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37-555: The division consists of a league of 14 teams. From 2013, the Damallsvenskan began operating on a system of promotion and relegation with the Elitettan . The two lowest placed teams are relegated to the Elitettan , and the two highest placed teams from the Elitettan are promoted in their place. Starting with the 2022 season the league has been expanded from 12 to 14 teams. The first Swedish women's national championship

74-542: A 50-yard field in the spring and early summer). There have been attempts at forming true minor leagues for the professional game (most recently with the XFL in 2020); none so far have been able to balance the major leagues' requests with the ability to maintain financial solvency. League systems can have a negative effect on competitive balance, particularly in European professional football. This sports-related article

111-724: A governing body ( Minor League Baseball , an organization under the authority of the Commissioner of Baseball , governs baseball leagues; the United States Soccer Federation designates the American soccer pyramid.) Ice hockey 's professional minor league system is linear, with one league at most of the four levels of the game; the ice hockey league system in North America is governed by collective bargaining agreements and affiliation deals between

148-689: A group of leagues that are tied together in a hierarchical fashion by promotion and relegation, and to the individual leagues within the league system. For example, in English association football , the English Football League (EFL) is a league system, while the term "National League" refers both to the league immediately below the EFL in the English pyramid and to its associated league system . An alternate system of league organization which

185-473: A lower division). This process can be automatic each year, or can require playoffs. In North America, league systems in the most popular sports do not use promotion or relegation. Most professional sports are divided into major and minor leagues . Baseball and association football (known as soccer in North America) have well-defined pyramid shapes to their minor league hierarchies, each managed by

222-484: A regular season in a league format, the top teams (possibly determined by conference or division) advance to the playoffs. In some such leagues having the best regular season record is relatively unimportant, though top-seeded teams in some leagues, such as the NFL , can gain byes to later rounds of the playoffs, and teams finishing with the best records usually have the advantage of playing the weakest teams that have advanced to

259-455: A semi-final and final. Malmö FF, LdB FC Malmö and FC Rosengård are the same club. Kopparbergs/Göteborg FC became BK Häcken in 2021. The following is a list of top scorers ( skyttedrottningar ) by season. Lena Videkull has won the award a record five times, while Hanna Ljungberg holds the record for most goals in a season with 39. [REDACTED] Media related to Damallsvenskan at Wikimedia Commons Sports league A sports league

296-399: A single competition or a related group of competitions. Many groups use promotion and relegation , where the best-ranked team(s) in the lower division are promoted to the higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are relegated to the lower division for the next season. Under this system, "league" may refer both to a league system ,

333-716: A small amount of interleague play , with the main AL-NL competition occurring between their champions in the World Series . Thus the two leagues played mostly separate competitions within the larger framework of MLB. Finally, until 2000, they were actually separate legal entities, unlike the conferences of other leagues. Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan has a similar history, with the Central League and Pacific League not founded together. Due to this naming custom, it

370-439: 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. Many uses of

407-519: Is a major factor in many sports. When teams competing for a tournament championship do not play the same teams the same number of times, it is known as an unbalanced schedule. In such a set-up, the team with the best record becomes champion, based on either a strict win–loss–tie system or on a points system where a certain number of points are awarded for a win, loss, or tie, while bonus points might also be added for teams meeting various criteria. Many leagues also use playoffs , where after teams compete in

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444-550: Is a sports league where all the fixtures take place at the same venue, instead of rotating around the venues of the 'home' team, for each fixture. Several UK basketball leagues operate on this basis, intended to keep the costs of participation as low as possible, including: Many sports leagues also participate in a single-elimination tournament each year. In the United States, Mexico, and some other countries, these tournaments are commonly called "playoffs" and are played at

481-509: Is a structure that allows teams or individuals to compete against each other in a nonrandom order on a set schedule, usually called a season , with the results of the individual competitions being used to name an overall champion. A league championship may be contested in a number of ways. Each team may play every other team a certain number of times in a round-robin tournament . Usually, teams play an equal number of games or matches at their own stadium and at other teams', because home advantage

