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Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada

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The major professional sports leagues are those professional sports leagues with the largest fan bases and the most lucrative television contracts (and therefore, the largest revenues and player salaries).

North American leagues

The Big Four

In North America, the term is usually limited to team sports leagues even though sports not generally seen as "team" sports (e.g. golf, tennis and auto racing) are also very popular. Thus, the most commonly accepted list of major sports leagues is:

These four leagues are often referred to as the Big Four, although there is a significant enough disparity in the popularity and revenues of the NHL compared to the other three leagues that the NFL, MLB and the NBA are categorized as the Big Three by some. Compared to the other three leagues, the NHL has struggled to find support in the Southern United States (due to its culture and climate), which has led some sports fans in this region to dispute the NHL's status as a major league. However, since the NHL is the only other team sports league in the North America to generate multi-billion dollar revenues, the league is closer financially with the three more popular leagues than any other North American team sports league. Furthermore, in spite of a season-long lockout in 2004 the NHL returned in 2005 with even stronger revenues than before the lockout. Within North America, the term hockey country is often used to describe those parts of the U.S. and Canada where hockey's fanbase is strongest. Most of the recent expansion teams were located in Southern cities, and three teams relocated from hockey country to the Sunbelt during the 1990s: the Minnesota North Stars moved to Dallas, the Winnipeg Jets moved to Phoenix, and the Hartford Whalers moved to North Carolina's Research Triangle region. (The Quebec Nordiques also moved, but they moved to another corner of hockey country by becoming the Colorado Avalanche.)

In a January 24, 2007 interview on TSN's Off The Record in which TSN's Michael Landsberg asked NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman where Bettman thought his league ranked in the United States, the commissioner replied: "Obviously, we're one of the Big Four - we're probably in the fourth position, but that's not a shabby place to be... I'm not sure anybody would put us lower than that based on attendance, based on revenues, based on followings."

Since the four leagues listed above are those listed as the major leagues, the sports they play (baseball, basketball, American football and ice hockey) are often referred to as the four major professional sports or even just the major sports by North Americans. As of 2005, thirteen American metropolitan areas have at least one team in each of the four leagues; these cities are sometimes said to have a Grand Slam.

The four major leagues combine for revenues that are hundreds of times greater than all other U.S. professional team sports leagues combined. The best players can become cultural icons to tens of millions of Americans plus millions of Canadians because the leagues enjoy a dominant place in U.S. popular culture combined with a significant place in Canadian popular culture.

In terms of overall league revenue, the NFL, MLB and the NBA rank as the three most lucrative sports leagues in the world (in that order). Based on June 2006 exchange rates the NHL ranks as the world's fifth most lucrative league, slightly behind the FA Premier League in English soccer. However, the Premier League has only 20 clubs — depending on exchange rates and what is defined as revenue, the Premier League's average per-team revenues are very close to, and could be ranked ahead of, the NBA's.

Soccer

Soccer, and specifically Major League Soccer (MLS) as a league, is the closest thing to a fifth major sport in the US. The league is a successor to multiple failed soccer leagues in the US, including the North American Soccer League (NASL). Some people attribute the demise of the NASL to the Yankee-esque spending of the New York Cosmos, which had many of the world's best players, including Pelé, while the rest of the league and country attempted but could not spend on that level; soccer had just not been established in the US as a premier spectator sport for very long at that time.

As such, MLS was established as a single-entity structure with a minuscule salary cap; total revenues remain a fraction of the NHL's. While soccer has experienced a boom in participation across the US over the last couple of decades, MLS is only eleven years old. Consequently, stadiums are in the process of being designed and built to house and support MLS teams, who started playing in old NFL and college stadiums (where some still play).

