHL in 1979.
American and Canadian sports leagues typically have a "playoff" system where the best teams in a given season compete in a tournament, with the winner being crowned champion of the league for that season. These have their roots in the long travel distances common in US and Canadian sports; to cut down on travel, leagues are typically divided into geographic divisions and feature unbalanced schedules with teams playing more matches against opponents in the same division. Due to this, not all teams face the same opponents, and some teams may not meet during a regular season at all. This results in teams with identical records that have faced different opponents differing numbers of times, making team records alone an imperfect measure of league supremacy.
Major League Soccer is technically not an association of franchises but a single business entity, though each team has an owner-operator; the team owners are actually shareholders in the league. The league, not the individual teams, contracts with the players. Unlike teams in the four traditional major North American sports leagues, MLS teams play meaningful games against teams from other nations. The MLS season serves as a qualifier for the CONCACAF Champions Cup, featuring teams from throughout the northern half of the Americas, including the Caribbean. Starting in 2023, all MLS teams play in the Leagues Cup, a competition also involving all sides in Mexico's top flight of Liga MX that serves as an additional qualifier for the Champions Cup. Also, MLS uses playing rules set by the international governing body of its sport. MLS followed its own playing rules until 2004, when it adopted FIFA rules. Under the auspices of US Soccer and the Canadian Soccer Association, respectively, the U.S. and Canada have had separate knockout cup competitions during the MLS season that include teams from lower leagues. In the U.S., the U.S. Open Cup has had MLS participation from the league's inception; since the 2012 cup, each competition has featured all American-based MLS sides. However, after the 2023 season the MLS announced it would no longer send MLS first teams to the US Open Cup - opting to send sides from its developmental league - MLS Next Pro instead. Canada's MLS teams will continue to compete in the Canadian Championship as before. However, the league structure of MLS follows the North American model, with a single premier league and no promotion or relegation.
Major League Rugby, which began play in 2018 as the second attempt to launch a professional rugby union competition in the U.S., has a business structure identical to that of MLS. It is a single business entity, with each team owner-operator being a league shareholder, and all player contracts are held by the league. Also similar to MLS, MLR uses playing rules set by its sport's international governing body. However, MLR teams do not play competitive matches against teams from other leagues, and there is currently no cup competition in U.S. rugby similar to soccer's U.S. Open Cup. The MLR league structure also follows the North American model of one premier league without promotion and relegation.
A more rarely seen business model in North America is the pure single-entity league, typified by the two incarnations of the XFL, where there are no individual owners or investors, with all teams centrally owned and operated by the league. Many upstart leagues begin their existence as pure single-entity leagues before they secure investors for teams (such as the Professional Women's Hockey League and its de facto predecessor, the Premier Hockey Federation) or are forced to operate in the pure single-entity model when investors fail to materialize (such as the Stars Football League).
Many North American systems have a secondary or minor league but without promotion and relegation of teams between them. Often a minor league team is partly or wholly owned by a major league team, or affiliated with one, and utilized for player development. For example, Major League Baseball operates Minor League Baseball. The minor clubs do not move up or down in the hierarchy by on-field success or failure. Professional ice hockey has a system somewhat similar to baseball's (without as many levels), while the National Basketball Association operates a single NBA G League. The National Football League does not have a minor league system as of 2024 but it has operated or affiliated with minor leagues in the 1930s, 1940s, 1960s, 1990s, and the early 2000s and invested in one in the late 2000s.
Men's soccer has multiple minor leagues. The United Soccer League operates two of these, the second-level USL Championship and the third-level USL League One. Major League Soccer operates the third-level MLS Next Pro, consisting primarily of reserve sides of MLS teams. Another third-level league, the National Independent Soccer Association, is totally independent. None have a promotion/relegation system, although many teams have moved between levels, either by invitation or by choice.
To prevent conflicts of interest, most North American sports leagues that operate on the franchise system do not allow individual owners to hold an interest in more than one franchise at once. Most such leagues also use revenue sharing and a salary cap in an effort to maintain a level of parity between franchises.
Structure of European leagues (promotion and relegation system)
Football in England developed a very different system from that in North America, and it has been adopted for football in most other European countries, as well as to many other sports founded in Europe and played across the world. The features of the system are:
The existence of an elected governing body to which clubs at all levels of the sport belong. The promotion of well-performing teams to higher-level leagues or divisions and the relegation of poorly performing teams to lower-level leagues or divisions. Matches played both inside and outside of leagues.
European football clubs are members both of a league and of a governing body. In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association, while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League, a separate organization. The 72 teams in the three levels below the Premier League are members of still another body, the English Football League. The FA operates the national football team and tournaments that involve teams from different leagues (except the EFL Cup, operated by the English Football League and open to its own teams and those in the Premier League). In conjunction with FIFA and other countries' governing bodies, it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs.
The rules or Laws of the Game are determined by the International Football Association Board.FIFA Regulations On The Status And Transfer Of Players
The Premier League negotiates television contracts for its games. However, although the national league would be the dominating competition in which a club might participate, there are many non-league fixtures a club might play in a given year. In European football there are national cup competitions, which are single elimination knock-out tournaments, are played every year and all the clubs in the league participate. Also, the best performing clubs from the previous year may participate in pan-European tournaments such as the UEFA Champions League, operated by the Union of European Football Associations. A Premier League team might play a league game one week, and an FA Cup game against a team from a lower-level league the next, followed by an EFL Cup game against a team in the EFL, and then a fourth game might be against a team from across Europe in the Champions League.