No-trade clause

In North American professional sports, a trade is a sports league transaction between sports clubs that involves an exchange of players from one club/team to another. Though players are the primary trading assets, draft picks and/or cash are other assets that may be supplemented to consummate a trade, either packaged alongside players' contracts to be transferred to another team, or as standalone assets in exchange for players' contracts and/or draft picks in return. In Major League Baseball, a player to be named later can be used to finalize the terms of a trade at a later date, but draft picks are not admissible as trading assets (with one exception). In Major League Soccer, besides current MLS players and draft picks, clubs may also trade MLS rights to non-MLS players, allocation money, allocation rankings, and international player slots. Typically, trades are completed between two clubs, but there are instances where trades are consummated among three or more clubs.

Conversely, a sports transaction involving a player who becomes a free agent and joins another club/team does not qualify as a trade as the player was not contractually bound to the previous team at the time of acquisition.

A no-trade clause is an amendment to a contract, usually relevant in American professional sports, wherein a player may not be traded to another club without the player's consent. Sometimes this clause is implemented by the club itself, but the vast majority are requested by the athlete and his sports agent. In many cases, these no-trade clauses are limited, where a club may be limited to trading the athlete only at certain times, or only to a certain team or geographical area.

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