Additionally, the best soccer players in the world generally play overseas. This includes some of the top American and Canadian professionals, such as longtime US captain Claudio Reyna and seasoned US striker Brian McBride, who actually played a number of years with the Columbus Crew in MLS. At the same time, US men's mainstay Eddie Pope has played exclusively in MLS and budding US stars like Clint Dempsey and Freddy Adu have risen in status while playing in MLS. The U.S. men's team that played in the 2006 World Cup had a roster consisting of approximately half MLS players and half from various leagues in Europe. Due to most of the best players overseas, combined with the newness of MLS and existing demographic of soccer fans in the US prior to MLS, many soccer fans follow much more established and prestigious overseas leagues such as the English Premiership, Serie A (Italy), La Liga (Spain), Bundesliga (Germany), all which are also considered more skillful; or, as in the case of many Hispanics in the US due to their roots, the Mexican League. These soccer viewers did combine to tune into ESPN and Univision for the 2006 World Cup, producing the some of the highest ratings ever in the US for soccer.[1][2] Though their 2006 showing in Germany was lackluster, the U.S. men's team has performed respectably in recent international competitions, and has been in the last five World Cup finals, including making it to the quarterfinals in 2002, in Japan and Korea. (In 1994, the Americans received an automatic finals bid as the host, but they have qualified for every other Cup finals series since 1990.)

In terms of MLS growth, three more stadiums will come online by spring 2008 and the league is receiving rights fees for the first time from ESPN,[3] Fox Soccer Channel,[4] HDNet,[5] and Univision[6] to telecast their games, at an estimated $15 million a year as of 2007 before the Univision deal.[7] Current franchises are located in: Los Angeles (2), Dallas, Houston, Denver (as Colorado), Salt Lake City, Kansas City, Chicago, Columbus, Ohio, Boston (as New England), New York City, and Washington (as DC). Expansion in 2007 is to Toronto, with franchises in Philadelphia, Cleveland, and St. Louis, along with a return to San Jose, expected by the end of the decade. In the end though, until all league teams have stadiums of their own, MLS raises their salary cap to compete with the biggest and best leagues in the world (previously mentioned), MLS attracts more stars of that quality, and MLS is featured more in the general public's eye, it will remain somewhat outside of what most Americans consider to be a major professional sports league.

Traits of the major North American leagues

Franchise stability

All four major leagues exhibit the stability of most of their franchises. No team from any of the four leagues has collapsed outright in decades. Although all 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 other leagues. It should be noted that all four major leagues have had frequent franchise collapses and relocations in their early histories, but these events ceased occurring with regularity by the time the leagues reached "major" status.

The major sports leagues in the United States and Canada 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 FA Premier League (which as noted above has comparable average team revenues to the major North American leagues but also a relegation system).

The last of the "big four" 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 four 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, with nearly all franchises in metropolitan areas of at least one million. Most teams are in metro areas having populations over two million — all metropolitan areas 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 sport teams. Utah is also the least populous state with a team.

Professional sport 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 re-located. 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. 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. especially, as contrasted with Europe, for a professional sports organization to have any association, real or perceived, with gambling interests has been taboo ever since the 1919 World Series scandal and all four leagues forbid its personnel to have any type of contact or association with anything related to gambling of any kind. Additionally, the city's abundance of entertainment options might make it difficult for a Las Vegas-based team to attract a large audience.

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 United States 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 win a Grey Cup before becoming the third (and current) incarnation of the Montreal Alouettes. 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 enthusiatsts such as 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 four 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 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 Dallas and Columbus.)

Regarding territorial rights, the main concern for many team owners has become television revenue although the possibility of reduced ticket sales remains a concern for some teams. Because the National Football League shares all of its television revenue equally, and most of its teams sell out their stadiums with little difficulty, some NFL owners are seen as being less reluctant to share their territories. For example, the return of the NFL to Baltimore in 1996 attracted no serious opposition from the Washington Redskins organization.

Weathering challenges from rival leagues

All of the majors have bested at least one rival league formed with the intention of being just as "big" as the established league, often by signing away star players and by locating franchises in cities that were already part of the existing league. In many cases, the major leagues have absorbed the most successful franchises from its failing rival, or merged outright with it.

Minor league systems

All the major leagues are distinguished from the minor league systems they utilize to develop and train personnel.

