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, draw high fan attendance, and have teams located throughout the largest metropolitan areas in the United States.

Major League Baseball

Major League Baseball is the highest level of play of baseball in North America. It consists of the National League (founded in 1876) and the American League (founded in 1901). Cooperation between the two leagues began in 1903, and the two merged on an organizational level in 2000 with the elimination of separate league offices; they have shared a single Commissioner since 1920. There are currently 30 member teams, with 29 located in the U.S. and 1 in Canada. Traditionally called the "National Pastime", baseball was the first professional sport in the U.S.

National Basketball Association

The National Basketball Association is the premier basketball league in the world. It was founded as the Basketball Association of America in 1946, and adopted its current name in 1949, when the BAA partially absorbed the rival National Basketball League. Four teams from the rival American Basketball Association joined the NBA with the ABA–NBA merger in 1976. It has 30 teams, 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. The NBA is watched by audiences both domestically and internationally.

National Football League

The National Football League 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. The NFL partially absorbed the All-America Football Conference in 1949 and merged with the American Football League 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.[1] Its championship game, the Super Bowl, 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.[2]

The NFL is the only one of the major leagues not to have a presence in Canada, where the Canadian Football League is the premier professional league in the sport.

National Hockey League

The National Hockey League is the only one of the major leagues to have been founded in Canada. It was formed in 1917 as a successor to the Canadian National Hockey Association (founded 1909), taking all but one of the NHA's teams. The NHL partially absorbed the rival World Hockey Association in 1979. There are 30 teams, with 23 in the U.S. and 7 in Canada, with an expansion team for Las Vegas planned to start for the 2017-2018 season.

The most popular sports league in Canada, and widely followed across the northern U.S., the NHL has expanded southward in recent decades to attempt to gain a more national following in the United States, in cities such as Dallas, Miami, Nashville, Phoenix, Raleigh, and Tampa, with varying success. Hockey remains much more popular in the northern states of the U.S. closer to Canada, such as the Upper Midwest and New England, than in the rest of the United States. The NHL has more Canadian teams (seven) than MLB, the NBA, the NFL, and Major League Soccer combined (five).

Major League Soccer

Major League Soccer (MLS) is the top-level men's professional soccer league in the United States and Canada. MLS has 20 teams as of 2015–17 in the United States and 3 in Canada. The league began play in 1996, its creation a requirement by FIFA for awarding the United States the right to host the 1994 World Cup. MLS is the first Division I outdoor soccer league in the U.S. or Canada since the North American Soccer League 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 and Thierry Henry. In 2014, MLS reported an average attendance of 19,148 per game, with total attendance exceeding 6.1 million overall, both breaking previous MLS attendance records.[3] 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 in the major professional sports leagues of North America.[4]

Other top-level professional leagues

In addition to the major sports leagues, there are several other top-level sports leagues in the United States. These leagues usually lack TV contracts for popular network TV or mainstream cable channels, draw more modest attendance, and generally pay significantly lower salaries than the major sports leagues.

 Top-level professional leagues (non-major)
League Sport First season
(Teams) 		Current
teams 		Recent
average
attendance 		Average
salaries 		Refs
NLL Box lacrosse 1987 (4) 9 8,970 (2015) $19,000 [5][6]
AFL Arena football 1987 (4) 8 8,947 (2015) $15,000 [7]
WNBA Women's basketball 1997 (8) 12 7,318 (2015) $72,000 [8]
NWSL Women's soccer 2013 (8) 10 5,046 (2015) $15,000 [9]
MLL Field lacrosse 2001 (6) 9 4,384 (2015) $15,000 [10][11]
PRO Rugby 2016 (5) 5 1,723 (2006) $25,000 [12]

Lacrosse: NLL and MLL

The National Lacrosse League (NLL) is a men's professional box lacrosse league in North America. It currently has 9 teams: 5 in the United States and 4 in Canada. The NLL plays its games in the winter and spring. The league's American teams have historically been concentrated in the northeastern United States, and two of the league's longest-established and most commercially successful teams, the Buffalo Bandits and Rochester Knighthawks, still reside there. Each year, the playoff teams battle for the Champion's Cup. The NLL has averaged between 9,400 and 10,700 spectators per game each year since 2004.[13][14]

Major League Lacrosse (MLL) is a men's field lacrosse league consisting of nine teams in the United States. Founded in 1999, the league's inaugural season was in 2001. MLL averaged 4,384 spectators per game during the 2015 season.[15] MLL is a semi-professional league. MLL players reportedly earn annual salaries in the $10,000–$25,000 range; players and staff generally hold other jobs.[16][17][18][19]

Arena Football League

An AFL endzone and goalpost

The Arena Football League is the highest level of play in the indoor/arena styles of gridiron football. The sport is played in an indoor arena on a much smaller field than American football. The league was founded in 1987. It operated continuously until 2009, but indefinitely suspended operations following the 2009 season when none of its franchise committed to playing the next year.[20]

Some teams from the AFL and af2 purchased both predecessor leagues' assets, adopted the Arena Football League name, and organized a new league for the 2010 season. In 2010 the Arena Football League had an average attendance of 8,154 per game and a total attendance of 970,369.[21]

Women's National Basketball Association

The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) is the top competition in women's basketball. Currently the WNBA is one of two fully professional women's sports league operating in North America. Founded in 1996 and beginning play in the 1997 season, it is the longest-running American professional women's sport league in history.

