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86-524: EHC Biel played in lower Swiss ice hockey leagues until they got promoted in the second-tier Swiss League in 1960. In 1975 EHC Biel won the Swiss League -title and got promoted to the first level, the National League . During the 20 years between 1975 and 1995 the club won three national championships in 1978, 1981 and 1983 under three coaches (František Vanek, Ed Reigle, Kent Ruhnke). After

172-411: A League system , based on their performance over a season . Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes called open leagues. In a system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in a lower division are promoted to a 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. During

258-578: A salary cap in an effort to maintain a level of parity between franchises. Football in England developed a very different system from that in North America, and it has been adopted for football in most other European countries, as well as to many other sports founded in Europe and played across the world. The features of the system are: European football clubs are members both of a league and of

344-476: A "ladder" that uses a promotion and relegation system, where individual players and pre-made teams can be promoted and relegated during the first few weeks of a league season, which generally lasts around 11 weeks, with promotion and relegation taking place based on a skill rating, which is in turn based on wins and losses. However, this form of matchmaking is not typically used for StarCraft II e-sports tournaments, which have various kinds of structures depending on

430-400: A closed membership system and do not have promotion and relegation . It is organized in a way that assures the teams' continued existence in the league from year to year. On occasion a league may decide to grow by admitting a new expansion team into the league. Most of the teams in the four major North American leagues were created as part of a planned league expansion or through the merger of

516-651: A club in the top league until a local club plays well enough to be promoted into the Premiership. Famously, the French Ligue 1 lacked a team from Paris, France's capital and largest city, for some years. Likewise, Berlin clubs in the Bundesliga have been rare, due to the richer clubs being all located in the former West Germany. As well as having no right to being in a certain tier, a club also has no territorial rights to its own area. A successful new team in

602-730: A decade (concluded 1891). In 1903 it accepted parity with the American League and the formation of the organization that would become Major League Baseball . The peace agreement between the NL and the AL did not change the "closed shop" of top-level baseball but entrenched it by including the AL in the shop. This was further confirmed by the Supreme Court's 1922 ruling in Federal Baseball Club v. National League , giving MLB

688-619: A few differences varying from country to country. A similar situation exists in countries in Central America and the Caribbean, where football and baseball share several close markets. A major factor in the development of the North American closed membership system during the 19th Century was the distances between cities, with some teams separated by half of the North American continent, resulting in high traveling costs. When

774-714: A geographical location can come to dominate the incumbents. In Munich , for example, TSV 1860 München were initially more successful than the city's current biggest team Bayern München . As of the current 2024–25 season, London has 13 teams in the top four league levels , including seven Premier League teams. Clubs may be sold privately to new owners at any time, but this does not happen often where clubs are based on community membership and agreement. Such clubs require agreement from members who, unlike shareholders of corporations, have priorities other than money when it comes to their football club such as tradition or local identity. For similar reasons, relocation of clubs to other cities

860-459: A given season compete in a tournament, with the winner being crowned champion of the league for that season. These have their roots in the long travel distances common in US and Canadian sports; to cut down on travel, leagues are typically divided into geographic divisions and feature unbalanced schedules with teams playing more matches against opponents in the same division. Due to this, not all teams face

946-640: A governing body. In the case of England, all competitive football clubs are members of The Football Association , while the top 20 teams also are members of the Premier League , a separate organization. The 72 teams in the three levels below the Premier League are members of still another body, the English Football League . The FA operates the national football team and tournaments that involve teams from different leagues (except

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1032-493: A high ranked club in their native city must buy a local club as it stands and work it up through the divisions, usually by hiring better talent. There have been some cases where existing owners have chosen to relocate out of a difficult market, to better facilities, or to realize the market value of the land that the current stadium is built upon (A famous example being the Relocation of Wimbledon F.C. to Milton Keynes ). As in

1118-579: A legal monopoly over professional baseball in the US. The other major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada have followed the MLB model of a franchise based system. In contrast to baseball's NABBP , the first governing body in English football survived the onset of professionalism, which it formally accepted in 1885. Perhaps the great geographical concentration of population and