  • The vast majority of MLB players are developed through the minor league baseball system. Prospective players traditionally were drafted or (before the first MLB draft in 1965) signed to a contract with a MLB team directly after high school and then assigned to the appropriate minor league level for development. With the growth of college baseball in the past few decades, more and more players opt to play at the collegiate level and delay entry into the MLB draft. Individual teams' large scouting staffs have given way to smaller staffs and subscriptions to commercial player scouting services. Entering the majors directly from high school or college is almost unknown; most of the few that have were quickly reassigned to the minors. MLB clubs have also recruited many players from the Japanese leagues.
  • College and high school basketball produce most of the NBA's talent, though minimum age rules have ended the NBA's practice of drafting players directly from high school beginning in 2006. The NBA D-League supplies the NBA to an extent, though NBA teams more frequently recruit talent from European and Latin American professional leagues.
  • Semi-pro football and minor leagues such as the Continental Football League once flourished up to the 1950s, but today the source for almost all NFL players is college football. The NFL does maintain its own six-team minor league, NFL Europe, which also serves the dual purpose of introducing the game of American football in European markets. NFL teams also recruit a number of players from indoor leagues, and occasionally signs players from the Canadian Football League.
  • Each NHL team has an affiliate in North America's top-tier minor hockey league, the American Hockey League, and in lower leagues such as the Central Hockey League or ECHL. For decades, the traditional route to the NHL went through the Canadian Hockey League (CHL), generally regarded as the world's premier competition for 15- through 20-year-olds. In recent decades, NHL teams have drafted and/or signed prospects from top European amateur and professional organizations, and a growing number of NHL hopefuls are forgoing the professional CHL in favor of NCAA Division I college hockey. Regardless of which route hockey players take to sign an NHL contract, almost all are initially assigned to an affiliate in their NHL team's minor league system for development.

Television exposure

All four of the major sports have had television contracts with at least one of the original "big three" U.S. broadcast television networks (CBS, NBC, and ABC) since those networks' early years, indicative of the sports' widespread appeal since their inception, continuing today additionally with FOX. Regular season games, as well as important contests such as championship and all-star games are often televised in prime time. In the last generation, fast-growing cable and satellite networks have taken a larger chunk of the major sports' pie. Three of the four major sports now have entire sports networks dedicated just to each of them. NBA TV launched in 1999, with NFL Network and NHL Network following. Major League Baseball had announced plans for their own network, but then dropped them to attempt to start a national sports network with FOX. Those plans were dropped as well, after MLB and FOX failed to acquire a late season package of NFL games that went to NFL Network.

Comparing the sizes of television contracts, the NFL is by far the largest (reportedly $2.2 billion US for the 2012 season), with the NBA and MLB second and third ($500 million and $479 million respectively). The NHL is in a distant fourth place ($120 million), a disparity those who wish to exclude the NHL from the major leagues often point to. However, the NHL began airing games on NBC starting in January 2006 and the NHL Network, currently only available in Canada, will soon be available to U.S. cable and satellite subscribers. In addition, many regular season NHL games are broadcast on regional sports networks (such as FSN), which can vary on contract worth by region or team.

High player salaries

The average annual salary for players in the four major leagues is about $2.9 million in 2004, although player salaries can range from $300,000 for backup players to $20 million for superstars.

  • NBA players have the highest average player salaries of the four leagues at $4.9 million; however, their teams also have the smallest rosters.
  • The NFL has the highest average team payroll and a salary cap that will exceed $100 million for the first time under the new collective bargaining agreement with the NFL's players union. However, NFL payrolls distributed among rosters that are far larger than the other three leagues, making their players among the lowest paid on the average at $1.3 million (although this average is likely to increase under the new CBA).
  • Following the settlement of the 2004-05 NHL lockout, NHL players were also due to be paid about $1.3 million on average, although this too is set to increase because the lockout did not have the adverse effect on league revenues that was expected. Before the lockout, NHL player salaries were approaching MLB averages.
  • MLB is in the middle at about $2.5 million per player. MLB is now alone among the major leagues in that it lacks any form of a salary cap and has enacted only modest forms of revenue sharing and luxury taxes, and compared to the other leagues there is a far greater disparity between MLB payrolls. The New York Yankees had the highest payroll of any American sports team in 2006 when they paid $194 million in players' salaries - nearly twice the NFL salary cap and nearly thirteen times the payroll of the Florida Marlins who spent about $15 million (significantly less than the mandatory minimum team payrolls in the NFL and NHL).

