If you follow sports and you're used to following American sports leagues
you probably already know that most teams are divided up into conferences.
And sometimes there are even further divisions within those conferences.
But if you're not familiar, let me give you an example.
The NFL, the National Football League, is divided into two conferences
16 teams each, the AFC and the NFC.
And then within those conferences there are even more divisions: north, south, east and west.
Now, every league has its own conferences and divisions
and what it is, is basically a way to organize the team schedule with their opponents.
"The next game we got is an AFC Championship"
"The Patriots versus Chiefs."
Another curiosity about American sports leagues is that their memberships are fixed
which means they don't use the concept of relegation and promotion
like we do in most other countries, but that's just not how it works here in the U.S.
But seriously, guys, look where we are!
The Orlando City Soccer Club offices!
I think we can definitely find somebody a little bit more qualified than me
to tell us about how U.S. major sports leagues work.
Let's go.
- Hi, Alex. - Hey!
Thanks so much for having us.
My pleasure. Please.
Guys, this is Alex Leitão. He is the CEO of Orlando City
and he is nice enough to sit down with us and answer a few questions.
So, I was just telling our sports fans about how U.S. major league sports are organized.
Because, of course, it's a little bit different than everywhere else.
Yeah, it's different.
It's not really... It's not a matter of what's the best one, it's just a model.
Here in the United States, not only for soccer, for any other sports.
It's a little bit different. They work as a single entity.
The clubs own the league.
Means that when you join the league, of course, you own your own club,
but you own a peace of the league and then all the owners make decisions around
how you're gonna rule, how to make the goals, I mean, they are...
They're competitors on the field, they are partners out of the field
and this is how every single sport is organized here in the States.
So if you look at football, for instance, their football,
it's a national football league.
And there all the owners own the league and then they're working in that end.
And then if you go to the baseball, is a major league baseball, the same thing.
So, right now, 24 clubs...
and this is a... kind of a closed type of championship.
It's like a... it's almost like a secret club that you guys have
and you would take a personal stake in it because of that.
Exactly.
So, I've already been telling the fans a little bit about how U.S. sports leagues are organized.
And, of course, we have conferences and sometimes we have divisions within those conferences.
How is MLS organized?
In MLS, two conferences: the East and the West.
And, of course, in MLS we also have the Canadian teams as well
so it's not just an American league, it's really a North American league.
- It's a North American league. - Yes.
So we have teams from Canada, three teams from Canada and the rest of the teams are from the U.S.
Can you explain a little bit for our fans the concept of the playoffs and the pre-season games?
How they're different from the regular season.
So, pre-season is really when you have the players and then you prepare them for the season.
You do all the medical, we do a lot of fitness.
And then the coach starts to put his philosophy, and the way he wants the team to play.
And then it starts the regular season where we are right now.
So, that's a lot of games...
34 games, and then you have to be in a position in this regular season in order to go to the post-season,
where they call it: the playoffs.
And how many teams get to go to the playoffs?
- Fourteen. - Fourteen.
So there are 10 teams that are left out of the playoffs.
And, of course, there's always some major U.S. sport having their season at any given time in the U.S.
There's no really downtime for U.S. major sports league.
So we go straight from, you know, football into basketball...
Do you feel like soccer has fit in well?
And that MLS has come into that schedule without having to compete too much?
Yes, I mean... Especially when you walk away from NFL.
And that's a good decision to make but...
Somehow we're playing the same season of the major league baseball.
And then NFL plays with NBA.
There's a couple of months that we overlap but most of the year we play with the baseball.
So we have a very young profile type of a fan base for soccer,
together with baseball that's more of an older type of a fan base.
And then when you have the flip of the year and you have NFL, and you have NBA.
Alex, thank you so much for talking with us, I know our fans will really enjoy it.
- Thank you so much. - My pleasure. Thank you.