1204-499: A live television program. The addition of a semi-final in 2004 allowed for more than 26 songs, but in 2008 automatic qualification of the previous year's top 10 to the final was removed. In Brazilian carnival's samba school contest, a similar system is adopted, with the schools from lower divisions, or "groups", able to be promoted into the highest tier, being currently called the "Special Group" ( Grupo Especial ). Schools parade in order of groups and ranking from last year contest, with

1290-694: A lower level, like independent professional leagues in American baseball today). For decades, teams finishing near the bottom of The Football League's lowest division(s) faced re-election rather than automatic relegation. But the principle of promotion and relegation had been firmly established, and it eventually expanded to the football pyramid in place today. Meanwhile, The FA has remained English football's overall governing body, retaining amateur and professional clubs rather than breaking up. Promotion and relegation has been used in several eSports leagues. Blizzard Entertainment 's video game StarCraft II has

1376-545: A major league team, or affiliated with one, and utilized for player development. For example, Major League Baseball operates Minor League Baseball . The minor clubs do not move up or down in the hierarchy by on-field success or failure. Professional ice hockey has a system somewhat similar to baseball's (without as many levels), while the National Basketball Association operates a single NBA G League . The National Football League does not have

1462-501: A minor league system as of 2024 but it has operated or affiliated with minor leagues in the 1930s , 1940s , 1960s , 1990s , and the early 2000s and invested in one in the late 2000s . Men's soccer has multiple minor leagues. The United Soccer League operates two of these, the second-level USL Championship and the third-level USL League One . Major League Soccer operates the third-level MLS Next Pro , consisting primarily of reserve sides of MLS teams. Another third-level league,

1548-501: A number of seasons. Originally the previous two seasons, and later three or four seasons, clubs avoid relegation by having a high coefficient, which is obtained by dividing the points achieved in the last three seasons by the number of matches played in the same period. Teams with the lowest points coefficient at the end of the season are relegated to the Primera B Nacional . This system has both positive and negative aspects, since all of

1634-574: A place in the league year after year would permit the owners to monopolize fan bases in their exclusive territories and give them the confidence to invest in infrastructure, such as improved ballparks. In turn, those would guarantee the revenues to support traveling halfway across a continent for games. Indeed, after its first season, the new league banked on its still doubtful stability by expelling its members in New York and Philadelphia (the two largest cities), because they had breached agreements to visit

1720-467: A playoff tournament of the teams that finished third through sixth. In the 2011–12 season, the teams Wolverhampton Wanderers , Blackburn , and Bolton were relegated to the Championship. They were replaced by Reading , Southampton , and West Ham . The two former teams had won automatic promotion, while the latter occupied the last promotion spot when they defeated Cardiff 5–0 on aggregate in

1806-667: A rival league. Only one team in the National Hockey League (the Montreal Canadiens ), for example, existed before becoming part of the NHL. The rest of the teams were created ex novo as expansion teams or as charter members of the World Hockey Association , which merged with the NHL in 1979. American and Canadian sports leagues typically have a " playoff " system where the best teams in

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1892-529: A similar system where in the top eight finishers of one of the bi-annual Majors are designated with the "Legends" seed and automatically qualified for the next Major tournament. The best six eliminated teams in the second stage (known as New Legends Stage ) of the Major would play a "qualifying" stage (known as New Challengers Stage ) with another ten teams from the Minors qualifying tournaments in order to compete at

1978-427: 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. The term league has many different meanings in different areas around

2064-545: Is a fact that the relegated schools have more to lose nowadays, such as access to the Cidade do Samba ("Samba City") facilities. There have been reported several interferences on the contest's final result, especially when traditional schools are involved. From 1957 to 1966 and from 1983 to the present, the Argentine First Division has used a system called Promedios based on the average performance over

2150-442: Is a single business entity, with each team owner-operator being a league shareholder, and all player contracts are held by the league. Also similar to MLS, MLR uses playing rules set by its sport's international governing body. However, MLR teams do not play competitive matches against teams from other leagues, and there is currently no cup competition in U.S. rugby similar to soccer's U.S. Open Cup. The MLR league structure also follows

