Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada
Major professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada, which compete in the sports of football, baseball, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer, include the National Football League, Major League Baseball, the National Basketball Association, the National Hockey League, and Major League Soccer. As the NFL only competes in the United States, the prominent gridiron football league in Canada is the Canadian Football League.
MLB, the NBA, the NFL, and the NHL are commonly referred to as the "Big Four". Each of these is the wealthiest professional club competition in its sport worldwide, and along with the Premier League, make up the top five sports leagues by revenue in the world.
Each of the Big Four leagues, as well as MLS and the CFL, averages at least 15,000 fans in attendance per game as of 2024. The NFL has the largest stadiums on average in the world, ranging in capacity from just over 60,000 to almost 100,000 spectators, while MLB ballparks generally hold between 30,000 and 50,000 fans. Venues used primarily by MLS and CFL vary more widely in capacity, from about 20,000 to about 60,000. The two indoor leagues, the NHL and NBA, play mostly in arenas that hold 18,000 to 20,000 seats. Many multi-purpose venues host events in multiple leagues, including: NFL and MLS, CFL and MLS, MLB and MLS, and NBA and NHL. MLB and NFL teams frequently shared stadiums in the past, although none currently do. The NFL and MLB also play a limited number of annual games in English Premier League stadiums, and the NFL plays a limited number of annual games in stadiums of Germany's Bundesliga, and less often plays games in stadiums of Mexico's Liga MX, Brazil's Brasileirão,, Spain's La Liga, and the Australian Football League.
The Big Four leagues currently have 30 to 32 teams each, most of which are concentrated in the most populous metropolitan areas of the United States and Canada. Unlike the promotion and relegation systems used in sports leagues in various other regions around the world, American and Canadian sports leagues are closed leagues that maintain the same teams from season-to-season. Expansion of the league usually occurs by adding newly formed teams, though mergers with competing leagues have also occurred.
Baseball, American football, and ice hockey have had professional leagues continuously for over 100 years; early leagues such as the National Association of Professional Base Ball Players, the Ohio League, and the National Hockey Association formed the basis of the modern MLB, NFL, and NHL, respectively. Basketball was invented in 1891, and its first professional league formed in the 1920s. The Basketball Association of America, founded in 1946, formed the basis of the NBA in 1949 and has lasted for over 75 years.
Soccer was first professionalized in 1894, with past American-based leagues including the American Soccer League and the original North American Soccer League . Major League Soccer was established in 1996.
"Big Four" leagues
Major League Baseball
Major League Baseball is the highest level of play of baseball in the United States and Canada, and the oldest of the major American leagues. It consists of the National League and the American League. With the establishment of the American League in 1901 also came the trademarking of "Major League Baseball". Cooperation between the two leagues began in 1903 inasmuch as the two league champions began playing a "World Series". In 1904, however, there was no World Series played because one of the league champions refused to play. During the offseason, the owners of each league voted to have the league champions automatically play one another in the World Series and it was 90 years until another World Series was not played, in 1994, due to a work stoppage. The two leagues merged on an organizational level in 2000 with the elimination of separate league offices; they have shared a single commissioner since 1920. There are currently 30 member teams, with 29 located in the U.S. and 1 in Canada. Traditionally called the "national pastime", baseball was the first professional team sport in the U.S. MLB consistently draws the largest total attendance of any sports league in the world.National Basketball Association
The National Basketball Association was described by Josh Martin of Bleacher Report as "the best basketball league in the world" in a 2012 power ranking of international leagues, and it is the youngest of the major American leagues. It was founded in 1949 with the merger of the Basketball Association of America and the National Basketball League though it later adopted the BAA's founding date in 1946 as its own. Four teams from the rival American Basketball Association joined the NBA with the ABA–NBA merger in 1976. It currently has 30 teams, 29 in the United States and 1 in Canada. The NBA is watched by audiences both domestically and internationally, and as of 2022 it was the most popular league out of the NFL, NHL, and MLB worldwide in desktop web traffic. While the NBA is the most viewed basketball league in Canada, Canada Basketball recognizes the Canadian Elite Basketball League as the country's first-division professional league.National Football League
