Relocation of professional sports teams is a practice which involves a sporting franchise moving from one metropolitan area to another, although occasionally moves between municipalities in the same conurbation are also included. Professional teams in North America are generally privately owned and operate according to the wishes of an owner, making this practice much more common there than in other areas of the world where sporting teams are clubs owned by local members.
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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 2010 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, and in fact Major League Baseball actually considered contraction in 2002 to be effective for the 2007 season (of the Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins), until the union got a contract prohibiting it. In the end, nothing happened to the Twins and the Expos relocated to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Nationals.
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, these upstart leagues owed their success in large part to the reluctance of owners in the established leagues to devote the majority of their revenues to player salaries and also on sports leagues' former reliance primarily on gate receipts for revenue. Under those conditions, an ambitious rival could often afford to lure away the sport's top players with promises of better pay, in hopes of giving the new league immediate respect and credibility from fans. Today, however, established leagues derive a large portion of their revenue from lucrative television contracts that would not be offered to an untested rival. Also, the activism of players' unions has resulted in the established leagues paying a majority of their revenues to players, thus the average salary in each of the big four leagues is now well in excess of $1 million per season.
Under present market and financial conditions, any 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. Not even at any point since the start of the 1980s have any of the established leagues so much as added expansion teams while a rival was operating (or establishment of a rival league was being seriously considered). 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 (or convince a prospective owner to purchase a team with the intent of moving it).
Owners usually move teams because of weak fan support or the team organization is in debt and needs an adequate population for financial 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 unpopular in Cleveland that the move was treated as the Baltimore Ravens being awarded an expansion franchise, while the Browns name and their official lineage would remain in Cleveland for a "reactivated" team founded in a few years later.) A little more than a decade earlier, the Baltimore Colts left for Indianapolis (NFL owners voted to give Irsay permission to move his franchise to the city of his choosing after no satisfactory stadium would be built), having literally sneaked away after the Maryland legislature passed a bill threatening to seize the team.
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 (for instance the Los Angeles Rams filed suit when the other NFL owners initialy blocked their move to St. Louis which caused the NFL to back down allowing that relocation to proceed). 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. Also recently, courts had denied the attempted relocation of the Phoenix Coyotes by siding with the National Hockey League which claimed that it had final authority over franchise moves.
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 using taxpayer money. Critics referred to the movement of teams to the highest-bidding city as "franchise free agency."
The following charts list movements of franchises in the modern eras of the major North American sports leagues. It does not include:
Relocations in the NHL have been unique in that most of the teams have changed their names after relocating, as opposed to keeping their identity with the old market. Only two NHL teams that relocated—both in the pre-Original Six era and in the modern era—kept their names: the Calgary Flames and the Dallas Stars. Although the Stars were previously known as the Minnesota North Stars, the team had begun to phase "North" out of the name two years before the move to Dallas as part of the "reverse merger" of the North Stars into the Minnesota Stars and the expansion San Jose Sharks (the California Golden Seals/Cleveland Barons had "merged" with Minnesota organization).
The Edmonton Oilers nearly relocated in 1998 but they remained in the city after a limited partnership raised enough money to purchase the franchise before the deadline.[1] The Phoenix Coyotes were placed into bankruptcy with the intend to circumvent the league's relocation rules, but this was blocked by a judge.
Austin Aztex FC of the USL First Division and USSF Division 2 Professional League (both of which were former second-tier levels of the United States soccer pyramid) were relocated to Orlando in October, 2010,[2] and became Orlando City S.C. Club owner Phil Rawlins, a board member of Stoke City F.C. in England,[3] cited problems finding sufficient investors in Austin.[4] Brendan Flood, majority owner of England's Burnley F.C.,[4] had wanted to establish a new soccer club in Florida, and decided to pair with Rawlins as co-owners.[5] Less than one year after the relocation to Orlando, Austin Aztex were re-born in the fourth-division USL Premier Development League, when David Markley (founder and minority owner of the previous Aztex) re-established the club.[6]
The league, started in 2009, saw its first major relocation before the 2011 season. The former Washington Freedom, which previously played in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., was purchased by Dan Borislow, founder of the VoIP company magicJack, and moved to Boca Raton, Florida. The team played as magicJack in the 2011 season, which was marked by near-constant conflict between the league and Borislow. WPS terminated the franchise after that season.