2236-406: Is generally used to determine membership of leagues. Most commonly, a pre-determined number of teams that finish at the bottom of a league or division are automatically dropped down, or relegated, to a lower level for the next season. They are replaced by teams who are promoted from that lower tier either by finishing with the best records or by winning a playoff. In England, in the 2010–2011 season,

2322-418: Is very rare. This is mostly because virtually all cities and towns in Europe have a football club of some sort, the size and strength of the club usually relative to the town's size and importance. Buying an existing top-flight club and moving it to a new location is problematic, as the supporters of the town's original club are unlikely to switch allegiance to an interloper. This means anyone wanting ownership of

2408-713: Is widely used in football around the world, notably in Africa and Latin America as well as Europe. The most notable variation has developed in Latin America where many countries have two league seasons per year , which scheduling allows because many Latin American nations lack a national cup competition. Another notable variation is the Brazilian system of two parallel league systems each with its own separate promotion and relegation, one national and another on state-level,

2494-510: The 1999 Conmebol Cup . The Uruguayan First Division adopted the same system in 2016. Paraguayan Primera División and Colombian Categoría Primera A also use this same system. Also, a similar system was used only in the 1999 edition of Campeonato Brasileiro Série A . Notes Bibliography Professional sports league organization Professional sports leagues are organized in numerous ways. The two most significant types are one that developed in Europe, characterized by

2580-431: The 2011 Copa Sudamericana . This system forces the newly promoted teams to fight relegation from the very beginning of the season. It also allows teams with a low budget with previous good campaigns to compete in international competitions without having to prioritize the championship to avoid relegation; examples of this are Club Atlético Lanús , winner of the 2013 Copa Sudamericana , or Club Atlético Talleres , winner of

2666-409: The 2012–13 NHL lockout , Biel were strengthen by the acquisitions of NHL All-Stars Tyler Seguin and Patrick Kane . They were joined by future NHL players, goalkeeper Reto Berra and winger Nikolaj Ehlers . Updated 30 September 2024. Promotion and relegation Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in

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2752-923: The 2015 season . Another example of a franchised league in European sport is ice hockey 's Kontinental Hockey League , centered mainly in Russia with teams also located in Belarus , China , and Kazakhstan . Rugby union also has a European-based franchised league in the United Rugby Championship (historically the Celtic League, Pro12, and Pro14). It was founded with teams in the Celtic nations of Ireland , Scotland , and Wales , and later added teams outside those nations, first from Italy and then South Africa . The promotion-relegation system

2838-817: The EFL Cup , operated by the English Football League and open to its own teams and those in the Premier League). In conjunction with FIFA and other countries' governing bodies, it also sets the playing rules and the rules under which teams can sell players' contracts to other clubs. The rules or Laws of the Game are determined by the International Football Association Board . The Premier League negotiates television contracts for its games. However, although

2924-502: The English Football League ) was founded in 1888, it was not intended to be a rival of The Football Association but rather the top competition within it. The new league was not universally accepted as England's top-calibre competition right away. To help win fans of clubs outside The Football League, its circuit was not closed; rather, a system was established in which the worst teams at the end of each season would need to win re-election against any clubs wishing to join. A rival league,

3010-842: The Football Alliance , was formed in 1889. When the two merged in 1892, it was not on equal terms; rather, most of the Alliance clubs were put in the new Football League Second Division , whose best teams would move up to the First Division in place of its worst teams. Another merger, with the top division of the Southern League in 1920, helped form the Third Division in similar fashion. Since then no new league has been formed of non-league clubs to try to achieve parity with The Football League (only to play at

3096-424: The Football Alliance , was then formed in 1889. When the two merged in 1892, it was not on equal terms; rather, most of the Alliance clubs were put in the new Football League Second Division , whose best teams would move up to the First Division in place of its worst teams. Another merger, with the top division of the Southern League in 1920, helped form the Third Division in similar fashion, firmly establishing

3182-532: The Italian Football Federation has relegated clubs found to have been involved in match fixing . This occurred most recently in 2006, when the season's initial champions Juventus were relegated to Serie B, and two other teams were initially relegated but then restored to Serie A after appeal (see 2006 Serie A scandal ). As of the 2020s, empirical evidence increasingly pointed to the conclusion that promotion and relegation, standing alone,

