Relocation of professional sports teams

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Relocation of professional sports teams, is a common practice in North America but not at all common in Europe. It typically involves a franchise moving from one city to another.

Contents

[edit] Franchise relocations in North America

[edit] Background

Unlike most professional sport systems worldwide, sports organizations in North America generally lack a system of promotion and relegation in which poorly performing teams are replaced with teams that do well in lower-level leagues. North America lacks comprehensive governing bodies whose authority extends from the amateur to the highest levels of a given sport. A city wishing to get a team in a major professional sports league can wait for the league to expand and award new franchises. However, as of 2006 each of the major leagues has 30 or 32 franchises. Many current owners believe this is the optimal size for a major league, and with the possible exception of the NFL's desire to return to Los Angeles, North America's second largest market, none of the major leagues are believed to be imminently considering expansion. Another tactic which worked in each of the major sports in the past was forming a rival league which could then merge with the existing major league, attain major league status in its own right and/or force the major league to expand (the 1960s American Football League is the most prominent example of a successful rival league, having achieved each of the three goals listed above in reverse order). However, given present market and financial conditions a serious attempt to form a rival league would likely require hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in investment and initial losses with almost no chance of success. So long as leagues choose not to expand and/or reject a city's application, the only realistic recourse is to convince the owner of an existing team to move it.

Owners usually move teams because of weak fan support or because another city offers a bigger local market or a more financially lucrative stadium/arena deal. Governments may offer lucrative deals to team owners to attract or retain a team. For example, to attract the National Football League's Cleveland Browns in 1995, the state of Maryland agreed to build a new stadium and allow the team to use it rent-free and keep all parking, advertising and concession revenue. (This move proved so controversial that the team was renamed the Baltimore Ravens and the NFL awarded Cleveland a new franchise, which took the Browns name and official lineage.)

The relocation of sports teams is often controversial. Opponents criticize owners for leaving behind faithful fans and governments for spending millions of dollars of tax money on attracting teams. However, since sports teams in the USA are generally treated like any other business under antitrust law, there is little sports leagues can do to prevent teams from flocking to the highest bidders. Major League Baseball, unique among the major professional sports leagues, has an exemption from antitrust laws won through a Supreme Court decision but nonetheless has allowed several teams to change cities.

Newer sports leagues tend to have more-transient franchises than more-established, "major" leagues, but in the mid-1990s, several NFL and National Hockey League teams moved to other cities, and the threat of a move pushed cities with major-league teams in any sport to build new stadiums and arenas. Critics referred to the movement of teams to the highest-bidding city as "franchise free agency."

[edit] List of relocations

The following charts list movements of franchises in the modern eras of the major North American sports leagues. It does not include:

  • Moves within a city, which have occurred many times in all major leagues.
  • Short-distance city-suburb moves (i.e. Los Angeles to Anaheim, both of which are in the same urban agglomeration)
  • Team moves that happened before the organization joined its current league.
  • Moves of teams that as of 2006 no longer exist. There were many such moves in the early years of the NFL in particular.

[edit] Major League Baseball

[edit] National Football League

[edit] National Basketball Association

[edit] National Hockey League

[edit] Team relocation in Europe

In Europe, this sort of move is very rare. This is due to the different relationship between clubs and their league in the European system of Professional sports league organization. In most sports, teams can be relegated from their current league down to a lower one, or promoted up a league to the one above. Membership of the national top division is gained and held through excellent performance — and lost when performance slips. This arrangement is equally true for every level in the Football pyramid. The pyramid system inevitably leads to nearly every sizable city or town having at least a semi-pro team (or teams) that will have likely have secured the loyalty of the town's fanbase, thus making the town unattractive to anyone looking to move a team there even if it plays in a higher division. Thus, any person or city wanting a top-league team can invest in the already-existing lower-level team that will likely be there and hope the team can advance to the top division. Wigan Athletic and Gretna are examples of teams in England and Scotland, respectively, that have risen up the pyramid dramatically due to investment. Additionally, the background of many clubs in these leagues is of social and community organisations rather than a commercial venture by an owner or owners which is why teams are usually referred to as clubs regardless of their current ownership structure. Whilst teams are now commonly privatised and often associated heavily with high profile owners, this historical basis may be why even private concerns are reluctant to move.

