Thursday, April 6, 2017

Netherlands

Team relocation is very rare in the Netherlands. The most prominent case involves professional football club Almere City FC. When 1964 Eredivisie champion and 1964–65 European Cup quarter finalist Door Wilskracht Sterk was merged into FC Amsterdam, its supporters founded amateur football club De Zwarte Schapen, named after their nickname, which translates as Black Sheep. The club quickly rose through the ranks of amateur football, eventually reaching the Hoofdklasse. After several violent incidents on the pitch and a six-month suspension by the Royal Dutch Football Association, the club moved from Amsterdam to nearby Almere (a "new town") and changed its name to Sporting Flevoland. That name was changed to FC Omniworld in the 1990s, and FC Omniworld was admitted to the Eerste Divisie for the 2005–06 season.
Team relocation is slightly more common in other sports in the Netherlands. Volleyball club AMVJ, for instance, moved from Amsterdam to Amstelveen in 1980. The men's team was subsequently relocated to Almere in 1999, becoming Omniworld.

Norway

Team relocation is rare, although mergers, for instance of teams of neighboring settlements, are common. Relocation has sometimes happened on the top level of women's football. SK Sprint-Jeløy was moved from Jeløy to Moss under the new name FK Athene Moss. Asker Fotball's women's team was absorbed by Stabæk Fotball ahead of the 2009 season. Ahead of the 2010 season Team Strømmen FK (which formerly had been moved from Aurskog-Høland) was absorbed by Lillestrøm SK, and Gjøvik FK absorbed by Raufoss IL.

Poland

  • Olimpia Poznań was moved from Poznań and merged with Lechia Gdańsk in 1995 creating Lechia/Olimpia Gdańsk. It only lasted one season in the top division and by 1997 it was already in the third division. The club tried to rescue its fall through another merger with local club Polonia Gdańsk, in turn dropping Olimpia's heritage and changing its name to Lechia/Polonia Gdańsk, with Antoni Ptak's company as the main sponsor. In 2001 Lechia decided to leave the merger, and started as an independent club from the bottom of the football pyramid as the sole legal and spiritual continuator of BKS Lechia, which folded the merged club in 2002, forcing Polonia to start in a lower league as well.
  • Pogoń Szczecin in 2002 was on the brink of bankruptcy. As a result, fans created a new team on the basis of the reserves in the fourth division. However owner of Piotrcovia Piotrków Trybunalski Antoni Ptak decided to move the team and renamed the club MKS Pogoń Szczecin. The initial distrust was lost when the team performed well and used local players, however halfway through the 2005/2006 season the team started underperforming and Ptak decided to replace almost the entire squad with only Brazilian nationals, making it the "most Brazilian team outside Brazil". Antoni Ptak also built a small training facility in Gutów Mały, meaning the home games were played almost 500 kilometres (310 mi) away from Szczecin. The experiment failed and in 2007 Antoni Ptak moved away from football, leaving the club to be rebuilt on the basis of the 4th division counterpart set up originally by the fans, which acted as the reserve team in the meantime.
  • Prokom Trefl Sopot was a successful basketball team, however it moved from Sopot to Gdynia and was renamed Asseco Prokom Gdynia. A phoenix club was set up straight away in 2009 called Trefl Sopot.
  • Sokół Pniewy was moved to Tychy and merged with the local club GKS Tychy, which resulted in unorthodox renaming, first to Sokół Pniewy in Tychy, then from 9 January 1996 Sokół Tychy. After 26 games in its 2nd season the new fused club folded, leaving the reserve team Sokół Pniewy in the fourth division to become the its senior team, whereas GKS Tychy started anew.
  • WKS Zawisza Bydgoszcz was founded in Koszalin, however a year later in 1947, being an army club, when the army offices moved to Bydgoszcz so did the team, however up until that point the team only played friendly matches.[44][44]
  • Zawisza Bydgoszcz SA was a club that was created when Kujawiak Włocławek were moved to Bydgoszcz and renamed by Hydrobudowa, their owners. The original WKS Zawisza Bydgoszcz continued playing in the fourth division,[45] however the new club had a very similar logo and an identical name, resulting in an unusual situation of having two almost identical clubs playing in 2 different divisions; for the purposes disambiguation, the new merged Zawisza was called Zawisza Bydgoszcz (2) by official sources and Kujawiak/Zawisza or Hydrobudowa Bydgoszcz by many others. As a result of the merger, Kujawiak, Zawisza and supporters all over the country boycotted the relocated team.[46] The reserve team continued to play under the name Kujawiak Włocławek in the Fourth Polish league. The club folded in 2007[47] as a result of serious corruption allegations[48] and widespread condemnation.[49]