3268-535: The National Independent Soccer Association , is totally independent. None have a promotion/relegation system, although many teams have moved between levels, either by invitation or by choice. To prevent conflicts of interest , most North American sports leagues that operate on the franchise system do not allow individual owners to hold an interest in more than one franchise at once. Most such leagues also use revenue sharing and

3354-457: The National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs was established in 1876, its founders judged that in order to prosper, they must make baseball's highest level of competition a "closed shop", with a strict limit on the number of teams, and with each member having exclusive local rights. This guarantee of a place in the league year after year would permit each club owner to monopolize fan bases in their respective exclusive territories and give them

3440-612: The New Legends Stage . Starting in 2020, however, this was changed to a Regional Major Ranking system, at first a points-based system which was used for ESL One Rio 2020 and PGL Stockholm 2021 (The top rankings from the ESL One Rio 2020 RMRs were turned into PGL Stockholm 2021 points once IEM Rio was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic ) and then a series of offline qualifiers starting with PGL Antwerp 2022 , in which

3526-634: The Professional Women's Hockey League and its de facto predecessor, the Premier Hockey Federation ) or are forced to operate in the pure single-entity model when investors fail to materialize (such as the Stars Football League ). Many North American systems have a secondary or minor league but without promotion and relegation of teams between them. Often a minor league team is partly or wholly owned by

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3612-641: The UEFA Champions League , operated by the Union of European Football Associations . A Premier League team might play a league game one week, and an FA Cup game against a team from a lower-level league the next, followed by an EFL Cup game against a team in the EFL, and then a fourth game might be against a team from across Europe in the Champions League. The promotion and relegation system

3698-501: The relegation in 1995 EHC Biel had to wait 13 years until their return to the NL. After three consecutive championship victories in the second-tier Swiss League, EHC Biel was reinstated into the NL, winning the promotion/relegation best of 7 series against EHC Basel 4-0 in 2008. A strong local rivalry exists with the SCL Tigers , SC Bern , EHC Olten , and HC Ajoie . Games between these teams often attract sell-out crowds. During

3784-477: The Billie Jean King Cup) at the top and series of regional groups at a lower level. The World Groups in both use a knockout tournament format, with the first-round losers entering play-offs with winners from regional groups to avoid relegation. In international tournaments, this format allows teams from countries in which a sport is less well established to have competitive matches, while opening up

3870-652: The LCK moved away from the system in 2020. As of 2023, the Pacific Championship Series and Liga Latinoamérica are the only top-tier professional League of Legends leagues to have promotion and relegation; North America's second-tier league, the North American Challengers League, also has promotion and relegation, as do the various regional leagues in Europe, but not with the top divisions. The Counter-Strike Majors used

3956-495: The North American model of one premier league without promotion and relegation. A more rarely seen business model in North America is the pure single- entity league, typified by the two incarnations of the XFL , where there are no individual owners or investors, with all teams centrally owned and operated by the league. Many upstart leagues begin their existence as pure single-entity leagues before they secure investors for teams (such as

4042-536: The North American system due to American influence on the game. In cricket , the Indian Premier League , launched in 2008, also operates on this system. The Super League , which is the top level of rugby league in the United Kingdom and France (and included a Canadian team for several years), was run on a franchise basis from 2009 to 2014 , but returned to a promotion-relegation model with

4128-641: The Pacific islands as a whole (mainly Samoa and Tonga) but is based in New Zealand. Super Rugby also formerly featured franchises in South Africa, Japan, and Argentina. In east Asia, places such as Japan , China , South Korea and Taiwan have a particular differentiation among leagues: "European" sports such as football and rugby use promotion and relegation, while "American" sports such as baseball and basketball use franchising and minor leagues, with

4214-532: The Torneo Apertura in 2009 and last place in the next championship, the Torneo Clausura 2010, without being relegated until the end of the Torneo Apertura 2010 with a second-to-last place finish. Similarly, River Plate finished last in the Torneo Apertura 2008 and after two bad campaigns and a mediocre one was relegated in the Torneo Clausura 2011 despite being in fifth place and qualifying for

