Out of curiosity, I've spent some time researching professional baseball leagues around the world. Not counting temporary configurations like the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues, I've come to the conclusion that there are about 50 legitimate professional leagues. Fully half of these are based in the United States. I'm not sure whether I have the time or base knowledge to work up numbers for other sports, but I was wondering if anybody knew how this compares. Are there any other countries with 25 professional leagues in a single sport? What are the total numbers for pro leagues in other sports?
The players have to be paid, but I don't consider that in itself to be adequate for my term of "legitimate professional." I consider the qualification that the players can make a substantial portion of their income through playing the sport, such that at least during the season, they could legitimately live mostly on that income and nothing else.
How many of the American baseball leagues are truly independent and how many supported by affiliation with MLB?
Soccer is interesting in that there is an overarching organization. FIFA->Continential Confederations->National Federations->Leagues. All the leagues are designated by their National Federation into divisions which make up what is commonly called 'the pyramid'. Generally the top handful of leagues will be national, but below that they get increasingly regional (cut down on costs). This graphic is old, but it shows how the US system compares to England's: Also, a lot of countries have something called Promotion and Relegation (or pro/rel) where the bottom teams of one division and the top of the lower will switch. How many teams, whether it is auto or there is a playoff, or even how many seasons (some you have to be consistently bad over a couple seasons to get sent down) is up to the Federation. We don't have that here (pro/rel is a solution to a problem we don't currently have - more teams capable of playing in top tier than can fit into league). What's interesting is that instead we have leagues themselves competing. The NASL (currently Division II) has said they aim to be Division I. The USL (currently Division III) has told USSF that they plan to apply for Division II status in the next couple of years. It's interesting times over here.
I counted six independent leagues, 17 affiliated minor leagues, and then of course the National and American leagues.
Baseball in the US used to work that way, too. The American League was actually the third recognized major league. And there have been at least three other significant efforts by upstart leagues to achieve that status, though there have never been more than two true major leagues at any given time. The most recent and perhaps nearly successful effort was the Pacific Coast League. It probably would have made it had the other two leagues remained concentrated in the Northeast and Great Lakes regions (and Missouri). But then the Dodgers and Giants moved to California and the PCL teams dropped back to the highest tier of minor league status (AAA). Prior to that, the PCL had actually been recognized as residing in a distinct class of its own that was only just slightly bellow the National and American leagues.
I once read a fascinating history of the American Basketball Association, which I didn't really know anything about previously. Part of the motivation for starting the league was to achieve an eventual merger with the NBA. Kind of strange that the ultimate success for an upstart organization would be to cease to exist.
My understanding is that the USFL had that as the primary goal, too (ie merging with the dominant league). Who knows, it might be a less expensive route to getting an expansion franchise.
If you can find it, the NFL Network's documentary series about the AFL (Full Color Football) is really good. >EDIT< Found it on YouTube.
Great documentary! I'm not a football fan, but just from the "man and his dream" "David & Goliath" view it was very interesting. It is multi-part however so from the fact there is only the NFL these days it does not end well.
Most of the AFL teams survive and many are thriving in the NFL. Very successful franchises like the Patriots, Raiders, Dolphins, and Broncos (13 superbowl championships collectively) started out in the AFL.
Yes. I don't think that was the original intention, but at some point, merger became the main purpose of the league. And it made sense for the NFL, as it had been considering expansion. The AFL got started as an effort to bring football to cities previously ignored or abandoned by the NFL. The surviving AFL teams represented viable teams, many in locations the NFL wanted in its portfolio. Contrast that with the USFL, that explicitly wanted a merger from day one. Their strategy made little sense, as most teams were in existing NFL markets. Why would the NFL want more teams in such places?
The USFL wasn't looking to merge from day one, were they? They played in the NFL's off-season so that fans had football for a bigger part of the year. They intended to abandon that model, (switching to a fall schedule and therefore competing directly with the NFL) and expanded aggressively, which led to their downfall. They were intending to sue the NFL for abuse of monopoly power. Ironically, the USFL won. They were awarded one dollar in damages, which was automatically tripled by law, to three whole bucks.
Yeah, I seem to be mixing up the USFL and AFL histories a bit. Given the current election cycle, here's an interesting article about the USFL and one of the current candidates: http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a41135/donald-trump-usfl/