Romania

Russia

Slovakia

  • In 2011, the Kontinental Hockey League, based in Russia but also including teams from several other post-Soviet states, expanded outside the former Soviet Union for the first time, adding the Slovakian team Lev Poprad. The team was purchased by Czech interests after the 2011–12 season; the new owners folded the club and replaced it with a similarly named team, the Prague-based Lev Praha. Although the two Lev teams are technically separate corporate entities, this situation can be viewed as an effective relocation; not only are the team names similar, but the new owners retained much of the Poprad roster.
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Azerbaijan

Belgium

  • Football Couillet La Louvière was formed in June 2009 as the result of a merger between R.A.C.S. Couillet and R.A.A. Louviéroise. The matricule of the club is the number 94 of RACS Couillet, so technically it is a continuation of Couillet, whereas La Louvière has dissolved into Couillet, with their matricule (number 93) being lost. At the time of the merger, La Louvière played in the third tier of Belgian football and Couillet in the fourth, as a result, the new team started in the fourth tier. After the merger, the team was based in La Louvière and renamed to Football Club Couillet-La Louvière with abbreviation FCLL. However, the team moved back to Couillet in Charleroi in 2011 after third division team URS Centre moved to the center of La Louvière and changed its name to UR La Louvière Centre. As a result, the team name was changed again to Football Club Charleroi.
  • RFC Liège, after its home stadium the Stade Vélodrome de Rocourt in Liège was destroyed, the club became 'homeless'. After having played during 4 years at rue Gilles Magnée, in Ans where a temporary stand was built, the RFC Liège is currently playing in Seraing at the Pairay Stadium.

Cyprus

At least three clubs were forced to move due to the 1974 Turkish invasion of that country:[19]

Czech Republic

  • Dukla Prague, a successful football team under the patronage of the Czech Armed Forces, originally from Prague, merged with second division side FC Portál Příbram in 1996.[20][21] The new club, which later became known as 1. FK Příbram, played one season in Prague at the Juliska Stadium before moving to Příbram in 1997, the last home match at Juliska being a 2–2 draw with relegated Baník Havířov on 1 June 1997,[22] effectively meaning that the original FC Příbram which was founded in 1929 was relocated to Prague, merged and then relocated back. The club currently playing under the Dukla Prague name, and the current spiritual successor of the original team, FK Dukla Prague, was founded in 1958 as FK Dukla Dejvice and advanced to the Prague Championship in the 1983–84 season.[23] Prior to 2001, the club's best finish in a season had been second in the Prague Championship in the 1984–85 season.[23] In 2001 the club became known as FK Dukla Prague, but not the legal successor of the original Dukla Prague team. In November 2006, the new FK Dukla Prague management announced that it had agreed to a takeover of second league rights of the Jakubčovice team[20] and in 2007 Dukla took Jakubčovice's place in the Czech 2. Liga,[24] having finished the 2006–07 season in second place.[25]
  • In ice hockey, the Kontinental Hockey League, based in Russia but also including teams from several other post-Soviet states, expanded outside the former Soviet Union for the first time in 2011, adding the Slovakian team Lev Poprad. The team was purchased by Czech interests after the 2011–12 season; the new owners folded the club and replaced it with a similarly named team, the Prague-based Lev Praha. Although the two Lev teams are technically separate corporate entities, this situation can be viewed as an effective relocation; not only are the team names similar, but the new owners retained much of the Poprad roster.
  • Mountfield HK originated with a club that began playing ice hockey in České Budějovice in 1928. Following the 2012–13 season, the Czech Extraliga reached a sponsorship deal with Radegast to sell its beer in all Extraliga arenas. This agreement conflicted with the naming rights deal HC České Budějovice already had with Budweiser Budvar Brewery for their arena. Under the agreement, the club and the city would face stiff penalties for selling any beer other than Budvar products.[26][27] Unable to resolve the dispute, the club decided on June 18, 2013 that no agreement could be reached between the parties involved and voted to immediately relocate to Hradec Králové for the 2013–14 season.[28][29] The ice hockey traditions of HC České Budějovice was continued in the town by a club which adopted the historical club name "Motor" - ČEZ Motor České Budějovice

