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 metropolitan area to another, although occasionally moves between municipalities in the same conurbation are also included.

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[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. Unlike in other countries, where one may invest in a local lower-level club and through performance see that club rise to major league status, the only three ways a North American city can host a major league sports team are through league expansion, forming/joining a rival league or, most commonly, relocation.

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.

In past decades, aspiring owners whose overtures had been rejected by the established leagues would respond by forming a rival league in hopes that the existing major league will eventually agree to a merger, the new league will attain major league status in its own right and/or the established league is compelled to expand. The 1960s American Football League is perhaps the most prominent example of a successful rival league, having achieved each of the three goals listed above in reverse order. However, all major sports have had a rival league achieve at least some of these goals in the past five decades. Baseball's proposed Continental League did not play a game, but only because Major League Baseball responded to the proposal by adding teams in some of the proposed CL cities. The American Basketball Association and World Hockey Association each succeeded in getting some of their franchises accepted into the established leagues, which had both unsuccessfully attempted to cause their upstart rivals to fold outright by adding more teams.

However, given present market and financial conditions a serious attempt to form a rival league in the early 21st century would likely require hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in investment and initial losses, and even if such resources were made available the upstart league's success would be far from guaranteed, as evidenced by the failure of the WWF/NBC-backed XFL in 2001. Therefore, so long as leagues choose not to expand and/or reject a city's application, the only realistic recourse is to convince the owner(s) of an existing team to move it.

Owners usually move teams because of weak fan support or the team organization is in debt and needs an adequete population for 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] Major League Soccer

  • 2006: San Jose Earthquakes moved to Houston and became the Houston Dynamo. An MLS franchise was awarded to Lew Wolff in 2006 and will compete in MLS in 2008 as a continuation of the Earthquakes franchise.

[edit] Canadian Football 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

[edit] Football

  • In England, Wimbledon F.C.'s Norwegian owners moved the club from South London to Milton Keynes, a town more than 60 miles away and one of the few large towns (due to its status as a new town constructed in 1967) without a league football team. For doing so, they were widely criticised by the English 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 (where it was nowhere near) made it reminiscent of US practice (see "Background" above). London fans created a new local team, AFC Wimbledon; Wimbledon F.C. went into administration, was bought out of administration and subsequently relaunched with a new name, Milton Keynes Dons F.C.. Twelve years before the move to Milton Keynes, they had already left their home London borough of Merton for Selhurst Park in (the London borough of) Croydon. Although this was a supposedly temporary move, it had lasted 12 years by the time of their migration.
  • 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. (This club failed a few years later. The present Gateshead F.C. and South Shields F.C. are new clubs).
  • More recently in Scotland, Meadowbank Thistle, a struggling Edinburgh club controversially relocated in 1995 to the new town of Livingston, 19 miles away. It changed its name to Livingston F.C., its fortunes improved and it won the Scottish League Cup in 2004.
  • Also in Scotland, Airdrie United F.C. was the 2002 reincarnation of Clydebank F.C., which relocated to Airdrie following the earlier liquidation of Airdrieonians F.C..
  • Again in Scotland, Clyde F.C. moved from Shawfield Stadium (near Rutherglen in the south east of Glasgow) to the new town of Cumbernauld in 1994. They had been evicted from Shawfield in 1986. By 1990, Clyde secured an agreement to build a home of their own in the Cumbernauld, which due to shifting population patterns was by now one of the larger settlements in Scotland without senior football. They were homeless from 1986 until Broadwood Stadium was built in Cumbernauld in 1994.
  • In Northern Ireland, Belfast based Distillery FC were homeless for many seasons in the 1970s sharing grounds with other clubs until settling in Lisburn, later adding the towns name to theirs, now known as Lisburn Distillery.

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

[edit] Rugby League

In 1999, just one year after the Sheffield Eagles won the Challenge Cup, they accepted an offer from the RFL to merge with the Huddersfield Giants. The new team, Huddersfield-Sheffield Giants, played some matches in Sheffield's Don Valley Stadium and some in Huddersfield's McAlpine Stadium. However, the new team consisting of mostly ex-Sheffield players, whilst retaining the old -Giants suffix resulted in a lack of acceptance from both sets of fans (though primarily Sheffield), and the team reverted to the Huddersfield Giants name the following season, effectively a franchise of the team. A new Sheffield Eagles started from scratch that following season, and now compete at National League 1.

The same year, Gateshead Thunder, who had only been playing in the English Super League for one year, were taken over by Hull Sharks and re-branded Hull FC; the merged club moved in entirety to Kingston upon Hull. As with Sheffield, a new Gateshead Thunder team was set up by supporters of the old side to play in the National Leagues.

[edit] Italy

Football club relocation is present also practice in Italian football, especially at lower levels. Current Italian football laws allow relocation of clubs only between bordering cities. Some examples of current football clubs born as relocation of previous ones include:

  • In 2004, after Cosenza Calcio 1914 was not admitted to Serie B, a new ownership bought sports rights from then-Serie D club Castrovillari in order to permit a Cosenza franchise to play football in the upcoming season. The new club however proved to be short-lived, as it declared bankruptcy in 2007, but was promptly replaced by Fortitudo Cosenza, born as relocation of neighbouring Serie D club Rende Calcio.
  • Serie C2's Neapolis, located in Naples, was born as a relocation of Sangiuseppese, a club hailing from the neighbouring city of San Giuseppe Vesuviano.
  • In 1994, one year after the cancellation of Calcio Catania, Atletico Leonzio's chairman Franco Proto relocated his club, renaming it Atletico Catania. The club, previously located in Lentini, went on to play up to Serie C1, losing promotion to Serie B on playoffs twice before being cancelled in 2001 because of financial difficulties also related to Calcio Catania's return into professional football and the consequent drop in attendance.