4300-722: The U.S., team relocations have been controversial as supporters of the club will protest at its loss. Leagues around the world generally follow one or the other of these systems with some variation. Most sport leagues in Australia are similar to the North American model, using post-season playoffs and no relegation, but without geographical divisions, with the most notable examples being the Australian Football League ( Aussie rules ) and National Rugby League ( rugby league ). Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan uses

4386-480: The asset value of their shares in the club collapse. Some leagues offer a " parachute payment " to its relegated teams for the following years in order to protect them from bankruptcy. If a team is promoted back to the higher tier the following year then the parachute payment for the second season is distributed among the teams of the lower division. There is of course a corresponding bonanza for promoted clubs. The league does not choose which cities are to have teams in

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4472-441: The better ranked inside a group and the higher-tier groups having the privilege of going latter (this means the team has the opportunity of fixing issues with costumes and allegorical floats as well as more rehearsal time). The number of promoted and relegated schools, four until 1997, has been diminishing as time passes, becoming two from 1998 to 2007 and being only one nowadays. There has never been an official reason for that, but it

4558-429: The boundary between the feeder leagues may have to transfer from one feeder league to another to maintain numerical balance. The system is said to be the defining characteristic of the "European" form of professional sports league organization . Promotion and relegation have the effect of allowing the maintenance of a hierarchy of leagues and divisions, according to the relative strength of their teams. They also maintain

4644-444: The club can not move underperforming players on, or second, the club is gambling on being promoted back straight away and is prepared to take a financial loss for one or two seasons to do so. Some leagues (most notably English football's Premier League ) offer " parachute payments " to its relegated teams for the following year(s). The payouts are higher than the prize money received by some non-relegated teams and are designed to soften

4730-492: The competition only by a vote of current members; typically, a new place is put up for bid by would-be owners. The "franchise system" was introduced in baseball with the formation of the National League in 1876 and later adopted by the other North American leagues. Although member teams are corporate entities separate from their leagues, they operate only under league auspices. North American teams do not play competitive games against outside opponents. The leagues operate in

4816-409: The confidence to invest in infrastructure, such as improved ballparks. This in turn would guarantee the revenues needed to support traveling across the continent. In contrast, the shorter distances between urban areas in England allowed more clubs to develop large fan bases without incurring the same travel costs as in North America. When The Football League, now known as the English Football League ,

4902-472: The corresponding short distances between urban centres was crucial. Certainly it provided the opportunity for more clubs' developing large fan bases without incurring great travel costs. Professional football did not gain acceptance until after the turn of the 20th century in most of Southern England . The earliest league members travelled only through the Midlands and North . When The Football League (now

4988-490: The division below. Such variations usually cause a "knock-on" effect through the lower divisions. For example, in 1995 the Premier League voted to reduce its numbers by two and achieved the desired change by relegating four teams instead of the usual three, whilst allowing only two promotions from Football League Division One . Even in the absence of such extraordinary circumstances, the pyramid-like nature of most European sports league systems can still create knock-on effects at

5074-477: The earliest American sport to develop professional leagues, the National Association of Base Ball Players (NABBP) was established in 1857 as a national governing body for the game. In many respects, it would resemble England's Football Association when founded in 1863. Both espoused strict amateurism in their early years and welcomed hundreds of clubs as members. Baseball's National Association

5160-419: The financial hit that clubs take whilst dropping out of the Premier League. However, in many cases, these parachute payments just serve to inflate the costs of competing for promotion among the lower division clubs as newly relegated teams retain a financial advantage. In some countries and at certain levels, teams in line for promotion may have to satisfy certain non-playing conditions in order to be accepted by

5246-478: The financial value of such games in terms of ticket sales and media rights . This explained why in the 2020s, association football leagues were collectively bringing in annually only about two times the revenue of the National Football League ( the wealthiest sports league in the world ), even though association football had eight times the number of fans worldwide as American football . It