Dominance of the respective sports

One other trait that each of the four leagues share is that they are the premier competitions of their respective sport on the world stage.

There are thriving professional ice hockey, baseball, and basketball leagues around the world but none are in a position to challenge their North American counterparts for dominance on or off the playing surface. Major League Baseball is increasingly luring away the stars from the Japanese leagues, the European hockey leagues have become a major source of star talent for National Hockey League clubs and the National Basketball Association frequently recruits talent from professional leagues in Europe and Latin America although prominent NBA figures have acknowledged that the gap between the NBA and the Euroleague (a Europe-wide competition for elite clubs) may be narrowing. [1]

The perceived lack of competition from the rest of the world has contributed to the long-standing but controversial practice of the American media dubbing the champions of MLB, the NBA and the NFL the world champions. The early Stanley Cup champions from both the NHL and the early leagues the NHL eventually displaced were also called world champions in the early decades of professional hockey by Americans and Canadians alike. However, that practice fell out of favor in the latter half of the 20th century. The International Ice Hockey Federation has proposed a world championship playoff between the Stanley Cup winners and the champions of the European Hockey League (see below).

If the popularity of baseball and basketball keeps growing in various countries outside of the United States, some think that the NBA and MLB may begin to place franchises in foreign markets (other than Canada, where the NBA and MLB each already have a franchise in Toronto). The popularity of baseball in Southeast Asia and Central America is growing, along with the talent of prospective players from the regions. Meanwhile, the popularity of basketball has grown to be the second highest in the world (following football (soccer)).[citation needed]

However, one major detractor against foreign expansion by MLB or the NBA is that the sports in question enjoy much of their popularity in relatively poor countries that would probably be unable to financially support a sports franchise using the American model. The only clear exception to this would be the popularity of baseball in Japan, but well-established baseball leagues already exist in that country.

Due to the popularity of hockey in some of the most prosperous parts of Europe, many believe that the major league with the best chance of success outside North America would be the NHL. This has led to the possibility of European NHL franchises being discussed in the past, although NHL officials have repeatedly said they have no current plans to create a European division. The most that has come out of this has been the Soviet All-Stars tour in the 1970s, where the Red Army squads played NHL teams in exhibition games[2]. As mentioned above, the IIHF has proposed that instead of a direct NHL presence in Europe a world championship playoff between the Stanley Cup winners and the champions of the European Hockey League should be held each year. [3] The NHL's position on this proposal is not entirely clear, but many believe that the players union would be unlikely to support it.

Recently talks about NBA franchises being located in Europe have intensified. For logistical reasons it would be necessary to have a minimum of two and probably four or more teams in Europe, so that visiting North American teams could have a "European Swing." Possible cities for such expansion include London, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, Cologne, Berlin, Rome and Moscow. Although current NBA commissioner David Stern and former NBA star Michael Jordan are among those who have endorsed the concept of NBA teams in Europe, increasing cooperation between the NBA and ULEB, the body that organizes the Euroleague, may make a permanent NBA presence in Europe less likely, at least for the foreseeable future. In 2005, the two bodies agreed to organize a summer competition known as the NBA Europe Live Tour featuring four NBA teams and four Euroleague clubs, with the first competition taking place in 2006. [4]

A major obstacle for anyone trying to establish either an NBA or NHL presence in Europe is that with soccer being in the dominant position that it enjoys on that continent, building state of the art indoor arenas suitable for ice hockey and/or basketball has not become a priority in European cities until very recently. No arena likely to meet the standards of either league existed anywhere in Europe until the Manchester Evening News Arena opened in 1995, followed by Cologne's Kölnarena in 1998. Two more NBA/NHL-caliber arenas opened in 2004—the Olympic Indoor Hall in Athens and Sazka Arena in Prague - another such arena, Belgrade Arena opened in 2005. A new arena is scheduled to open in London by 2007, and plans are in the works for NBA/NHL-caliber venues in Berlin, Moscow and Madrid.

