Dispersal draft

A dispersal draft is a process in professional sports for assigning players to a new team when their current team goes out of business, consolidates with another team, or for some other reason ceases to exist. Since most sports drafts are held in North America, this is where most dispersal drafts are conducted as well. Since no major professional sports team has folded in decades, dispersal drafts are more commonly seen in emerging sports (such as soccer or women's basketball in the United States) where initial support for a team failed to remain consistent and the team was unable to survive financially.

Examples of dispersal drafts

The NBA had two dispersal drafts in the 1950-51 season. In October 1950, a dispersal draft for the Chicago franchise was conducted. In January 1951, Washington's early demise led to a dispersal draft. On August 8, 1976, as part of the ABA-NBA merger agreement, a dispersal draft was conducted to assign teams for the players on the two ABA franchises which had folded.

The American Basketball Association in 1975 had two drafts within a month of each other in October and November 1975 as teams folded during what turned out to be the final season of the ABA;

In 1991, the National Hockey League conducted a dispersal draft in order to split a new team, the San Jose Sharks, off of the Minnesota North Stars as a compromise when the Minnesota owners requested permission to move the franchise to the San Francisco Bay Area. This is not "technically" a dispersal draft as the other situations.

In 1996, the Canadian Football League conducted a dispersal draft which consisted of players from the rosters of the Baltimore Stallions, Birmingham Barracudas, Memphis Mad Dogs, San Antonio Texans and Shreveport Pirates in order to return the CFL to a nine-team format with all franchises based in Canadian cities.

In 2002, Major League Soccer held a dispersal draft after shutting down the Tampa Bay Mutiny and Miami Fusion teams. See 2002 MLS Dispersal Draft.

The WNBA has had three such drafts: For the 2003 season, after Miami and Portland folded; 2004 season, after Cleveland folded, and the 2007 season, after Charlotte folded. In each draft, all remaining WNBA teams were allowed a draft pick, in reverse order of their regular-season record for the preceding season.

The Major Indoor Soccer League shut down two teams in December of 2004 — the San Diego Sockers and Monterrey Fury — over various issues with the operation of those teams. Players in those teams were then distributed to remaining teams in a dispersal draft. The order of player selection was based on the winning percentage of the remaining teams from the 2003-04 season and the 2004-2005 season up to that point.

On April 9, 2006, the Ottawa Renegades had their team operations suspended by the Canadian Football League. On April 12, 2006, the former players still under contract, plus those that the Renegades had the rights to, were distributed amongst the remaining 8 teams. The worst team from the previous year selected first and went until all players were selected or all teams passed on the remaining players. Quarterback Kerry Joseph was selected #1 overall by the Saskatchewan Roughriders after they traded with the Hamilton Tigercats for the rights to the #1 pick.

On January 5, 2007, the Southern Professional Hockey League quickly conducted a one-round (seven team) dispersal draft after the SPHL terminated the Florida Seals franchise midway through the season; the seven players who were drafted went to their new teams. The remaining players became free agents.