518-443: Is common to use slightly different terms to discuss MLB. Where someone might refer to "the best quarterback in the league" and be understood to mean the overall NFL, a similar mention of "the best outfielder in the league" is almost always a reference to the American or National League, while "in all of baseball" or similar is used to denote the larger status. Each of the major leagues also has its own set of awards to recognize

555-559: Is especially common in individual sports, although the term "league" is sometimes used in amateur individual sports such as golf . The term "league" is also sometimes applicable to competitions that would more traditionally be called tournaments , such as the UEFA Champions League , which is organized with multiple small round-robin competitions followed by a single elimination tournament to choose an overall winner. "League" and its synonyms may be used to encompass either

592-488: Is still used in many team sports around the world. One potential drawback of this simple double round-robin format is that the number of teams in the league determines the schedule. Larger leagues may not be able to play as many games as such a system would require, and smaller leagues may want more games. In addition, leagues whose teams are geographically spread out over a wide area (a common situation for leagues in North America) may face significant travel costs. One solution

629-411: Is to allow teams to play each other whenever they see fit. In some sports, such as horse racing , the main goal of the entrants is to win individual purses , and there is little or no ranking or competition outside winning certain major races. A small amount of league organization may be imposed on these non-league sports by way of a series or tournament tying several individual events together, such as

666-428: Is to play an unbalanced schedule, with some teams playing additional games against some other teams; this is the way Major League Soccer has traditionally been scheduled, with the additional games being played against local rivals. Some leagues also break the league into subunits, often known as divisions and conferences , each of which may itself play a balanced or unbalanced schedule. A "central venue league" (CVL)

703-624: Is used primarily in Australia, Canada, and the United States is a closed model which always has the same teams playing, with occasional admission of expansion teams and relocation of existing teams . There is no team movement between the higher major league and the lower minor leagues . In many of these closed-model leagues in Canada and the United States, they are divided into subdivisions on historical or geographical lines. These may be referred to as conferences or divisions . For example,

740-427: Is used similarly in the United States to describe baseball teams that play in leagues other than those sanctioned by Major League Baseball . These teams do play in leagues and should not be confused with barnstorming teams that play truly non-league schedules. Individual sports often use an alternative type of league organization where competitors are ranked against each other. In the simplest cases, such as boxing ,

777-582: The American League (AL) and the older National League (NL). They are titled leagues rather than conferences for several reasons. The National League predates the American by 25 years and was considered a "major" league in comparison to its early competitors, and in a sense it simply extended this recognition to the AL, the only league of similar financial clout. In addition, the leagues played no interlocking schedule of any kind until 1995, and then added only

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814-496: The NHL , AHL and ECHL . Gridiron football does not operate on a league system. Different professional leagues play by very different sets of rules in different seasons (the NFL plays 11-a-side on a 100-yard field in autumn and early winter, the CFL uses 12-a-side on a 110-yard field in summer and early fall, while arena football and the minor indoor leagues each play 8-a-side on

851-845: The National Football League (NFL) is divided into the National Football Conference and American Football Conference ; the latter conference was formed largely from the remnants of the American Football League after it merged with the NFL , though it now contains three original NFL teams and three expansion teams. Both the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) are divided into Eastern and Western Conferences. The conferences in

888-534: The Triple Crown . Even in team sports that normally use a traditional league format, some teams often exist outside any league; these teams are generally known as barnstorming teams and either schedule games against local professional or amateur competition or bring their own competition, such as the barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters did when they toured with the Washington Generals . As with

925-581: The Globetrotters, barnstorming teams sometimes emphasize spectacle over athletic competition. In Europe, the term "cup competition" is used to describe single elimination or knock-out tournaments, where the pairing of teams in each round is determined by a "draw" (see for example, the FA Cup in England), to distinguish it from league competition, in which every club in the league or division plays

962-424: The NFL, NBA, and NHL are further divided into subsets, all of which are called divisions . These are geographically based, and teams play their divisional opponents more than any others, and then play the other clubs in their conference more than their non-conference opponents. Baseball has a unique nomenclature, with " Major League Baseball " (MLB) the name of the overall grouping of 30 teams in two "major leagues",