More recent examples include A.C.D. Città di Vittoria, born in 2007 as merger of Serie D's Comiso with minor league club Junior Vittoria (possibly a trick in order to allow the club to legally relocate from Comiso to Vittoria). A.S.D. Pol. Libertas Acate of Serie D are a club officially settled in Acate, which however actually plays their home matches in Modica and are recognized by both fans and the regional press as Modica's club, being frequently referred to as Libertas Acate-Modica. In fact, after a takeover bid in 2006 the club left Acate to play their home matches in Modica despite the fact they were not eligible to change the "legal" home city.

[edit] Netherlands

Team relocation is very rare in the Netherlands. The most prominent case involves professional football club FC Omniworld. When 1964 Eredivisie champion and 1964-65 European Cup quarter finalist Door Wilskracht Sterk was merged into FC Amsterdam, its supporters founded amateur football club De Zwarte Schapen, named after their nickname, which translates as Black Sheep. The club quickly rose through the ranks of amateur football, eventually reaching the Hoofdklasse. After several violent incidents on the pitch and a six month suspension by the Royal Netherlands Football Association, the club moved from Amsterdam to nearby Almere (a "new town") and changed its name to Sporting Flevoland. That name was changed to FC Omniworld in the 1990s, and FC Omniworld was admitted to the Eerste Divisie for the 2005-06 season.

[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, as a result the member clubs have had to move to adjust to a changing national focus.

[edit] Major Interstate Relocations

  • South Melbourne Swans - in 1982 relocated interstate to Sydney 963 kilometres north and became the Sydney Swans. Despite early struggles, the club has more than tripled its membership since.
  • Fitzroy Lions - in 1996 the Melbourne based club merged with the interstate Brisbane Bears to become the Brisbane Lions and base itself 1669 kilometres north of its former home. Since the merger, the club has almost doubled its membership. The Fitzroy Lions club maintains a small Melbourne branch office and sponsors a spin-off amateur club based near its old home.

[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 and conducting community camp clinics to build up local supporter bases.

[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.

The Canterbury Bulldogs were formed in 1935 and played their first season without a home ground. In 1936, they settled at Belmore Oval (renamed the Belmore Sports Ground) and played home matches there until the end of the 1998 season. The Bulldogs trialled a number of alternative home grounds during the 1990s, including Concord Oval in 1994. In 1995 they changed their name to the Sydney Bulldogs played most of the Premiership winning season at Parramatta Stadium, sharing the ground with bitter rivals, the Parramatta Eels and the also renamed and relocated Sydney (Balmain) Tigers. They finally settled on Stadium Australia, the main stadium for the Sydney 2000 Olympic games as their home ground, and in 2008, relocated their training and administration facilities from Belmore to the Homebush Olympic Park Site.

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

[edit] Relocations in other parts of the world

Relocations in other countries are done according to the type of sport played and/or the predominant style of league organization, as well as individual economic circumstances. For instance, Nippon Professional Baseball in Japan (run like MLB) has relocated several franchises out of crowded markets, the most recent being Hokkaido Nippon Ham Fighters (originally based in Tokyo) and Fukuoka SoftBank Hawks (originally based in Osaka). The J. League (also in Japan but run like European football leagues) has by contrast allowed only a few teams to move out of crowded or unprofitable markets, the only prominent example being Tokyo Verdy 1969 moving from Kawasaki, Kanagawa to Tokyo. (Thespa Kusatsu actually plays in the nearby larger city of Maebashi, Gunma because Kusatsu does not have a large stadium; Verdy, F.C. Tokyo and Gamba Osaka play outside their city limits but in Tokyo's case it's more a question of practicality than location.)

In Mexico, the Atlante football club recently moved out of Mexico City to Cancún in the south (Primera División de México has a relegation system but its teams have some territorial rights recognized, perhaps due to U.S. influence as many league matches are aired in the U.S., where only traditional top flight teams are perceived to reach the immigrant fanbase more efficiently). Relocations are also common when an amateur or semi-professional club tries to acquire its own facilities in order to become a professional club, and no money and/or space is available to build their own in a long-established location. In Peru several teams have had to use already built large stadiums, including ones in the interior of the country, to be able to participate in Primera División Peruana; this includes several teams from the capital, Lima, who have not been able to establish fanbases in their districts due to the required moves.

In South Korea, the GS Group, which was soon to be spun off from its parent LG, moved its Anyang football club to Seoul in February 2004 without notice one month before the start of the K-League season, changing the club's name to FC Seoul. Two years later to the day, on February 2, 2006, Bucheon's club was moved by its owner, SK Group, to Jeju Island, again without notice, and rechristened Jeju United. Many Korean football fans reacted by calling the two clubs Northern Immoral (Seoul) FC and Southern Immoral (Jeju) FC, and consider February 2 a black day for Korean football.

[edit] References

  1. ^ Saints confirm Frankston switch

[edit] External links

[edit] See also