Professional sports leagues are organized in numerous ways. The two most significant types are one that developed in Europe, characterized by a tiered structure using promotion and relegation in order to determine participation in a hierarchy of leagues or divisions, and a North American originated model characterized by its use of franchises, closed memberships, and minor leagues. Both these systems remain most common in their area of origin, although both systems are used worldwide.
An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also hope that the expansion of their competition will grow the popularity of the sport generally. The term is most commonly used in reference to the North American major professional sports leagues but is applied to sports leagues in other countries with a closed franchise system of league membership. The term refers to the expansion of the sport into new areas. The addition of an expansion team sometimes results in the payment of an expansion fee to the league by the new team and an expansion draft to populate the new roster.
A sports league is a group of individual athletes, sports teams or clubs who form a league to compete against each other and gain points in a specific sport. At its simplest, it may be a local group of amateur athletes who form teams among themselves and compete periodically, at its most complex, it can be an international professional league making large amounts of money and involving dozens of teams and thousands of players.
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, which compete in the sports of football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer, include the National Football League (NFL), Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Hockey League (NHL), and Major League Soccer (MLS). As the NFL only competes in the U.S., the prominent gridiron football league in Canada is the Canadian Football League (CFL).
MLB, the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL are commonly referred to as the "Big Four". Each of these is the wealthiest professional club competition in its sport worldwide, and along with the Premier League, make up the top five sports leagues by revenue in the world.
The XFL was a professional American football league that played its only season in 2001. The XFL was operated as a joint venture between the World Wrestling Federation (WWF, now WWE) and NBC. The XFL was conceived as an outdoor football league that would begin play immediately after the National Football League (NFL) season ended, to take advantage of the perceived lingering public desire to watch football after the NFL and college football seasons conclude. It was promoted as having fewer rules to encourage rougher play than other major leagues, while its telecasts featured sports entertainment elements inspired by professional wrestling (and in particular, the WWF's then-current "Attitude Era"), including heat and kayfabe, and suggestively-dressed cheerleaders. Commentary crews also featured WWF commentators (such as Jesse Ventura, Jim Ross, and Jerry Lawler) joined by sportscasters and veteran football players. Despite the wrestling influence, the games and their outcomes were legitimate and not based on scripted storylines.
The XFL operated as a single entity with all teams owned by the league, in contrast to most major professional leagues, which use a franchise model with individual owners. The league had eight teams in two divisions, and each franchise was based in a market that either currently had an NFL team (New York/New Jersey, Chicago, San Francisco); had previously supported other pro leagues like the United States Football League, the original World League, or the Canadian Football League (Memphis, Orlando, Birmingham, Las Vegas); or was the largest market without a professional franchise (Los Angeles). Co-owner NBC served as the main carrier of XFL games, with UPN and TNN also carrying selected games.
The Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey (LNAH, "North American Hockey League") is a semi-professional ice hockey league based in the Canadian province of Quebec. Teams in the LNAH compete for the Vertdure Cup.
The 2011 St. Louis Cardinals season was the 130th season for the St. Louis Cardinals, a Major League Baseball franchise in St. Louis, Missouri. It was the 120th season for the Cardinals in the National League and their 6th at Busch Stadium III.
This was Tony La Russa's final season as Cardinals manager.
Minor leagues are professional sports leagues which are not regarded as the premier leagues in those sports. Minor league teams tend to play in smaller, less elaborate venues, often competing in smaller cities/markets. This term is used in North America with regard to several organizations competing in various sports. They generally have lesser fan bases, much smaller revenues and salaries, and are used to develop players for bigger leagues. Minor leagues are also occasionally used as a testing ground for proposed rule changes prior to implementation at the top level.
The minor league concept is a manifestation of the franchise system used in North American sports, whereby the group of major league teams in each sport is fixed for long periods between expansions or other adjustments, which only take place with the consent of the major league owners. In Europe, and many other parts of the world, association football (soccer), basketball, american football, baseball, handball, hockey, etc. leagues have many divisions below the top-flight level as part of the football pyramid. In other parts of the world there is usually either a system of annual promotion and relegation, meaning that clubs have no fixed status in the hierarchy, or there is only one professional league per country in each sport, rendering the major/minor distinction irrelevant.
Relocation of professional sports teams occurs when a team owner moves a team, generally from one metropolitan area to another, but occasionally between municipalities in the same conurbation. The practice is most common in North America, where a league franchise system is used and the teams are overwhelmingly privately owned. Owners who move a team generally do so seeking better profits, facilities, fan support, or a combination of these.