The Baltimore Stallions moved to Montreal in 1996 to become the Montreal Alouettes. When the Cleveland Browns announced that they would relocate to Baltimore, the Stallions recognized that they could not compete with it and relocated to Montreal where it assumed the defunct Montreal Alouettes' name along with its records, history and traditions. Although cosmetic rather than substantive, the CFL officially considers the modern Alouettes to be a continuation of the previous Alouettes team in an effort to distance itself from the American expansion experiment of which the Stallions were members and to keep the Alouettes' legacy viewed collectively. The current Alouettes do not consider the Stallions' legacy, including its Grey Cup victory, as part of the team's current legacy, even though the two teams never played concurrently. The only other team to relocate in the CFL's history was the Sacramento Gold Miners, another American team, who moved to become the San Antonio Texans in 1995. The staff of the Ottawa Rough Riders moved from Ottawa to Shreveport, Louisiana to become the Shreveport Pirates in 1993, but the CFL forced the team itself to be left in Ottawa, where a new owner kept the franchise alive.
Outside of the American expansion, the CFL has never relocated any of its core Canadian franchises from one market to another.
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 in England, Gretna in Scotland, and 1899 Hoffenheim in Germany are examples of teams that have risen up the pyramid dramatically due to investment. Gretna also illustrates the danger of relying on a single large investor—after its owner, Brooks Mileson, withdrew his support in February 2008 due to what eventually proved to be a fatal illness, the club went bankrupt and was liquidated within six months.
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.
Other examples of relocation out of the original district are slightly more common. In certain cases, the club has moved within a conurbation:
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 in the second-tier Championship.
The same year, Gateshead Thunder, who had only been playing in the English Super League for one year, were taken over by Hull Sharks, who then reverted to their traditional brand of Hull. The merged club played all its home games in Hull. As with Sheffield, a new Gateshead Thunder team was set up by supporters of the old side to play in the National Leagues, since renamed the Championship and Championship 1. The current incarnation of Gateshead Thunder competes in Championship 1.
Following their inaugural Super League season in 2009, the Celtic Crusaders, based in the South Wales town of Bridgend since their formation in 2005, moved to the North Wales town of Wrexham and renamed themselves Crusaders Rugby League. The team folded after the 2011 season and was replaced by the North Wales Crusaders, which will compete in Championship 1.
A number of rugby union clubs have made minor relocations from time to time, almost always within their current conurbation.
Three of the four Premiership clubs whose historic roots are in London now play their home matches outside Greater London, though still within the London commuter belt:
The fourth London club, Harlequins, were the second part of the Hampstead F.C. split. They played at a number of grounds in London until the RFU invited them to play at Twickenham in 1906. The club acquired an athletics ground across the road from Twickenham in 1963, built today's Twickenham Stoop on the site, and have played there ever since. Quins have long been headquartered at Twickenham—first at the RFU stadium, and now at The Stoop.
Another Premiership club, Sale Sharks, have moved their home ground from their original base, though within the same conurbation. Founded in Sale and still headquartered at their longtime home of Heywood Road, they have groundshared with Stockport County F.C. at Edgeley Park in Stockport since 2003.
While football club relocation has so far been unusual in West German football, it was a rather common practice in communist East Germany. As teams were dependent on the regime, it intervened several times to promote an equal distribution of teams across the country. A number of prominent East German teams were affected by these political moves, and even in modern-day Germany, the reason for the regional dominance of some teams and the roots of many strong rivalries can be found there.
Major relocations in the DDR-Oberliga:
In recent times, team relocation has become a more common feature in sports that are less popular with the German public. Notable examples include former ice hockey team München Barons (became the Hamburg Freezers in 2002), former handball side VfL Bad Schwartau (became HSV Handball in 2002) and basketball club Bayer Giants Leverkusen (Düsseldorf Giants since 2008).
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:
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.
Relocation has also occurred in Italian basketball. Before the 2010–11 season, Triboldi were legally domiciled in Soresina, but played their home games in nearby Cremona, a community in the same province. The club has now changed its domicile to Cremona. Nuova Sebastiani Basket moved from Rieti, a city in the Lazio region near Rome, to the southern city of Naples effective with the 2009–10 season.
Irish clubs relocating out of their original district are slightly more common. In certain cases, the club has moved within a conurbation.
Team relocation is very rare in the Netherlands. The most prominent case involves professional football club Almere City FC. 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 Dutch 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.
Team relocation is slightly more common in other sports in the Netherlands. Volleyball club AMVJ, for instance, moved from Amsterdam to Amstelveen in 1980. The men's team was subsequently relocated to Almere in 1999, becoming Omniworld.