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5332-549: The four western clubs at the end of the season. The NL's dominance of baseball was challenged several times after its first few years, but only by entire leagues. Eight clubs, the established norm for a national league, was a prohibitively high threshold for a new venture. Two challengers succeeded beyond the short-term, with the National League fighting off a challenge from the American Association after

5418-406: The higher league, such as financial solvency, stadium capacity, and facilities. If these are not satisfied, a lower-ranked team may be promoted in their place, or a team in the league above may be saved from relegation. While the primary purpose of the promotion and relegation system is to maintain competitive balance, it may also be used as a disciplinary tool in special cases. On several occasions,

5504-678: The importance of games played by many low-ranked teams near the end of the season, which may be at risk of relegation. In contrast, the final games of a low-ranked US or Canadian team serve little purpose, and in fact losing may be beneficial to such teams because they offer a better position in the next year's draft . Although not intrinsic to the system, problems can occur due to the differing monetary payouts and revenue-generating potential that different divisions provide to their clubs. For example, financial hardship has sometimes occurred in leagues where clubs do not reduce their wage bill once relegated. This usually occurs for one of two reasons: first,

5590-421: The matches played for the championship in the last seasons are included in the coefficient for the clubs. Teams have an incentive to score points in every match of the season, meaning teams that are not challenging for the title or fighting relegation in the current season want to win even in the final matches to reduce the risk of relegation in the next season; examples are Club Atlético Banfield being champion of

5676-444: The national league would be the dominating competition in which a club might participate, there are many non-league fixtures a club might play in a given year. In European football there are national cup competitions, which are single elimination knock-out tournaments, are played every year and all the clubs in the league participate. Also, the best performing clubs from the previous year may participate in pan-European tournaments such as

5762-644: The organizer, the most important being the ESL Pro Tour as of 2021 . Most professional League of Legends leagues like the League of Legends Championship Series and League of Legends Champions Korea used a promotion and relegation system, although the LCS moved away from this in 2018 for North America LCS and 2019 for the European LCS (which was renamed to the League of Legends European Championship ), while

5848-539: The others as non-league or cup games, even though the separate competitions may be organized by the same governing body. Also, there is a rugby football code called rugby league , which is distinct from rugby union . Professional sports leagues in North America comprise a stipulated number of teams, known as franchises, which field one team each. The franchises have territorial rights, usually exclusive territories large enough to cover major metropolitan areas, so that they have no local rivals. New teams may enter

5934-786: The possibility of competing against higher ranked nations as a sport grows. Other international tournaments which employ promotion and relegation include the Ice Hockey World Championships , Bandy World Championships , Floorball World Championships , the UEFA Nations League , the CONCACAF Nations League , the World Cricket League and the European Team Championships in athletics. In baseball,

6020-612: The pyramid structure normally found in football, but instead follows the tradition of Australian sports having a franchise model and a post-season playoff system. This model better suits a country with a few important central locations where a sport needs to ensure there is a team playing with no risk of relegation. Likewise, the American franchise model is used by rugby union's Super Rugby , which features 12 non-European franchises. Australia and New Zealand have five franchises each; one franchise represents Fiji but currently plays most of its "home" games in Australia; and one franchise represents

6106-404: The regional level. For example, in a higher league with a large geographical footprint and multiple feeder leagues each representing smaller geographical regions, should most or all of the relegated teams in the higher division come from one particular region then the number of teams to be promoted or relegated from each of the feeder leagues may have to be adjusted, or one or more teams playing near

6192-445: The same opponents, and some teams may not meet during a regular season at all. This results in teams with identical records that have faced different opponents differing numbers of times, making team records alone an imperfect measure of league supremacy. Major League Rugby , which began play in 2018 as the second attempt to launch a professional rugby union competition in the U.S., has a business structure identical to that of MLS. It

6278-615: The same teams from year to year, with occasional admission of expansion teams and relocation of existing teams , and with no team movement between the major league and minor leagues . The number of teams exchanged between the divisions is almost always identical. Exceptions occur when the higher division wishes to change the size of its membership, or has lost one or more of clubs (to financial insolvency or expulsion, for example) and wishes to restore its previous membership size, in which case fewer teams are relegated from that division, or (less often) more teams are accepted for promotion from