The NFL has the least international exposure of the Big Four, American football being the least international of the four sports, yet it is the most popular professional league in the United States. In the 1950s and 1960s, selected NFL teams would travel north to Canada to play a CFL team in pre-season "American Bowl" games. The NFL has also attempted to promote its game worldwide by scheduling selected pre-season games since 1976 in Mexico, Europe, Australia, and Japan [5] and through NFL Europe, although the latter has largely failed outside Germany. Starting in 2005, the NFL has begun holding one regular season game in Mexico City. The 2005 matchup between the San Francisco 49ers and Arizona Cardinals drew a crowd of over 103,000 to Azteca Stadium, making it the largest attendance at an NFL regular season game [6]. (A 1994 crowd of over 112,000 at Azteca Stadium is the largest to attend a pre-season game.) Additional overseas regular season games in other countries have been proposed for as early as 2007. [7][8] The NFL has a working agreement with the Canadian Football League (CFL), which is second in popularity only to the NHL in that country. There has also been speculation that a franchise would be located in Toronto, to balance out returning a team to Los Angeles (the only metro area in the U.S. larger than Toronto, or even larger than half Toronto's size that lacks an NFL team). Despite this, the prospect of foreign NFL franchises in the relative near future is unlikely due to gridiron football's lack of popularity outside of Canada and the US.

Major professional sports leagues outside North America

Australia

The term major sports is commonly used in Australia to denote the most popular sports of that country. Australian rules football, cricket, rugby league and rugby union are team sports that are considered "major" by most Australians. Whether or not football (soccer) is a major sport is frequently debated, although the progression of the men's national team to the second round of 2006 FIFA World Cup provided a significant boost for that sport and its new professional league, the A-League.

Historical regionality

Strong regional identification with different football codes has led to corresponding regional attitudes to these sports. Prior to the 1990s, rugby league was almost exclusively a sport of the "northern" states, that is, those states north of the Murray River (New South Wales and Queensland, and also the Australian Capital Territory). Sydney was and remains the focus of elite competition in that sport. In the other states (Victoria, Tasmania, South Australia and Western Australia, and also the Northern Territory) the dominant winter sport was, and still is, Australian rules football. Melbourne is the heartland of "Aussie Rules".

Several factors since 1990 have eroded the regional boundaries between these football codes, although the support systems and minor (including junior and schools) competitions in each state and city still reflect the biases of the last 100+ years. The recent factors of change include:

  • More widespread media coverage of each sport, particularly since the advent of pay television in 1995.
  • The maturation of each code's elite competition from being a city/suburban league to a national league, although rugby league has failed to maintain national league franchises in either Perth or Adelaide.
  • The change from amateurism to professionalism in rugby union, and the advent of an elite interprovincial competition — now known as the Super 14 — involving teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, has greatly widened the knowledge and appeal of that sport to make it a market rival for rugby league and Australian rules football.
  • The great increase in the marketing and promotion effort of all top-level sports in Australia, which has made teams and players into household names in contrast with earlier eras where news of one region's sports leagues would rarely be reported in another region.

Japan

Even though sports such as boxing and sumo wrestling are popular, baseball is the most popular team sport, and NPB (Nippon Professional Baseball) is considered a major league among Asians. The total revenue and attendance records of NPB, as well as its popularity in its home market, are competitive with those of other major leagues in North America and Europe, such as the NFL and English Premiership.

The second most popular and important team sport is soccer; the local J. League is the most financially successful of leagues in East Asia. An interesting trait of these two major leagues is that J. League uses promotion and relegation like the major European leagues, but NPB, owing to its American origins, does not (franchises are awarded in the American style but do not have regional criteria; most teams are located in the Tokyo or Osaka metropolitan areas, and are differentiated by the company sponsoring them).

Europe, Africa and Latin America

Association Football

In Association Football (soccer), the term "major leagues" would apply (and is occasionally used) to refer to the strongest domestic leagues. In Europe, the media almost always define the top divisions of England (FA Premier League), Italy (Serie A) and Spain (La Liga) as major leagues. The French (Ligue 1) and German (Bundesliga) top leagues are not generally regarded as being quite of the same calibre as the first three, but are usually defined as major leagues too, due to the stature of France and Germany in world football terms. The top teams from each of the national leagues compete in the UEFA Champions League, which operates at the continental level (participation in the Champions League as well as the second-tier UEFA Cup is concurrent with continuing national league and cup commitments). The G-14 is a grouping of 18 of Europe's top teams. Its membership currently includes three clubs from each of the "big five" leagues as well as two from the Netherlands and one from Portugal. The latter two leagues are occasionally included in the synoptic reports of media outlets covering the "major leagues".

