Expansion team

An expansion team is a new team in a sports league, usually from a city that has not hosted a team in that league before, formed with the intention of satisfying the demand for a local team from a population in a new area. Sporting leagues also hope that the expansion of their competition will grow the popularity of the sport generally. The term is most commonly used in reference to the North American major professional sports leagues but is applied to sports leagues in other countries with a closed franchise system of league membership. The term comes from the expansion of the sport into new areas. That sometimes results in the payment of an expansion fee to the league by the new team and an expansion draft to populate the new roster.

In North America, expansion often takes place in response to population growth and geographic shifts of population. Such demographic change results in financial opportunities to engage with the new market as consumers of sports demand local teams to support. Major League Baseball (MLB) was limited to 16 teams located north and east of St. Louis, Missouri for the first half of the 20th century. During that time, the United States population doubled and expanded to the south and west. Rival interests explored the possibility of forming a rival league in the untapped markets. To forestall that possibility, one of the measures that MLB took was to expand by four teams in 1961 and 1962. Over the past four decades, MLB expanded further, to its current 30-team membership. In the context of MLB, the term "expansion team" is also used to refer to any of the 14 teams enfranchised in the second half of the 20th century.

Leagues that are new and/or financially struggling may also admit large numbers of expansion teams to pocket more revenue from expansion fees. Indoor American football leagues are notorious for doing so: the leagues can double the number of teams and have many new teams fail within a year or two.

When an expansion team begins play, it is generally stocked with less talented free agents, inexperienced players, and veterans nearing retirement. Additionally, prospective owners may face expensive fees to the league as well as high startup costs such as stadiums and facilities, and the team is also at a disadvantage in that it has not been together as a team as long as its opponents and thus lacks the cohesiveness other teams have built over years. As a result, most expansion teams are known for their poor play during their first few seasons, which can be exacerbated by the fact that leagues sometimes expand by two or four teams in one season for scheduling reasons, such as eliminating the possibility of a team being without an opponent on a preferred date by an odd number of teams. In those cases, expansion teams must compete with their expansion rivals for available talent. Expansion teams are not usually doomed to mediocrity forever, as most leagues have policies which promote parity, such as drafts and salary caps, which gives some expansion teams the opportunity to win championships only a few years after their first season. The Arizona Diamondbacks won the 2001 World Series only three years after the team's founding in 1998 even though Major League Baseball is generally considered among the least conducive to parity because of the lack of a salary cap. The Milwaukee Bucks also won the 1971 NBA Finals in only their third year of existence, greatly helped by drafting Kareem Abdul-Jabbar in the 1969 draft and acquiring Oscar Robertson from Cincinnati Royals before the 1970-71 season began. The Chicago Fire won MLS Cup in 1998 in just their first year of existence in Major League Soccer. In 2011, the Portland Timbers started their MLS franchise, and they won the MLS Cup in 2015. The Florida Panthers made the Stanley Cup Finals in only their 3rd season in the National Hockey League (NHL) even though, like MLB, the league then had no salary cap. The National Football League, despite being considered the most generous in its revenue sharing and the strictest with its salary cap, has had far more difficulty bringing expansion teams up to par with their more established brethren: none of the four teams started with new rosters since 1995 (when the salary cap was imposed) won a Super Bowl (the Carolina Panthers have come closest, reaching the NFC Championship Game in their second season and reaching the Super Bowl twice, but have never won); the most recent addition to the league, the Houston Texans, took over a decade to reach the playoffs, and the Cleveland Browns have yet to win a playoff game in the nearly two decades since its return to the league in 1999.

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