Professional sports leagues in the United States: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 03:10, 18 February 2016
Professional sports leagues in the United States include several major leagues as well as other professional and semi-professional leagues.
Major leagues
National Football League
The National Football League (NFL) is the most popular sports league in the U.S. in terms of television ratings and merchandising, and has the highest per-game attendance of any domestic professional leagues in the world.[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 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. The NFL is the only one of the major leagues not to have a presence in Canada.
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball (MLB) 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 (NBA) 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 Hockey League
The National Hockey League (NHL) 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.
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 notable top-level professional leagues
Arena Football League
The Arena Football League is the highest level of play in the indoor/arena styles of gridiron football. As the name implies the sport is played in an indoor arena on a much smaller field than American football. The league was founded in 1987 and operated continuously until 2009, with an ongoing revival starting in 2010, overcoming the perception that it was merely a fad. From 2000 to 2009, the AFL had a developmental league, af2.
The AFL indefinitely suspended operations in 2009.[5] The af2 conducted its full 2009 season, but came to an end when none of its franchise committed to playing the next year. Afterward some teams from both the AFL and af2 came together to organize a new league for the 2010 season, initially known as Arena Football 1. The AF1 purchased both predecessor leagues' assets in December 2009 and it adopted the Arena Football League name. Since resuming play in 2010 the Arena Football League had an average attendance of 8,154 per game and a total attendance of 970,369.[6]
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.[7] Total attendance was 1,598,160 in 2010.[7] 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.[8]
Major League Lacrosse
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.[9] 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.[10][11][12][13]
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.
References
- ^ "NFL maintains massive lead in attendance " Sporting Intelligence". Sportingintelligence.com. 2010-01-04. Retrieved 2010-05-03.
- ^ Patra, Kevin (February 2, 2015). "Super Bowl XLIX is most-watched show in U.S. history". National Football League. Retrieved February 2, 2015.
- ^ "2014 Final Attendance Update". MLSAttendance.Blogspot.com.
- ^ Hickey, Walt (2014-04-04). "The 'Big Five' in North American Pro Sports". FiveThirtyEight. Retrieved 2015-05-14.
- ^ George, John (August 6, 2009). "Arena Football League shuts down indefinitely". Philadelphia Business Journal. Retrieved 2009-08-06.
- ^ "2010 Arena Football League Attendance Chart". arenafan.com. Retrieved December 17, 2010.
- ^ a b "WNBA Attendance Down 2.5%, But Eight Clubs See Gains From '09". Sports Business Daily. August 24, 2010. Retrieved December 17, 2010.
- ^ "WNBA Closes Regular Season Up in Attendance, TV Ratings and Web Traffic". WNBA.com. Retrieved 2011-02-19.
- ^ Major League Lacrosse.
- ^ "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 . . .")
- ^ "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.")
- ^ Jr, Ralph Gardner. "The Sport of Scholarships". Wall Street Journal. ISSN 0099-9660. Retrieved 2015-08-27.
- ^ "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.")