UEFA, the sport's governing body for Europe, maintains lists of coefficients to compare the performances of national teams, leagues and individual clubs. The league coefficients are used for determining how many teams from each domestic league may compete in the Champions League and UEFA Cup. The top five leagues using these rankings are those of Spain, Italy and England (4 CL entries each) followed by France and Germany (3 CL entries each). Portugal is sixth and also gets three CL entries, while the Netherlands is seventh and currently entitled to two CL entries. There is currently a significant gap between the coefficients of the Dutch league and the top league of Greece, which is currently ranked eighth.

In South America, the Brazilian and Argentine leagues could be considered as "major leagues" for international football, comparable to the strongest European leagues. However, recent decades have seen an enormous diaspora of South America's top players due to the limited financial resources of the continent's best clubs. Nowadays, virtually all of the great Brazilian and Argentine stars play in Europe. Nevertheless, Brazilian and Argentine clubs still are strong enough to be competitive with the best European clubs in the FIFA Club World Cup. In fact, the last two editions of the Club World Cup were won by Brazilian sides, with São Paulo defeating Liverpool in the 2005 final and Internacional Porto Alegre defeating Barcelona in the 2006 final. The Copa Libertadores is South America's equivalent of the UEFA Champions League, and it is known for its rugged competitiveness. Historically, Uruguayan clubs were also major powers in the continent, but financial and technical crises in Uruguayan football in recent decades have enlarged the gap between them and the Brazilians and Argentines.

Rugby union

The pinnacle of rugby has always been international matches between teams representing their country. However, since the sport turned professional in 1995, several successful leagues have developed.

The top five professional leagues in rugby union are considered to be the Guinness Premiership (England), Top 14 (France), Magners League (Ireland, Scotland and Wales), Currie Cup (South Africa) and Air New Zealand Cup (New Zealand). The nations represented by these leagues are seven of the ten nations recognised as "Tier One" by the sport's governing body, the International Rugby Board. The other three Tier One nations are Argentina, Australia, and Italy. Australia has yet to establish a major domestic league of its own, with the Australian Rugby Championship being the latest attempt. Italy has a professional league in the Super 10, but it is generally considered well below the main five leagues in quality. Unlike the other Tier One countries, Argentina has kept its domestic game amateur. While that country has many professionals, they all play club rugby overseas, primarily in European leagues.

The leading teams from the European leagues also take part in the Heineken Cup, a transnational competition. The Super 14, consisting of teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, is organised on a slightly different basis. The competition operates via an American- or Australian-style franchise system, with each team representing a large geographic area within its country. Each New Zealand and South African franchise draws players from one or more teams (typically more than one) in its country's domestic competition. The Australian franchises will eventually draw players from the Australian Rugby Championship sides. Other professional leagues such as the Top League in Japan are considered well below the main five leagues in terms of quality.

Other sports

In most other countries, the concept of a set of major sports does not really exist. Football (soccer) is, in some countries, so dominant that other sports cannot compete. In a small number of other countries, a different sport has a similarly dominant position (e.g., Cricket in India and Pakistan, basketball in Lithuania or ice hockey in Finland). Many, however, will have two or three other sports that are popular on a national basis, and receive similar attention to soccer where the national team is competing, or during its 'off-season'. For example, rugby union and cricket compete for attention in England; Gaelic football, rugby union and hurling are popular in Ireland. Considering the European Union as a whole, football (soccer), basketball, Rugby Union and ice hockey have the most widespread popularity.

References

  1. ^ TV ratings challenge U.S. best for soccer
  2. ^ ESPN 'amazed' at TV ratings World Cup draws
  3. ^ TV deal highlights State of the League address
  4. ^ FOX Soccer Channel, Soccer United Marketing sign new five-year programming pact
  5. ^ MLS Announces Three-Year Deal With HDNet and 2006 Television Schedule
  6. ^ Univision acquires rights to broadcast Major League Soccer
  7. ^ Major League Soccer on ABC/ESPN

See also

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