Estonia

France

In 1967, the top-tier but deep in-debt Toulouse FC, located in Toulouse, merges with Paris suburbs Red Star, then a tier-2 club, actually relocating the entire club, including players and staff, 700 kilometres (430 mi) North. This created a major scandal, leading to legislation changes, in particular the 1984 Avice law, which prevents out-of-departement fusions or relocations for all sports
  • Athlétic Club Arles founded in 1913 in Arles, moved in 2010 to the nearby (45 kilometres (28 mi)) Avignon and adopted its current name, Athlétic Club Arles-Avignon
  • Evian Thonon Gaillard F.C. were rumoured to be pursuing a move to play its home matches at the Stade de la Praille in Geneva, Switzerland after it was determined that the club's current facility, the Stade Joseph-Moynat, did not meet the Ligue de Football Professionnel's (LFP) standards. Thonon-les-Bains, the commune where the club situates itself, is a few kilometres from the Swiss border and is only 34.6 kilometres (21.5 mi), a 45-minute car drive, from the city of Geneva. It was reported that the club's president, Patrick Trotignon, had been in the process of advocating for the move since the beginning of the 2009–10 Championnat National season just in case the club had achieved promotion to the second division. The vice-president of Swiss club Servette FC, who occupy the stadium, questioned the move citing possible schedule conflicts, as well as the health of the pitch if both clubs were to use the stadium on a weekly basis.[30] However, his claims were refuted by Benoît Genecand, who serves as president of Fondation du Stade de Genève (FSG), which owns and operates the facility. The club responded immediately to Genecand's comments via a press release posted on the club's official website.[31] Evian petitioned to the State Council of Geneva and obtained approval from the LFP for the move in early May. On 20 May 2010, Evian received a favourable ruling from the French Football Federation (FFF) with the Federal Council voting in favour of the move. According to the federation, the move now had to be agreed upon by a UEFA executive committee, which is composed of seventeen officials.[32][33] On 8 June, UEFA officially denied Evian's request to play at the Stade de la Praille meaning the club would play its home matches at the Parc des Sports in nearby Annecy.[34]

Georgia

Due to the Abkhaz–Georgian conflict several clubs from the region cannot compete in the Georgian league and therefore several clubs have been re-founded by internally displaced persons from Abkhazia in Tbilisi, and although the original clubs continue to exist in exile, and no actual relocation has occurred, the Abkhaz peoples who had founded these club consider the clubs to be the continuation of the original club:
  • Dinamo Sokhumi continues to exist however two phoenix club's have been found. FC ASMC Sokhumi was first founded as Dinamo Sokhumi and continues to represent the city in Tbilisi. FC Tskhumi Sukhumi was formed to represent Sokhumi initially in 1990, due to FC Dinamo Sokhumi refusing to join Umaglesi Liga and played in the Soviet First League, when the vast majority of the Georgian clubs withdrew from the Soviet League system and joined the Georgian SSR regional league, as the first Umaglesi Liga. After bankruptcy in 1993, the club was re-founded in 1999.
  • FC Gagra was founded in 2004 as a continuation of the city of Gagra's disrupted by war football traditions, although a dormant amateur side in Gagra by the same name remains in the local Abkhaz league. Initially there have been efforts to relocate the Abkhaz team to Tskhaltubo, ground-sharing with Samgurali Tskhaltubo due to the number of internally displaced persons in the town but these plans failed due to lack of finances and facilities.[35]
Due to the Georgian–Ossetian conflict, several teams have been displaced:

