Minor league

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The minor leagues (Minor: English for small, insignificant; League: English for league) are professional sports leagues, mainly in US sports , which, in contrast to the major leagues (major: English for large, larger, significant), which are more powerful in sporting and financial terms Have a smaller budget and receive less attention from fans and media. Today, many major leagues allow themselves the maintenance of minor leagues in order to give young players experience and older players after injuries game practice in so-called farm teams .

The most comprehensive and well-known minor league system exists in North American baseball - minor league baseball contains individual leagues that each play on a level. An AAA league plays at the highest, an A league at the lowest level. Other designations such as B, C, D existed in the first half of the 20th century, due to the spread of television and the associated greater popularity of the major leagues , these leagues could not sustain themselves financially. In 2018 there are three AAA leagues, the International League , the Liga Mexicana de Béisbol and the Pacific Coast League .

In North American ice hockey , the best-known minor league is the American Hockey League (AHL), other leagues are the ECHL , Central Hockey League (CHL), Federal Hockey League (FHL), Ligue Nord-Américaine de Hockey (LNAH) and Southern Professional Hockey League (SPHL).

The NBA also operates a youth league - the NBA G-League . For many years the now dissolved Continental Basketball Association had also acted as a training league for the NBA, although the ties between the two leagues (or their teams) were not as close as in ice hockey or baseball.

See also