Major professional sports league

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

North American leagues

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:
*The National Football League (32 clubs as of 2006, founded in 1920). The NFL partially absorbed the All-America Football Conference in 1949 and merged with the American Football League in 1970.
*Major League Baseball (30 clubs as of 2006, formally founded in 1920 though constituent leagues began cooperation in 1903). MLB is divided into the American League (founded in 1901) and the National League (founded in 1876). The two are effectively merged on an organizational level.
*The National Basketball Association (30 clubs as of 2006, founded in 1946). The NBA partially absorbed the rival American Basketball Association in 1976.
*The National Hockey League (30 clubs as of 2006, founded in 1917). The NHL partially absorbed the rival World Hockey Association in 1979.

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, 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. The term hockey country is often used to describe those parts of the U.S. 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.)

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 said to have the 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 American 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. It is worth noting, however, that 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, 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 NASL. Most people contribute 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 Pele, 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 miniscule 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 ten 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 stadia (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, USMNT mainstay Eddie Pope has played exclusively in MLS, a few of the younger established US stars such as Landon Donovan and Eddie Johnson have elected to stay in the US and MLS rather than go overseas, 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 1/2 MLS players and 1/2 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 glorified overseas leagues such as the EPL, Serie A, La Liga, Bundesliga, which are also considered more skillful, or, as in the case of many hispanics in the US due to their roots, the MFL. 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.TV ratings challenge U.S. best for soccer ESPN 'amazed' at TV ratings World Cup draws 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 quaterfinals in 2002, in Japan and Korea. (In 1994, the Americans got 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 stadia come online within the next year and a half and the league is recieving rights fees for the first time from ESPNTV deal highlights State of the League address, Fox Soccer ChannelFOX Soccer Channel, Soccer United Marketing sign new five-year programming pact, HDNet, and Univision to telecast their games, at an estimated fifteen million dollars a year as of 2007 before the Univision dealMajor League Soccer on ABC/ESPN. Current franchises are located in: Los Angeles (2), Dallas, Houston, Denver (as Colorado), Salt Lake City, Kansas City, Chicago, Columbus, Boston (as New England), New York City, and Washington DC (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 stadia 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 American's 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 unique compared to 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. However, this merger was officially dissolved in 1991,Stein, Gil: Power Plays: An Inside Look at the Big Business of the National Hockey League (1997, Birch Lane Press, ISBN 1559724226) and the franchise was resurrected as the San Jose Sharks. 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 a few American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association franchises 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 metro areas of this size or larger have at least one team. This typically means at least one franchise (and often two) 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, however several West Coast-based teams did compete for the Stanley Cup in the era before the Cup competition was limited to NHL teams. During the 1910s and into the 1920s, the pro teams in Western Canada and the USA Pacific Northwest were on a par with those in Quebec and Ontario. From 1914 to 1926, the Stanley Cup was an East vs. West championship (before 1914, the Stanley Cup was a challenge cup, and some western teams did mount challenges, including one from the remote Yukon Territory. In a bizarre incident in January 1905, the Dawson City Nuggets made the arduous month-long journey to Ottawa to challenge the reigning Ottawa Silver Seven. The Nuggets lost the first game of the best-of-three series by a score of 9-2, and the second game by a score of 23-2.) The last non-NHL team to win the Stanley Cup was the Western Canada Hockey League's Victoria Cougars, who defeated the Montreal Canadiens in 1925. However, the WCHL disbanded the following year with the Cougars and Regina Capitals moving east to join the NHL as the Detroit Cougars (later the Red Wings) and Chicago Black Hawks respectively, and the NHL assuming exclusive possession of the Cup.

College, minor-league and amateur teams existed from coast to coast in all four sports.

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.

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 San Diego and Los Angeles metro areas and serves as a local market for those teams, no major league franchise is likely to move there without purporting to represent the L.A. and/or San Diego markets as well. 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 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.

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 â€" 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. Alberta's GDP per capita is the highest of any Canadian province or U.S. state even after exchange rates are taken into account. Since Alberta's total GDP (over C$200 billion as of 2005 and expected to exceed US$200 billion in 2006) is well over twice Utah's (less than $90 billion as of 2006), it is not difficult to explain how Alberta can support two major league teams if 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 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 Montreal Alouettes. The CFL and NFL forged a working relationship less than a year later.