Germany

While football club relocation has so far been unusual in West German football, it was a rather common practice in communist East Germany. As teams were dependent on the regime, it intervened several times to promote an equal distribution of teams across the country. A number of prominent East German teams were affected by these political moves, and even in modern-day Germany, the reason for the regional dominance of some teams and the roots of many strong rivalries can be found there.
Major relocations in the DDR-Oberliga:
  • In 1954, the entire team of Empor Lauter, a club from a small industrial town in southern Saxony, were relocated to the very north of the country to compete as Empor Rostock. Under the name Hansa Rostock, they have been the most successful East German team since 1990.
  • Also in 1954, Dynamo Dresden lost all its players to the newly formed side of Dynamo Berlin. Dresden passed almost a decade in the lower leagues, returned to top-level football in 1962 and became one of the fiercest rivals of by-then record champion Dynamo Berlin.
  • Vorwärts Frankfurt (Oder) was the only major team to be relocated twice. Founded as Vorwärts Leipzig in 1951, the team was moved to East Berlin in 1953, where they won six East German championships. They became Vorwärts Frankfurt in 1971 and were renamed to FFC Viktoria in 1991.
In recent times, team relocation has become a more common feature in sports that are less popular with the German public. Notable examples include former ice hockey team München Barons (became the Hamburg Freezers in 2002), former handball side VfL Bad Schwartau (became HSV Handball in 2002) and basketball club Bayer Giants Leverkusen (Düsseldorf Giants since 2008).

Greece

Italy

Current Italian football laws allow relocation of clubs only between bordering cities. Some examples of current football clubs born as relocation of previous ones include:
  • In 2003, after Cosenza Calcio 1914 was not admitted to Serie B, a new ownership bought sports rights from then-Serie D club Castrovillari in order to permit a Cosenza franchise to play football in the upcoming season. The new club however proved to be short-lived, as it declared bankruptcy in 2007, but was promptly replaced by Fortitudo Cosenza, born as relocation of neighbouring Serie D club Rende Calcio.
  • Serie D's Neapolis, located in Naples, was born as a relocation of Sangiuseppese, a club hailing from the neighbouring city of San Giuseppe Vesuviano.
  • In 1994, one year after the cancellation of Calcio Catania, Atletico Leonzio's chairman Franco Proto relocated his club, renaming it Atletico Catania. The club, previously located in Lentini, went on to play up to Serie C1 (the league now known as Lega Pro Prima Divisione), losing promotion to Serie B on playoffs twice before being cancelled in 2001 because of financial difficulties also related to Calcio Catania's return into professional football and the consequent drop in attendance.
  • A.C.D. Città di Vittoria, born in 2007 as merger of Serie D's Comiso with minor league club Junior Vittoria (possibly a trick in order to allow the club to legally relocate from Comiso to Vittoria).
  • A.S.D. Pol. Libertas Acate of Serie D are a club officially settled in Acate, which however actually plays their home matches in Modica and are recognized by both fans and the regional press as Modica's club, being frequently referred to as Libertas Acate-Modica. In fact, after a takeover bid in 2006 the club left Acate to play their home matches in Modica despite the fact they were not eligible to change the "legal" home city.
  • S.S. Racing Club Roma was founded in summer 2013, after that Real T.B.M. Zagarolo transferred the seat and its sports title of Eccellenza to the city of Frascati, becoming A.S.D. Lupa Castelli Romani.
  • Lupa Frascati in the season 2013–14 the club moved to Axa district of Rome[37] changing its name to A.S.D. Lupa Roma, and playing the home matches in nearby Stadio Pietro Desideri of Fiumicino.[37] In the next season it was promoted to Lega Pro as Group G champions, changing its name again to Lupa Roma F.C. as a sign of return to the professional ranks after a 34-season absence. The team had to also move its home in Aprilia due to the Fiumicino field being unfit for professional league games, and the immediate lack of an available venue in Rome.[citation needed] In 2016–17 season the club moved to Stadio Olindo Galli of Tivoli. The legal address of the club also moved to the same municipality of Greater Rome.[38]
In basketball, before the 2010–11 season, Triboldi were legally domiciled in Soresina, but played their home games in nearby Cremona, a community in the same province. The club has now changed its domicile to Cremona. Nuova Sebastiani Basket moved from Rieti, a city in the Lazio region near Rome, to the southern city of Naples effective with the 2009–10 season.