999-614: The Swedish Football Association website for Damallsvenskan . Games from the 2022 Damallsvenskan are broadcast on the Swedish sports television channel, Viaplay . International viewers can subscribe on Fanseat . The list of Swedish champions (1973–87) and winners of the Damallsvenskan (1988–present): From 1988 to 1992 a play-off round was played. The top four teams after the regular season played

1036-482: The conference, as other sports leagues do, but the individual schools also schedule a certain number of "non-conference" games that are organized independently between two schools in different conferences, or between a conference team and a non-conference team. Also, national championships in some college sports are determined by a ranking or playoff system that is independent of the individual conferences. Most major team sports play some form of round-robin schedule, where

1073-490: The end of the season, with the teams qualifying for the playoffs based on their performance during the season. In Europe, "cup" competitions are more common, with all teams playing in a single-elimination tournament that takes place during and parallel with the regular season. League system A league system is a hierarchy of leagues in a sport. They are often called pyramids , due to their tendency to split into an increasing number of regional divisions further down

1110-570: The goal is for each team to play a relatively balanced schedule with each other team in the league or in its league subdivision. Within this structure, there are a few significant differences between leagues, a few of which are set forth below. The simplest way to organize a sports league, and still one of the most common, is in a double round-robin format where each team plays each other team twice, once at home and once away. This ensures that every team plays an equally difficult schedule and that no team has undue home field advantage . This organization

1147-463: The other teams a pre-determined number of times in a season, usually on a home and away basis. Further, in England, the term non-league football is used for historical reasons to describe association football teams that play in organized leagues, but not in the English Football League or Premier League , the two highest levels of competition in that sport in that country. Independent baseball

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1184-464: The playoffs. While round-robin and modified round-robin competitions are the most common form of league organization, there are a number of ways to organize a sporting competition, almost all of which may be described as a "league". Many sports organizations fall on a continuum between a total lack of organization, as in a pick-up game, and a formal league such as is common at the highest level of professional team sports. The simplest form of competition

1221-826: The rankings mean little and the major competition is to crown a champion in a title fight. In other sports, the rankings and leaderboards gain importance when they are used in seeding tournaments. In some sports, points are assigned to results at individual competitions, and the resulting points are used to generate a season rankings and determine the season champion. While not usually referred to as "leagues", but "tours" or "series", these season-long competitions with set events are very similar to league structures in team sports. Examples of this are motorsport , tennis , golf , skiing , beach volleyball and rugby sevens . American college sports are traditionally organized into groups of teams known as conferences . These conferences ordinarily keep league tables and crown champions within

1258-539: The separation between the two, which means there are two MVPs , two Cy Young Award winners, etc. Since its name is constructed differently—a description of the status of two leagues rather than the title of one—it is common to hear "MLB" without "the" attached to it, as in "the most home runs in MLB this year", since one would not say "the Major League Baseball". The common thread between all sports leagues

1295-468: The system. League systems of some sort are used in many sports in many countries. In association football , rugby union , rugby league and Gaelic games , league systems are usually connected by the process of promotion and relegation , in which teams from a lower division who finish at the top of the standings in their league are promoted (advanced to the next level of the system) while teams who finish lowest in their division are relegated (move down to

1332-480: The term league in sports and for sports organizations are misnomers as the term league relates specifically to the form of organization, requiring persons or bodies to be in league together. A sport competition owned and controlled other than by its participant players, teams or clubs is not a league. In many cases, organizations that function as leagues are described using a different term, such as association , conference , division , leaderboard , or series . This

1369-505: Was played in 1973. Since its inception, the Damallsvenskan has featured star players like Marta , Daniela , Nadine Angerer , Lisa De Vanna , Hope Solo , Christen Press , and Hanna Ljungberg . It's also the first women's domestic league to turn professional since its inception in 1988. The top three teams in the Damallsvenskan qualify for the UEFA Women's Champions League . Note: According to each club information page at

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