The National Football League is a professional American football league and was founded in 1920 as a combination of various teams from regional leagues such as the Ohio League, the New York Pro Football League, and the Chicago circuit as a successor to Western Pennsylvania Professional Football Circuit. For its first two seasons, 1920 and 1921, it was known as the "American Professional Football Association" before changing its name to the current name in 1922. The NFL partially absorbed the All-America Football Conference in 1949 and merged with the American Football League in 1970. It has 32 teams, all located in the United States., NFL games have the largest per-game attendance among domestic professional leagues in the world, and is the most popular league in the U.S. in terms of television ratings and merchandising. Its championship game, the Super Bowl, is the most watched annual event on U.S. television, with Super Bowl XLIX being the single most-watched program in U.S. television history. The NFL is the only one of the "Big Four" leagues not to have a team in Canada, where the Canadian Football League is the premier professional league in a similar gridiron football sport of Canadian football.National Hockey League
The National Hockey League is widely recognized as the world's premier professional ice hockey league, and is the only "Big Four" league to have been founded in Canada. It was formed in 1917 as a successor to the Canadian National Hockey Association, taking all but one of the NHA's teams. The NHL partially absorbed the rival World Hockey Association in 1979. There are 32 teams, with 25 in the United States and 7 in Canada. The most popular sports league in Canada, and widely followed across the northern and northeastern U.S., the NHL has expanded westward and southward in recent decades to attempt to gain a more national following in the United States, in cities such as Denver, San Jose, Dallas, Miami, Nashville, Salt Lake City, Raleigh, Tampa, Las Vegas, and Seattle with varying success. The NHL has more Canadian teams than MLB, the NBA, and MLS combined.Other major professional leagues
Major League Soccer
Major League Soccer is the top-level men's professional soccer league in the United States. As of the league's 2026 season, MLS has 30 teams, with 27 in the United States and 3 in Canada. The league began play in 1996, its creation a requirement by FIFA for awarding the United States the right to host the 1994 World Cup. MLS was the first major Division I outdoor soccer league in the U.S. since the North American Soccer League operated from 1968 to 1984. MLS has increased in popularity following the adoption of the Designated Player Rule in 2007, which allowed MLS to sign stars such as David Beckham, Thierry Henry, and Lionel Messi. In 2017, MLS reported an average attendance of 22,112 per game, with total attendance exceeding 8.2 million overall, both breaking previous MLS attendance records, while 2018 saw Atlanta United FC break multiple single-game attendance records, with crowd figures of over 70,000 among the highest team attendances worldwide.With a total attendance of nearly 11 million and an average of over 22,000, MLS has the fifth-largest total attendance and third-largest average attendance, among the sports league in U.S. and Canada, had the seventh-highest attendance among global professional soccer leagues. The top soccer league sanctioned by the Canadian Soccer Association is the Canadian Premier League.
MLS is unique among U.S. and Canadian major sports leagues in that the teams take part in multiple separate tournaments outside the MLS regular and playoff season; the knockout U.S. Open Cup for United States teams and Canadian Championship for Canadian teams, cross-border/regional Leagues Cup and Campeones Cup, the continental CONCACAF Champions Cup, and possibly the intercontinental/worldwide FIFA Intercontinental Cup and FIFA Club World Cup.
Canadian Football League
The Canadian Football League is the highest level of play in Canadian football. The league was organized in 1956 as a cooperative agreement between two regional leagues, the Interprovincial Rugby Football Union and the Western Interprovincial Football Union, and became independent from the Canadian Rugby Union in 1958. The league now consists of nine teams, all based in Canada. The Grey Cup is awarded annually to the champion every November and is the highest-attended sporting event in the nation. The oldest extant teams, the Hamilton Tiger-Cats and the Toronto Argonauts, trace their origins to the late 1860s and early 1870s, which ranks them amongst the oldest professional sports teams of any kind still in existence on the continent. From 1993 to 1995, the CFL attempted expansion into the United States to cities without NFL teams, but all the clubs folded, while the management structure of the Baltimore Stallions was moved to a relaunched Montreal Alouettes franchise. By 2009 the CFL was the second-most-popular league in Canada, after the NHL. A 2023 study shows that interest in the CFL had dropped over the previous 10 years.The CFL has the fourth-highest average attendance of leagues in the United States and Canada, behind the NFL, MLB and MLS., the CFL's average attendance number was 22,795, continuing a slow upward trend for the league. Its level of play is generally recognized as on the second tier of professional football, with the CFL having a slight advantage in player recruitment compared to second-tier American leagues such as the UFL due to the CFL's longer established history.