Ireland

Irish clubs relocating out of their original district are slightly more common. In certain cases, the club has moved within a conurbation.
  • Shamrock Rovers Played in Glenmalure Park on the Southside of Dublin from 1926 to 1987. The club's owner Louis Kilcoyne announced he was selling Glenmalure Park, which they had recently purchased from the Jesuits.[39] The team played the entire 1987–88 season in an almost empty Tolka Park on Dublin's Northside as a result of a boycott called for by the Shamrock Rovers Supporters Club and KRAM (Keep Rovers At Milltown),[39] which was observed by the vast majority of Hoops fans.[40] Following the completion of the boycott season in Tolka, the Kilcoynes sold the football club to Dublin businessman, John McNamara, who put forward a controversial proposal to move in with Rivals Bohemians at Dalymount Park. KRAM congregated to vote on whether to lift the boycott and on the proposal to move to Dalymount. Both motions were passed and the club spent the next two seasons at the Phibsboro venue, with an unrecognisable side playing in front of small attendances.[41] Rovers spent two season's in Dalymount Park before moving to the RDS Arena in Ballsbridge, just two miles away from Glenmalure Park. In 1996 the club's new owner Alan McGrath unveiled a plan to build a permanent home state-of-the-art stadium in the Dublin southwest suburb of Tallaght for Rovers,[42] The club also played home matches in Morton Stadium, Richmond Park and again in Tolka Park before moving to their new home in Tallaght in 2009.
  • Shelbourne were originally from Ringsend in the South of Dublin. The club played in Harold's Cross Stadium in Harold's Cross briefly in the 1970s before moving to the stadium in 1982 where they remained until 1989 when they moved to Tolka Park, in the North of Dublin.

Israel

Kazakhstan

Latvia

  • FK Jūrmala, founded in 2003, moved from Jūrmala to Riga in March 2012 and renamed themselves after the historic Riga club, becoming FK Daugava.
  • RAF Jelgava in the early 1990s RAF was one of the strongest teams in Virslīga. However, when the plant ran into financial difficulties, the team received new sponsorship from the University of Latvia in 1996 and, as a result, changed their name and relocated to Riga, and played in the Latvian University Stadium.[43] The move was a sporting disaster and the club folded. A team under the name RAF Jelgava appeared again in 2001 in the 1. līga, and after the 2003 season the club merged with another Jelgava club, FK Viola Jelgava forming FK Jelgava.

