In the sports leagues — especially soccer leagues — of many countries, relegation (or demotion) means the mandated transfer of the worst team(s) (often the bottom three) of a higher league into a lower league at the end of the season. An equal number of best team(s) from the lower league enjoy the opposite procedure, promotion. This is a disambiguation page — a navigational aid which lists other pages that might otherwise share the same title. ... Football is a ball game played between two teams of eleven players, each attempting to win by scoring more goals than their opponent. ... Promotion, used in sports leagues of most countries outside North America, is the mandated transfer of the best team(s) of a lower league into a higher league at the end of the season. ...

Promotion and relegation have the effect of regularly rearranging the leagues according to the teams' playing strength, and also prevents the games of the not-so-good teams of each league from becoming boring towards the end of the season. Relegation can potentially mean severe hardship or even bankruptcy for demoted clubs. Relegation can be a heart-wringing melodrama for the fans, but just avoiding it can also be a source of pure bliss and continuing legends, sometimes even more so than winning the title. Bankruptcy is a legally declared inability or impairment of ability of an individual or organization to pay their creditors. ... Poster for The Perils of Pauline (1914). ... Fans of Janet Jackson, at Music Music The word fan refers to someone who has an intense, occasionally overwhelming liking of a person, group of persons, work of art, idea, or trend. ... Daniel Is not a very good example of a legend For other senses of this word, see legend (disambiguation). ...

The following are the promotion and relegation rules for the English Premier League and Football League, to serve as an example: FA Premier League logo The FA Premier League (which, for sponsorship/legal reasons, is often referred to as the Barclays Premiership in the UK and the Barclays English Premier League internationally) is a league competiton for English football (soccer) clubs located at the top of the English football league system... The Football League logo The Football League (often referred to as the Coca-Cola Football League for sponsorship reasons) is a league competition for English football (soccer) clubs (though a few Welsh clubs also take part) containing three divisions (the Football League Championship, Football League One and Football League Two...

1. English Premier League (level 1): Bottom three teams relegated.
2. Football League Championship (level 2): Top two automatically promoted; next four teams play off, with the winner gaining the third promotion spot. Bottom three relegated.
3. Football League One (level 3): Top two automatically promoted; next four teams play off, with the winner gaining the third promotion spot. Bottom four relegated.
4. Football League Two (level 4): Top three automatically promoted; next four teams play off, with the winner gaining the fourth promotion spot. Bottom two relegated.
5. Conference National (level 5): Top team promoted, subject to stadium being of required standard; next four teams play off, with the winner gaining the second promotion spot (again with the same stadium requirement). If stadia are not of the required quality, teams from League Two are not relegated. Note that Conference National is not part of The Football League, but is instead the top level of the National League System, a comprehensive system of lower-level leagues which itself has promotion and relegation between its levels.

A notable exception to this system is sport in North America, where teams are not relegated, owing to the lack of comprehensive governing bodies covering all playing levels in all four major North American professional team sports. None of the four sports have a comprehensive association analogous to England's Football Association and governing bodies, if they exist, are limited in scope. North American educational institutions, rather than sport clubs, act as primary feeders (directly from university in the case of American football and basketball, indirectly in the case of baseball) to supply players to three American professional team sports, while hockey has a separate youth club system supplemented by school team participation that prospective North American players progress through. While American baseball and hockey do in fact have lower professional levels to which relegation is theoretically possible, the fact that minor league team players are either employees of (baseball) or under contract to (hockey) their affiliated major league team make team promotion and relegation incompatible with the present structure of any North American team sport. The Football League Championship logo The Football League Championship (often referred to as The Championship for short or the Coca-Cola Football League Championship for sponsorship reasons) is the highest division of The Football League and second-highest division overall in the English football league system after the FA Premier... Football League One (often referred to as League One for short or Coca-Cola Football League 1 for sponsorship reasons) is the second-highest division of The Football League and third-highest division overall in the English football league system. ... Football League Two (often referred to as League Two for short or Coca-Cola Football League 2 for sponsorship reasons) is the third-highest division of The Football League and fourth-highest division overall in the English football league system. ... Conference National (often referred to as the Nationwide Conference for sponsorship reasons) is the top division of the Football Conference. ... The National League System, otherwise known as the football pyramid, is a comprehensive league structure for football clubs in England playing below the level of the FA Premier League and The Football League. ... World map showing location of North America A satellite composite image of North America North America is a continent in the northern hemisphere, bounded on the north by the Arctic Ocean, on the east by the North Atlantic Ocean, on the south by the Caribbean Sea, and on the west... The major professional sports leagues in North America (or in the United States specifically by some definitions) are those professional sports leagues with the largest fan bases and television audiences (and therefore, the largest revenues and player salaries). ... The Football Association (The FA) is the governing body of football in England (and the Crown dependencies of Jersey, Guernsey and the Isle of Man). ... A professor giving a lecture at the Helsinki University of Technology A university is an institution of higher education and of research, which grants academic degrees. ... United States simply as football, is a competitive team sport that is both fast-paced and strategic. ... Basketball is very popular in U.S. colleges. ... Baseball is popular in the Americas and East Asia. ... Ice hockey, known simply as hockey in areas where it is more common than field hockey, is a team sport played on ice. ... Baseball is popular in the Americas and East Asia. ... Ice hockey, known simply as hockey in areas where it is more common than field hockey, is a team sport played on ice. ...

Recently, the United Soccer Leagues of North America (with teams from across the United States and Canada) discussed a possible relegation system, and implemented two leagues, the USL division one and two. However this would still be different from the usual promotion system, as the European systems usually extend over all ranks from the worst village amateur teams to the nation's top pro teams. The United Soccer Leagues (USL) is directly affiliated with the United States Soccer Federation (USSF), United States Adult Soccer Association (USASA) and the Canadian Soccer Association (CSA). ...