6364-469: The same teams play both leagues each year. The European model is also used in Europe even when the sports were founded in America, showing that the league system adopted is not determined by the sport itself, but more on the tradition of sports organization in that region. Sports such as basketball in Spain and Lithuania use promotion and relegation . In the same vein, Australia's A-League Men does not use

6450-445: The season, teams that are high enough in the league table that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the promotion zone , and those at the bottom are in the relegation zone ( colloquially the drop zone or facing the drop ). An alternate system of league organization, used primarily in Australia, Canada, Singapore, and the United States, is a closed model based on licensing or franchises . This maintains

6536-466: The semifinals, and defeated Blackpool 2–1 at the final in Wembley Stadium. The system originated in England in 1888 when twelve clubs decided to create a professional Football League . It then expanded by merging with the Football Alliance in 1892, with the majority of the Alliance teams occupying the lower Second Division , due to the divergent strengths of the teams. As this differential

6622-489: The teams Birmingham City , Blackpool and West Ham United were relegated from the Premier League to the Football League Championship , the second level of English football. They were replaced by the top two teams from the second level, Queens Park Rangers and Norwich City , both of which won automatic promotion, as well as Swansea City (a Welsh club that plays in the English system), which won

6708-627: The teams from the Legends Stage (Now known as the Elimination Stage ) from the previous Major automatically qualify for their RMRs and are joined by online qualifiers. From 1993 until 2003, the Eurovision Song Contest used various systems of relegation to reconcile the number of countries wishing to participate (approximately 30 at the time) with the number of performances allowed considering time constraints of

6794-499: The top division. For example, Leeds , the fourth-biggest city in England, saw their team, Leeds United , relegated from the Premier League to the Championship in 2004, and went without top-flight football for 16 seasons before United returned to the Premier League in 2020. During this period, United were relegated again to the third-tier League One in 2007 and returned to the Championship in 2010. Any city that loses all of its Premier League clubs to relegation will continue to be without

6880-480: The world, and its use for different concepts can make comparisons confusing. Usually a league is a group of teams that play each other during the season. It is also often used for the name of the governing body that oversees the league, as in America's Major League Baseball or England's Football League. Because most European football clubs participate in different competitions during a season, regular-season home-and-away games are often referred to as league games and

6966-431: Was founded in 1888, it was not intended to be a rival of The Football Association but rather the top competition within it. The new league was not universally accepted as England's top-calibre competition right away. To help win fans of clubs outside The Football League, a system was established in which the worst teams at the end of each season would need to win re-election against any clubs wishing to join. A rival league,

7052-408: Was insufficient to ensure adequate parity in any given game or the overall financial performance of a sport (as distinguished from individual players or teams). Most importantly, the failure of most association football leagues to adequately regulate individual player compensation (that is, by imposing salary caps ) had resulted in too many games ending in predictable blowouts , and thereby reduced

7138-419: Was not able to survive the onset of professionalism . It responded to the trend – clubs secretly paying or indirectly compensating players – by establishing a "professional" class for 1869. As quickly as 1871, most of those clubs broke away and formed the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players (NAPBBP). That new, professional Association was open at a modest fee, but it proved to be unstable. It

7224-508: Was overcome over the next five years, the winners of the Second Division went into a playoff with the worst placed team in the First Division , and if they won, were promoted into the top tier. The first club to achieve promotion was Sheffield United , which replaced the relegated Accrington F.C. Relegation often has devastating financial consequences for club owners who not only lose TV, sponsorship and gate income but may also see

7310-432: Was replaced by the National League of Professional Base Ball Clubs in 1876, which has endured to the present day. The founders of the new League judged that in order to prosper, they must make baseball's highest level of competition a franchise based system with exclusive membership, a strict limit on the number of teams, and each member having exclusive rights to their local market. The modest National League guarantee of

7396-646: Was reportedly because of such evidence that the EuroLeague adopted mandatory salary bands in September 2024. Promotion and relegation is used in international sports leagues such as in Europe , and many other parts of the world. It may be used in international sports tournaments. In tennis, the Davis Cup and Billie Jean King Cup have promotion and relegation, with a 'World Group' (split into two divisions in

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