Team relocation is rare, although mergers, for instance of teams of neighboring settlements, are common. Relocation has sometimes happened on the top level of women's football. SK Sprint-Jeløy was moved from Jeløy to Moss under the new name FK Athene Moss. Asker Fotball's women's team was absorbed by Stabæk Fotball ahead of the 2009 season. Ahead of the 2010 season Team Strømmen FK (which formerly had been moved from Aurskog-Høland) was absorbed by Lillestrøm SK, and Gjøvik FK absorbed by Raufoss IL.
Team relocation in football is rare if not nonexistent. However, one current top-level basketball team has moved twice in the 2000s. The club founded in 1946 as Lokomotiv Mineralnye Vody moved in 2003 to Rostov-on-Don, and then in 2008 to Krasnodar, where it is now known as Lokomotiv-Kuban. All three of the club's home cities are in adjoining federal subjects.
Again, team relocation in Spain is highly unusual. However, at the end of the 2006-2007 season Segunda Division side Ciudad de Murcia was acquired by an investor from Granada, transferring it to that city and renaming it to Granada 74 CF. The players still under contract with Ciudad had the option to cancel their contract or stay on with the newly formed club.
Süleymaniye Sirkeci was founded in 1912 and had black-white colors. The club played in the old Third Division (now TFF Second League) before relocating to Küçükçekmece at the end of the 1989-90 season. It was renamed as "Küçükçekmecespor" and changed its colors to green-white.
Beyoğlu Kapalıçarşı was founded in 1983 in Beyoğlu district. The club moved to Güngören one and was renamed as Güngören Belediyespor after the end of the 1993-94 season.
The two major professional sporting leagues in Australia are the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL). Both competitions were originally based in one city (Melbourne and Sydney respectively) and expanded to a national level, and through this process there have been team relocations, mergers and closures in both leagues. The clubs are owned by members, not privately, but the North American franchise model exists, which means entry to the league is restricted. This hybrid model has meant that the leading promotor of relocation is the league itself, trying to grow the football code by encouraging poorly performing clubs to relocate interstate.
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.
Some Melbourne based clubs began selling home games interstate in the late 1990s and conducting community camp clinics to build up local supporter bases.
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 following a prior move west to Lidcombe Oval. 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 ANZ 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.
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 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 F.C. 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 most effectively reach the immigrant fanbase). Club Necaxa also moved from Mexico City to Aguascalientes. 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, there were 3 professional football clubs Ilhwa Chunma, LG Cheetahs, Yukong Kokkiri in Seoul by 1995. However, due to K-League's decentralization policy, these three clubs were forced to move to another city in 1996, changing their name in the process. As a result, Ilhwa Chunma became Cheonan, LG Cheetahs became Anyang, and Yukong Kokkiri became Bucheon. These moves are done under the accord that if any of these teams build a football specific stadium in Seoul, they can return there.
Anyang LG Cheetahs returned in 2004, assuming a small part of the construction costs of the vacant Seoul World Cup Stadium and renamed as 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 and the vacant Jeju World Cup Stadium, without notice, and rechristened Jeju United. South Korea has three national tiers, but as in the North American system, there is no promotion or relegation between them. This is because of disagreement between the Korea Football Association and the chaebols that back the top clubs. Many, if not most, of K2 and K3 clubs are fan-owned teams.
In France, Red Star Olympique merged with Toulouse FC (1937), but Toulouse FC disappeared and a new Toulouse FC was reformed later.
In Colombia historic teams from First Division are rarely relocated, but newer teams created in second division are often moved from city to city looking for a responding fan base. 2008 Colombian Champions Chicó F.C. started as a B team in Bogotá Only to relocate to Tunja after promoting to First Division.
In Brazil, the first relocation of a first division football team was in 2010. Grêmio Barueri relocated to Presidente Prudente, becaming Grêmio Prudente, only to return as Grêmio Barueri in the middle of 2011. In other sports, such as volleyball, basketball or futsal, relocation is a bit more common, although it doesn't occur frequently.
In South Africa most football clubs are privately owned, and club relocation is relatively common. Several clubs, including top division Premier Soccer League clubs have moved and taken on new identities. The most recent PSL team to do this was Benoni Premier United, who moved to Kwa-Zulu Natal and became Thanda Royal Zulu. There are many other cases of South African relocations.