The league's attendance has fluctuated over the last several seasons. It had an average per-game attendance of 8,039 in 2009 and 7,834 in 2010.[22] Total attendance was 1,598,160 in 2010.[22] In 2007, the league signed a television deal with ESPN that would run from 2009 to 2016. This deal is the first to ever pay rights fees to women's teams. In 2009 it had a total television viewership of 413,000 in combined cable and broadcast television.[23]

National Women's Soccer League

The National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) is a professional women's soccer league run by the United States Soccer Federation. At the top of the United States league system, it is the country's primary competition for women's soccer. The NWSL was established in 2012 as a successor to Women's Professional Soccer (2007–2012). The league began play in 2013 with eight teams; four of which were former members of Women's Professional Soccer.[24][25][26] With the addition of two expansion teams in Houston and Orlando since the league's founding, it now has 10 teams based throughout the United States.[27]

PRO Rugby

The Professional Rugby Organization, known as PRO Rugby, is America's national professional rugby union competition, and launched in 2016. The competition is sanctioned by USA Rugby and by World Rugby. The competition, the first professional rugby competition in North America, began play in 2016 with five teams.[28]

Minor leagues

Several of the major sports leagues in the United States have other professional leagues in tiers below them. For example, Major League Baseball has an extensive "farm system" of minor league teams. Similarly, below Major League Soccer are the Division II North American Soccer League and the Division III USL.

League Sport Average
Attendance
International League (AAA) Baseball 6,719 (2013)
North American Soccer League (D2) Soccer 6,514 (2015)[29]
Pacific Coast League (AAA) Baseball 5,876 (2013)[30]
American Hockey League Ice hockey 5,402 (2014)[31]
United Soccer League (USL) (D3) Soccer 3,369 (2015)[32]
NBA Development League Basketball 2,725 (2014)[33]

Minor League Baseball

Minor League Baseball is a hierarchy of professional baseball leagues in the United States that compete at levels below Major League Baseball (MLB) and provide opportunities for player development and a way to prepare for the major leagues. All of the minor leagues are operated as independent businesses. Most are members of the umbrella organization known as Minor League Baseball (MiLB), which operates under the Commissioner of Baseball within the scope of organized baseball, an six-tier league hierarchy that classifies leagues by level of development. The highest level of minor league baseball, Triple-A, features high level major league prospects almost ready to join the majors playing in large cities without MLB franchises, while each successively lower class (Double-A, A-Advanced, Class A, Short Season A, and Rookie) features players with correspondingly less experience and, generally, playing in smaller markets. Additionally, several independent baseball leagues, which do not have any official links to Major League Baseball, also operate, with varying levels of competition.

Soccer: NASL and USL

The North American Soccer League (NASL) is a professional men's soccer league with 12 teams: 9 in the United States, 2 in Canada and 1 in Puerto Rico. It is sanctioned by the United States Soccer Federation (U.S. Soccer) as the Division II league in the American league system, under Major League Soccer (MLS) and above the USL (formerly, USL Pro). It is headquartered in New York City. The modern NASL began play in 2011 with eight teams.[34] The NASL uses a split-season schedule running from April to early November, with a four-week break in July. The spring and fall champions, along with the two teams with best combined spring/fall records meet in a four-team single elimination tournament known as The Championship.[35] The winner of the final claims the Soccer Bowl at the end of the season. While there is no promotion and relegation with other leagues, Commissioner Bill Peterson has stated repeatedly that the league has an interest in introducing it to the pyramid.[36]

The United Soccer League (USL) is a professional men's soccer league in the United States and Canada that began its inaugural season in 2011. USL is sanctioned as a Division III Professional League by United States Soccer Federation (U.S. Soccer), placing it under Major League Soccer (Division I) and the North American Soccer League (Division II) in the hierarchy. The league is owned and operated by United Soccer Leagues (USL) and was formed as result of the organization's merger of the old USL First and Second Divisions. The merger is meant to consolidate USL's position within the American professional soccer landscape and focus on stability, commercial growth and the professional development of soccer in four main regions throughout the United States and Canada.[37] In January 2013, USL and MLS reached an agreement to integrate USL Pro league competition with the MLS Reserve League, primarily to improve player development in North America, strengthen league competition and build ties between divisions in the American soccer pyramid. This multi-year deal encourages MLS and USL Pro team affiliations and player loans, and it will lead to more games for teams and developing players.[38][39]

