
College sports competitions play an important role in the American sporting culture, and college basketball and college football are as popular as professional sports in some parts of the country. Sports are particularly associated with education in the United States, with most high schools and universities having organized sports, and this is a unique sporting footprint for the U.S. As in Canada and Australia, sports leagues in the United States do not practice promotion and relegation, unlike most sports leagues in Europe.

In addition to the major league–level organizations, several sports also have professional minor leagues, active in smaller cities across the country.

All major sports leagues use a similar type of regular-season schedule with a post-season playoff tournament. Professional teams in all major sports in the United States operate as franchises within a league, meaning that a team may move to a different city if the team's owners believe there would be a financial benefit, but franchise moves are usually subject to some form of league-level approval. Of these five U.S.-based leagues, all but the NFL have at least one team in Canada. after the National Football League (NFL) and Major League Baseball (MLB), and is the seventh-highest attended professional soccer league worldwide. With an average attendance of over 20,000 per game, MLS has the third-highest average attendance of any sports league in the U.S. All these leagues enjoy wide-ranging domestic media coverage and, except for Major League Soccer, all are considered the preeminent leagues in their respective sports in the world, although American football does not have a substantial following in other nations. The market for professional sports in the United States is roughly $69 billion, roughly 50% larger than that of all of Europe, the Middle East, and Africa combined. Contentsīased on revenue, the major professional sports leagues in the United States are Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), Major League Soccer (MLS), and the National Hockey League (NHL).
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Indoor American football, rugby union, Cricket, tennis, golf, auto racing, softball, lacrosse, field hockey, water polo, and mixed martial arts, among others, are also somewhat popular sports played in the country. American football is the most popular spectator sport to watch in the United States, followed by baseball, basketball, ice hockey, and soccer, which make up the "five major sports". Sports are an important part of culture in the United States of America.