Lithuania

Moldova

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A-League

New Zealand Knights FC, who played in Auckland, New Zealand, were dissolved and moved to Wellington in 2004, becoming Wellington Phoenix FC. During the later stages of the 2006–07 A-League season, Football Federation Australia (FFA) removed New Zealand Knights A-League licence due to the club's financial and administrative problems and poor on-field performance. After much delay, the final amount needed for the application came from Wellington property businessman Terry Serepisos in the latter stages of the bid. Serepisos, the club's majority owner and chairman, provided NZD $1,000,000[citation needed] to ensure the beginnings of a new New Zealand franchise and a continuation of New Zealand's participation in the A-League. FFA finalised a three-year A-League licence to New Zealand Football who then sub-let the licence to the Wellington-based club.[8] The new Wellington club was confirmed on 19 March 2007. The name for the new club was picked from a shortlist of six, pruned from 250 names suggested by the public, and was announced on 28 March 2007.[9][10] Serepisos said of the name, that "It symbolises the fresh start, the rising from the ashes, and the incredible Wellington support that has come out".[11]

NRL

The NRL is the national competition in rugby league and was born out of the Sydney-based Australian Rugby League and New South Wales Rugby League competitions. In 1987, the Western Suburbs Magpies agreed to relocate from its (inner) Western suburbs base to the outer south-western Macarthur district following a prior move west to Lidcombe Oval. In 1999, they merged with the remaining Inner Western team, the Balmain Tigers, (both teams having been established in 1908) to become Wests Tigers. The North Sydney Bears attempted to move from their Northern Suburbs base to the swiftly growing Central Coast region just north of Sydney in 1999, however problems with construction at the proposed home ground now known as Bluetongue Central Coast Stadium meant that the Bears continued to play home matches in a variety of Sydney grounds before being forced into a merger with the Manly Sea Eagles as the Northern Eagles. The merged clubs played home matches at both the Central Coast and Manly's home ground of Brookvale Oval, but after the bears were expelled from the partnership, poor crowds at the former location led to a reversion to the name of Manly and games played exclusively at Brookvale Oval. Subsequently, one of the owners of Bluetongue Central Coast Stadium, John Singleton, has attempted to lure another club to play there, notably the South Sydney Rabbitohs who have experienced poor crowds at their new home ground of ANZ Stadium.
The Canterbury Bulldogs were formed in 1935 and played their first season without a home ground. In 1936, they settled at Belmore Oval (renamed the Belmore Sports Ground) and played home matches there until the end of the 1998 season. The Bulldogs trialled a number of alternative home grounds during the 1990s, including Concord Oval in 1994. In 1995 they changed their name to the Sydney Bulldogs played most of the Premiership winning season at Parramatta Stadium, sharing the ground with bitter rivals, the Parramatta Eels and the also renamed and relocated Sydney (Balmain) Tigers. They finally settled on Stadium Australia, the main stadium for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games as their home ground, and in 2008, relocated their training and administration facilities from Belmore to the Homebush Olympic Park Site, though have since re-embraced the Belmore region by returning to the name of the Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs and playing some of their home games at the new Belmore Sports Ground.
Other clubs have relocated to new home grounds but have retained their original base.

Team relocations in Europe

In Europe, moves are very rare because of the different relationship between clubs and their league in the European system of professional sports league organization. In most sports, teams can be relegated from their current league down to a lower one or promoted up a league to the one above.

Armenia

  • FC Banants were founded in 1992 in the village of Kotayk, representing the Kotayk Province. Between 1992 and 1995, the club was commonly referred to as Banants Kotayk.[12] During the 1992 season, the club won the first Armenian Cup. At the end of the 1995 transitional season, Banants suffered a financial crisis. The club owners decided that it was better to merge the club with FC Kotayk of Abovyan, rather than disband it. In 2001, Banants demerged from FC Kotayk, and was moved from Abovyan to the capital Yerevan.

Austria

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Home ground-only relocations

Secondary interstate 'home's

Some Melbourne-based clubs began selling home games interstate in the late 1990s and conducting community camp clinics to build up local supporter bases.
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Team relocations in Australia and New Zealand

The two major professional sporting leagues in Australia are the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL). Both competitions were originally based in one city (Melbourne and Sydney respectively) and expanded to a national level, and through that process, there have been team relocations, mergers and closures in both leagues. The clubs are owned by members, not privately, but the North American franchise model exists, which means entry to the league is restricted. The hybrid model has meant that the leading promotor of relocation is the league itself, trying to grow the football code by encouraging poorly performing clubs to relocate interstate.