Minor hockey leagues: AHL and ECHL

The ECHL and the AHL are the only minor leagues recognized by the collective bargaining agreement between the National Hockey League and the National Hockey League Players' Association, meaning any player signed to an entry-level NHL contract and designated for assignment must report to a club in either the ECHL or the AHL.[40]

The American Hockey League (AHL) is a 30-team professional ice hockey league based in the United States and Canada that serves as the primary developmental league for the National Hockey League (NHL).[41] Since the 2010–11 season, every team in the league has an affiliation agreement with an NHL team. Twenty-seven AHL teams are located in the United States and the remaining three are in Canada. The annual playoff champion is awarded the Calder Cup, named for Frank Calder, the first President (1917–1943) of the NHL.

The ECHL is a mid-level professional ice hockey league with teams scattered across the United States and one franchise in Canada. It is a tier below the American Hockey League. Additionally, the league's players are represented by the Professional Hockey Players' Association in negotiations with the ECHL itself. All but four National Hockey League teams have affiliations with an ECHL team[42] with Columbus, Florida, New Jersey, and St. Louis having no official affiliations as of October 14, 2015. However, these teams do sometimes lend contracted players to ECHL teams for development and increased playing time. The league's regular season begins in October and ends in April.

Basketball

The NBA Development League (NBA D-League), is the National Basketball Association's official minor league basketball organization. The NBA D-League started with eight teams in the fall of 2001. In March 2005, NBA commissioner David Stern announced a plan to expand the NBA D-League to 15 teams and develop it into a true minor league farm system, with each NBA D-League team affiliated with one or more NBA teams. At the conclusion of the 2013–14 NBA season, 33% of NBA players had spent time in the NBA D-League, up from 23% in 2011. The league will expand to 22 teams for its next season in 2016–17 with the debut of three new franchises owned directly by NBA teams. All D-League teams are either owned by an NBA franchise or affiliated with a single NBA team; the last "independent" team, the Fort Wayne Mad Ants, was acquired by the Indiana Pacers in September 2015.

Football

In contrast with the other major sports, the National Football League does not maintain an official minor league system. The only league to have served as a minor league to the entire NFL was the NFL Europe League; NFL Europe teams were not assigned an individual NFL squad for an affiliation, but instead received prospects from all of the NFL's teams, who played in Europe during the offseason, then returned stateside in time for training camp. Individual NFL teams over the course of their history signed affiliation deals with the American Association in the 1930s, the Association of Professional Football Leagues in the 1940s, and the Atlantic Coast Football League in the 1960s. In addition to these leagues, NFL owners also operated franchises in the Arena Football League in the 2000s (decade); this arrangement differed in that the AFL teams were not directly used for player development. Arena football had its own minor league, arenafootball2, for most of the same decade.

The most recent independent minor professional football league to play outdoors was the Fall Experimental Football League, which lasted two seasons in 2014 and 2015 before running out of money.

Indoor football leagues outside the auspices of the Arena Football League have historically played at a level somewhere on the margins between minor-professional and semi-professional. As of fall 2016, two indoor leagues, the Indoor Football League and Champions Indoor Football, survive. A third, the National Arena League, is slated to begin play in 2017. Indoor leagues are notorious for their instability, with teams often folding midway through their seasons, teams jumping between leagues, and leagues often failing to launch.

