The playoffs, play-offs, postseason or finals of a sports league are a competition played after the regular season by the top competitors to determine the league champion or a similar accolade. Depending on the league, the playoffs may be either a single game, a series of games, or a tournament, and may use a single-elimination system or one of several other different playoff formats. Playoff, in regard to international fixtures, is to qualify or progress to the next round of a competition or tournament.
Leicester City Football Club is a professional football club based in the city of Leicester, East Midlands, England. The club competes in the Premier League, the top tier of English football, following promotion from the 2023–24 EFL Championship as league champions.
The Isthmian League is a regional football league covering Greater London, East and South East England, featuring mostly semi-professional clubs.
The Northern Premier League is an English football league that was founded in 1968. Together with the Isthmian League and the Southern League it forms levels seven and eight of the English football league system.
The J1 League, a.k.a. the J.League or the Meiji Yasuda J1 League for sponsorship reasons, is the top level of the Japan Professional Football League system. Founded in 1992, it is one of the most successful leagues in Asian professional club football history. Contested by 20 clubs, it operates on a system of promotion and relegation with the J2 League. It was known as the J.League from 1993 to 1998 before becoming a two-division league, and as J.League Division 1 from 1999 to 2014. Vissel Kobe successfully defended their second consecutive title in the 2024 season, after previously winning it in the 2023 season.
The EuroLeague, officially the Turkish Airlines EuroLeague, is a European men's professional basketball club competition. The league is widely recognised as the top-tier men's league in Europe. The league consists of 18 teams, of which 16 are given long-term licences and wild cards, making the league a semi-closed league. The league was first organized by FIBA in 1958, subsequently by ULEB in 2000 and then solely the Euroleague Basketball.
The Southern League is a football competition featuring semi-professional clubs from East Anglia, the South and Midlands of England, and South Wales. Together with the Isthmian League and the Northern Premier League it forms levels seven and eight of the English football league system.
The English football league system, also known as the football pyramid, is a series of interconnected leagues for men's association football clubs in England, with five teams from Wales, one from Guernsey, one from Jersey and one from the Isle of Man also competing. The system has a hierarchical format with promotion and relegation between leagues at different levels, allowing even the smallest club the theoretical possibility of ultimately rising to the very top of the system, the Premier League. Below that are levels 2–4 organised by the English Football League, then the National League System from levels 5–10 administered by the FA, and thereafter Regional feeder leagues run by relevant county FAs on an ad hoc basis. It also often happens that the Premier Division of a Regional Feeder League has its constitution given to it by the FA. They have to accept it or appeal but cannot reject it at an annual general meeting.
Promotion and relegation is used by sports leagues as a process where teams can move up and down among divisions in a League system, based on their performance over a season. Leagues that use promotion and relegation systems are sometimes called open leagues. In a system of promotion and relegation, the best-ranked team(s) in a lower division are promoted to a higher division for the next season, and the worst-ranked team(s) in the higher division are relegated to the lower division for the next season. During the season, teams that are high enough in the league table that they would qualify for promotion are sometimes said to be in the promotion zone, and those at the bottom are in the relegation zone.
In sports, a farm team is generally a team or club whose role is to provide experience and training for young players, with an agreement that any successful players can move on to a higher level at a given point, usually in an association with a major-level parent team. This system can be implemented in many ways, both formally and informally. It is not to be confused with a practice squad, which fulfills a similar developmental purpose but the players on the practice squad are members of the parent team.
The K League 1 (Korean: K리그1) is the top flight of men's professional football in the South Korean football league system, and is contested by twelve clubs. It is one of the most successful leagues in the Asian Football Confederation, with its past and present clubs having won a record twelve AFC Champions League titles.
There are a number of formats used in various levels of competition in sports and games to determine an overall champion. Some of the most common are the single elimination, the best-of- series, the total points series more commonly known as on aggregate, and the round-robin tournament.
The German football league system, or league pyramid, refers to the hierarchically interconnected league system for association football in Germany that in the 2016–17 season consisted of 2,235 leagues in up to 13 levels having 31,645 teams, in which all divisions are bound together by the principle of promotion and relegation.
The Saudi Pro League (SPL), known as the Roshn Saudi League (RSL) for sponsorship reasons, is the highest division of association football in the Saudi league system.
The Spanish football league system consists of several professional, semi-professional and non-professional leagues bound together hierarchically by promotion and relegation. The top two tiers of the male league pyramid — Primera División and Segunda División — are administered by the Liga Nacional de Fútbol Profesional, a sports association with independent legal status from the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF), the governing body of football in Spain. Conversely, the top tiers of the women's pyramid, second and third tier of the women's pyramid, are administered by the RFEF. The lower tiers are run by the regional federations. In addition to clubs from Spain, and under the purview of the additional provision 17 of the 1990 Law of Sport, Andorran clubs affiliated to a Spanish regional federation are allowed to compete in the system.
League of Legends (LoL), commonly referred to as League, is a 2009 multiplayer online battle arena video game developed and published by Riot Games. Inspired by Defense of the Ancients, a custom map for Warcraft III, Riot's founders sought to develop a stand-alone game in the same genre. Since its release in October 2009, League has been free-to-play and is monetized through purchasable character customization. The game is available for Microsoft Windows and macOS.
The Australian soccer league system is the league structure for soccer clubs in Australia. The league system in Australia since 1977 has involved one top divisional league controlled by Football Australia and many leagues run within each state below. The National Soccer League stood from 1977 to 2004 as the top nationwide tier above the current state-based league systems, in 2005, the A-League was established as its successor. The introduction of the National Premier Leagues in 2013 introduced a direct second tier of soccer in Australia, underpinning the A-League. The National Premier Leagues incorporated the existing state leagues as divisions with a nationwide end of season finals series. In 2013, the National Premier Leagues rebranded 5 of the 9 top state leagues, and the remainder – with the exception of the Northern Territory – joined in 2014. There is no promotion and relegation to and from the top-tier A-League, and promotion and relegation at other levels varies between different state systems.
The Football League First Division was a division of the Football League in England from 1888 until 2004. It was the top division in the English football league system until the end of the 1991-92 season, at which point all of its teams broke away to form the Premier League. From 1992 to 2004, the name First Division was given to what had previously been called the Second Division. After the 2003–04 season, the division was renamed the Football League Championship.
Professional men's basketball clubs in Europe can compete in a number of different competitions, including national leagues, regional (multi-national) leagues, and continental competitions. It is therefore possible for clubs from some countries to take part in several levels of competition in the same season. Clubs usually qualify for European competitions through performance in their national or regional leagues, with the exception of wild cards.