AFL

The AFL is the national competition in Australian rules football and grew out of the mostly suburban Melbourne based Victorian Football League competition; as a result, the member clubs have had to move to adjust to a changing national focus.

Major interstate relocations and mergers

  • South Melbourne Football Club – in 1982, it relocated interstate to Sydney, 963 km north and became the Sydney Swans. Despite early struggles, the club has more than tripled its membership since and have won premierships (championships) in 2005 & 2012.
  • Fitzroy Football Club – in 1996, the Melbourne-based club merged its playing operations with the interstate Brisbane Bears, a club 1669 km north of its original home, with the Bears becoming the Brisbane Lions. Since the merger, the Brisbane club almost doubled its membership and won three consecutive premierships between 2001 and 2003. Though the Fitzroy Football Club ceased fielding a team in profession competitions, it continued as a standalone entity based at its traditional home and fields a team in the amateur Victorian Amateur Football Association (VAFA).

Minor relocations

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Women's Professional Soccer

The league, started in 2009, saw its first major relocation before the 2011 season. The former Washington Freedom, which previously played in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., was purchased by Dan Borislow, founder of the VoIP company magicJack, and moved to Boca Raton, Florida. The team played as magicJack in the 2011 season, which was marked by near-constant conflict between the league and Borislow. WPS terminated the franchise after that season. The fallout from a subsequent legal battle between WPS and Borislow, combined with major financial losses, led the league to disband in 2012.

National Women's Soccer League

The NWSL, which launched in 2013 as the effective successor of WPS, played its first four seasons without a major relocation (during this time, several teams moved to different stadiums within their existing markets). The first major relocation occurred prior to the league's fifth season.
In the Flash's case, the move was largely a paper relocation involving only the NWSL franchise and not the team itself; the Flash will continue to operate in United Women's Soccer.

Canadian Football League

The Baltimore Stallions moved to Montreal in 1996 to become the Montreal Alouettes despite high attendance and success on the field (reaching the Grey Cup championship game in both seasons and winning it once). When the Cleveland Browns announced that they would relocate to Baltimore, the Stallions recognized that they could not compete with it and relocated to Montreal where it assumed the defunct Montreal Alouettes' name along with its records, history, and traditions. Although cosmetic rather than substantive, the CFL officially considers the modern Alouettes to be a continuation of the previous Alouettes team in an effort to distance itself from the American expansion experiment of which the Stallions were members and to keep the Alouettes' legacy viewed collectively. The current Alouettes do not consider the Stallions' legacy, including its Grey Cup victory, as part of the team's current legacy, even though the two teams never played concurrently. The only other team to relocate in the CFL's history was the Sacramento Gold Miners, another American team, who moved to become the San Antonio Texans in 1995. Coincidentally the Stallions' move ultimately led to the collapse of the entire US expansion. The staff of the Ottawa Rough Riders moved from Ottawa to Shreveport, Louisiana to become the Shreveport Pirates in 1993, but the CFL forced the team itself to be left in Ottawa, where a new owner kept the franchise alive. The Ottawa franchise itself ceased operations in 1996, but re-joined the league in 2003 as the Ottawa Renegades. The Renegades would in turn cease operations in 2006. In 2014, Ottawa rejoined the CFL as the Ottawa Redblacks.
On multiple occasions, the league attempted to relocate the remains of the Las Vegas Posse, who played one season in 1994. Prior to the 1995 season, multiple ownership groups unsuccessfully tried to buy the team for a relocation to Jackson, Mississippi. Following that, plans were made to move the team to Miami, Florida as the Manatees, but plans fell through when the league chose to end the US expansion before the Manatees' scheduled launch in 1996.
Outside of the American expansion, the CFL has never relocated any of its core Canadian franchises from one market to another.

National Basketball League of Canada

The NBL, founded in 2011, has had three teams relocate in its history, although one of the relocations was within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and is not listed here. The other two were:
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