See also

References

  1. ↑ "NFL maintains massive lead in attendance " Sporting Intelligence". Sportingintelligence.com. 2010-01-04. Retrieved 2010-05-03.
  2. ↑ Patra, Kevin (February 2, 2015). "Super Bowl XLIX is most-watched show in U.S. history". National Football League. Retrieved February 2, 2015.
  3. ↑ "2014 Final Attendance Update". MLSAttendance.Blogspot.com.
  4. ↑ Hickey, Walt (2014-04-04). "The 'Big Five' in North American Pro Sports". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
  5. ↑ https://thegatewayonline.ca/2015/06/rushing-out-of-town-the-future-of-professional-lacrosse-in-edmonton/
  6. ↑ http://www.thestar.com/sports/2013/10/22/salary_cap_national_lacrosse_league_signs_labour_deal_with_luxury_tax.html
  7. ↑ http://www.arenafan.com/history/?page=yearly&histleague=1&fpage=attendance&year=2015
  8. ↑ The Sports Xchange (September 16, 2015). "2015 WNBA season sees lowest fan attendance in league history". Las Vegas Review-Journal. Retrieved October 3, 2015.
  9. ↑ http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/low-pay-limits-player-experience-in-national-womens-soccer-league/
  10. ↑ Major League Lacrosse.
  11. ↑ "The pro athletes with full-time day jobs", CNN Money, Ahiza Garcia, September 28, 2015.
  12. ↑ "More Details On Pro Rugby", This Is American Rugby, November 9, 2015.
  13. ↑ NLL Sees Lowest Attendance Avg. Since '03 Season; Rochester Up Nearly 15%, Sports Business Daily, May 10, 2012
  14. ↑ "Stealth Move North to Washington". NLL.com. 17 June 2009. Retrieved 17 June 2009.
  15. ↑ Major League Lacrosse.
  16. ↑ "Lacrosse Doesn't Pay the Rent". The Wall Street Journal. May 31, 2012. Retrieved May 5, 2013.("The players, many recently out of college, generally practice once a week during the summer months . . . They make between $10,000 and $25,000 per season. This, of course, doesn't pay the bills for the year. MLL players are part-time professional athletes. Many of them have day jobs . . .")
  17. ↑ "Exhausting travel and no pay: Major League Lacrosse players stick with it", Sporting News, August 16, 2014. (“You have to do something else, because you can’t live off the pay you get paid in Major League Lacrosse,” Schmidt said. “It’s not to a point yet where the teams are making enough money that you can play pro lacrosse year round.")
  18. ↑ Jr, Ralph Gardner. "The Sport of Scholarships". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2015-08-27.
  19. ↑ "The pro athletes with full-time day jobs", CNN Money, Ahiza Garcia, September 28, 2015. ("The average for all players falls somewhere between $10,000 and $20,000 . . . It's not like we're negotiating for our annual salary as pros," Schmidt said. "It's more a summer part-time job.")
  20. ↑ George, John (August 6, 2009). "Arena Football League shuts down indefinitely". Philadelphia Business Journal. Retrieved 2009-08-06.
  21. ↑ "2010 Arena Football League Attendance Chart". arenafan.com. Retrieved December 17, 2010.
  22. 1 2 "WNBA Attendance Down 2.5%, But Eight Clubs See Gains From '09". Sports Business Daily. August 24, 2010. Retrieved December 17, 2010.
  23. ↑ "WNBA Closes Regular Season Up in Attendance, TV Ratings and Web Traffic". WNBA.com. Retrieved 2011-02-19.
  24. ↑ "WILL NWSL BE A SUCCESS? WELL ...". ESPN. Retrieved September 21, 2013.
  25. ↑ Whiteside, Kelly (November 21, 2012). "Women's pro soccer league to debut in U.S. next year". USA Today. Retrieved September 21, 2013.
  26. ↑ "Seattle will have team in new women's professional league owned by Bill Predmore". Seattle Times. Retrieved September 21, 2013.
  27. ↑ Kassouf, Jeff (20 October 2015). "Orlando Pride named 10th NWSL team for 2016". The Equalizer. Retrieved 20 October 2015.
  28. ↑ "USA to launch six-team rugby union competition in 2016", Fox Sports, November 9, 2015.
  29. ↑ "Taking Attendance 6/15/2015: NASL On Pace To Draw A Million", June 15, 2015.
  30. ↑ http://www.baseball-reference.com/minors/league.cgi?id=3219ab1a
  31. ↑ http://theahl.com/stats/schedule.php?view=attendance&season_id=43
  32. ↑ "USL 2015 Stat Leaders - United Soccer League". uslsoccer.com.
  33. ↑ http://sportsfranchises.sportsblog.com/posts/285337/attendance_tracker_mls_nll_afl.html
  34. ↑ "FC Edmonton wins first-ever NASL game". The Soccer Room. April 10, 2011. Retrieved October 7, 2011.
  35. ↑ "NASL: NASL Clubs To Compete For 'The Championship'".
  36. ↑ "NASL's response to MLS: Promotion-relegation is viable in North America". Sports Illustrated. August 6, 2014. Retrieved September 3, 2014.
  37. ↑ "USL Restructures Professional Division". www.uslsoccer.com. September 8, 2010. Archived from the original on October 11, 2010. Retrieved September 8, 2010.
  38. ↑ "MLS, USL Pro reach deal on restructured Reserve League". www.mlssoccer.com. January 23, 2013. Retrieved January 27, 2013.
  39. ↑ "USL PRO & MLS Announce Partnership". www.uslpro.uslsoccer.com. January 23, 2013. Retrieved February 7, 2013.
  40. ↑ "Collective Bargaining Agreement between National Hockey League and National Hockey League Players' Association" (PDF). NHL and NHLPA. July 22, 2005. Retrieved November 19, 2010.
  41. ↑ Scott, Jon C. (2006). Hockey Night in Dixie: Minor Pro Hockey in the American South. Heritage House Publishing Company Ltd. p. xvii. ISBN 1-894974-21-2.
  42. ↑ http://www.echl.com/nhlahl-affiliations-s12375
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