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 re-located 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) 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. Hunt currently owns 3 teams in Major League Soccer, one based in Kansas City - where he owns the Chiefs - and also teams 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.
*Major League Baseball withstood the challenge of the Federal League in 1914 and prevented the Continental League from getting off the ground in the early 1960s by awarding franchises to some of the proposed CL cities. Before the end of World War II, the combination of a gentlemen's agreement and the restrictive policies of Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis prevented African American players from playing Major League Baseball, and various Negro Leagues sprung up to showcase black players' talents. Although no official cross-league play took place, white and black players often faced off in post-season barnstorming tours where the Negro League players showed themselves to be MLB players' competitive equals. After Jackie Robinson broke the major league color barrier in 1947, the influx of black stars into the major leagues drained the Negro Leagues of talent and eventually caused their collapse.
*The NBA withstood the challenge of the American Basketball Association in the 1960s and 70s, absorbed four of its most successful franchises (Denver Nuggets, Indiana Pacers, New York Nets, and San Antonio Spurs) and adopted several of the ABA's rule variations, most notably the three point shot.
*The NFL has fought off the most rivals throughout the years. The most notable rival was the American Football League, which existed from 1960-1970, before merging with the NFL. In the AFL's last years, it achieved parity with the NFL: AFL teams won 2 of the 4 pre-merger Super Bowl games, and TV ratings and in-person attendance for the two leagues were about the same. (The America Football League name was previously used by several shortlived leagues back in the 1920s and 1930s.) Another strong rival to the NFL was the All-America Football Conference of 1946 -1949 which also merged with the NFL. Other rival football leagues were the World Football League of 1974 -1975, the United States Football League of 1982 -1985, the Canadian Football League's American franchises of 1993 -1995 and the XFL of 2001. All told, 13 of the NFL's current 32 franchises were absorbed from a rival league â€" all 10 AFL franchises of the 1960s, the Cleveland Browns and San Francisco 49ers from the AAFC, and the St. Louis Rams (originally based in Cleveland and later relocated to Los Angeles) of the 1936 AFL. Another three NFL franchises have been added or moved to USFL cities since the USFL's demise in 1986, these being Phoenix, Jacksonville and Baltimore.
*Prior to the challenge of the World Hockey Association, the NHL prevented the old Western Hockey League from achieving parity with the NHL by doubling in size in 1967. The WHA was in existence from 1972-1979, and upon its demise, the four strongest teams joined into the NHL: the Edmonton Oilers, the Quebec Nordiques (now the Colorado Avalanche), the New England Whalers (later renamed the Hartford Whalers and now the Carolina Hurricanes), and the Winnipeg Jets (now the Phoenix Coyotes). A few WHA players became NHL stars after the merger, including Mark Messier, Wayne Gretzky, Mark Howe and Mike Liut. The WHA initially attracted star players such as Bobby Hull and Derek Sanderson to its teams by offering substantially higher salaries than did the NHL at the time; to compete for free agents, NHL teams were forced to match this salary escalation, bringing hockey players' salaries to parity with those of other North American professional athletes.

Minor league systems

All the major leagues are distinguished from the minor league systems they utilize to develop and train personnel.
*Although MLB clubs have recruited many players from the Japanese leagues, 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 after disastrous MLB debuts.
*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. The four major sports now have entire sports networks dedicated just to each of them (such as the NFL Network).

Comparing the sizes of television contracts, the NFL is by far the largest (reportedly $2.2 billion US for the 2001 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 is now available to a large percentage of 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.
*MLB is in the middle at about $2.5 million per player.

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 National Basketball Association frequently recruits talent from professional leagues in Europe and Latin America and the European hockey leagues have become a major source of star talent for National Hockey League clubs.

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.

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 soccer).

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.

Recently talks about NBA franchises being located in Europe have intensified. For logistical reasons it would be necessary to have between two and four teams in Europe, so that visiting teams can have a "European Swing." Possible cities for such expansion include London, Paris, Barcelona, Madrid, and Rome. However, as of 2006, NBA expansion to Europe is looking less likely, mainly because of increasing cooperation between the NBA and ULEB, the body that organizes the Euroleague for top European clubs. In 2005, the two bodies agreed to organize a summer competition featuring four NBA teams and four Euroleague clubs, with the first competition to take place in 2006. [1]

The NFL has the least international exposure of the Big Four. The NFL has attempted to promote its game worldwide by promoting NFL Europe (although that has largely failed outside Germany) and holding a regular season game in Mexico City. The NFL has a working agreement with the Canadian Football League (CFL), which is second in popularity only to the NHL in that country. 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 sports 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.

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. 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. Perhaps not uncoincidentally, 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.

Serie A's status as a European "big three" league was thrown into question in 2006 after a serious match-fixing scandal damaged the league's reputation and caused the expulsion of several of the top teams.

As stated above, the soccer league of the United States is Major League Soccer. As MLS is only 10 years old, the quality of the league is often debated, though safely assumed behind the top five leagues in Europe.

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., basketball in Lithuania or 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, Soccer, Basketball, and Hockey have the most widespread popularity.

Major professional sports league: Encyclopedia BETA

Contents