[edit] United Kingdom

  • In England, one recent case of relocation was highly controversial. Wimbledon F.C.'s Norwegian owners moved the club from London to Milton Keynes, a town 70 miles away and one of the few large towns (due to its status as a new town constructed in the 1970s) without a league football team. For doing so, they were widely criticised by the footballing community, who began to refer disparagingly to the club as "Franchise F.C.": though this isn't technically 'franchising', the fact of continuing to call it Wimbledon (when it was nowhere near) made it reminiscent of US practice. London fans created a new local team, AFC Wimbledon; Wimbledon F.C. went into administration, was rescued and subsequently relaunched with a new name, Milton Keynes Dons F.C.
  • Another similar, but less well known move, is that from South Shields. In 1973, South Shields F.C. became Gateshead United F.C. after a move between the two towns that are 10 miles apart — repeating a similar migration in 1930.
  • More recently in Scotland, Meadowbank Thistle, a struggling Edinburgh club controversially relocated in 1995 to the new town of Livingston, 10 miles away. Its fortunes improved and it won the Scottish League Cup in 2004.
  • Also in Scotland, Airdrie United F.C. was the controversial 2002 reincarnation of bankrupt Clydebank F.C., following the earlier bankruptcy of Airdrieonians F.C. Whether this 'counts' as a relocation or franchise is slightly debatable, as Clydebank were being evicted from the league anyway. However, Airdrie United effectively 'bought' their league place.

Other examples of relocation out of the original district are slightly more common. In certain cases, the club has moved within a conurbation:

  • Arsenal moved from Woolwich in south London to Highbury in north London in 1913.
  • Grimsby Town play in the town of Cleethorpes, a town to the north of Grimsby that has been absorbed by the former's outward growth
  • Partick Thistle is a Scottish football club that moved from the Glasgow district of Partick to that of Maryhill but retains its name.
  • Also in Glasgow, Clyde F.C. moved from Shawfield Stadium near Rutherglen in the South East of the city to the town of Cumbernauld.
  • Horwich moved from their infamous Grundy Hill ground, with a 12 foot slope from corner to corner, and relocated to Leigh. Despite the move, it was promised that the club would retain its original name until at least the end of its centenary season but this never happened. The summer of the move, the club was renamed Leigh RMI and the team changed its kit, badge, colours, name and neglected its history. A new Horwich RMI then started, playing in Eccles and is soon to return home to the town, yards away from where Grundy Hill once stood.
  • Wimbledon, before the move to Milton Keynes, had previously left their home borough of Merton for Selhurst Park. Although this was a supposedly temporary move, it had lasted 12 years by the time of their migration.

[edit] Team Relocations in Australia

Two of the major professional sporting leagues in Australia are the Australian Football League and National Rugby League. Both competitions were originally based in one city and expanded to a national level, as such there have been team relocations, mergers and closures in both leagues. As in North America, promotion and relegation does not exist.

[edit] AFL

The AFL is the national competition in Australian rules football and grew out of the mostly suburban Melbourne based Victorian Football League competition.

[edit] Major Interstate Relocations

[edit] Minor Relocations

[edit] Home Ground Only Relocations

[edit] Secondary Interstate 'Home's

Some Melbourne based clubs began selling home games interstate in the late 1990s.

[edit] NRL

The NRL is the national competition in rugby league and was born out of the Sydney based Australian Rugby League and New South Wales Rugby League competitions. In 1987, the Western Suburbs Magpies agreed to relocate from its (inner) Western suburbs base to the outer south-western Macarthur district. In 1999, they merged with the remaining Inner Western team, the Balmain Tigers, (both teams having been established in 1908) to become Wests Tigers. The North Sydney Bears attempted to move from their Northern Suburbs base to the swiftly growing Central Coast region just north of Sydney in 1999, however problems with construction at the proposed home ground now known as Bluetongue Central Coast Stadium meant that the Bears continued to play home matches in a variety of Sydney grounds before being forced into a merger with the Manly Sea Eagles as the Northern Eagles. The merged clubs played home matches at both the Central Coast and Manly's home ground of Brookvale Oval, but after the bears were expelled from the partnership, poor crowds at the former location led to a reversion to the name of Manly and games played exclusively at Brookvale Oval. Subsequently one of the owners of Bluetongue Central Coast Stadium, John Singleton, has attempted to lure another club to play there, notably the South Sydney Rabbitohs whom have experienced poor crowds at their new home ground of Telstra Stadium.

Other clubs have relocated to new home grounds but have retained their original base.

[edit] External links

[edit] See also

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