[1] In other team sports, like association football or basketball, it is generally from August or September to May although in some countries – such as Northern Europe, North America or East Asia – the season for oudoor summer sports starts in the spring and finishes in autumn, mainly due to weather conditions encountered during the winter.
For example, the NBA's Los Angeles Lakers will play the Los Angeles Clippers (a team within their division, a subdivision of the conference) four times in a regular season, while both will only play the Toronto Raptors, who are in the opposite Eastern Conference, twice.
Part of this is due to the vast geographic distances between some teams in North America — measured in a straight line, Los Angeles is 3,494 kilometres from Toronto, for instance — and a desire to limit travel expenses.
Because most Latin American countries never had a football cup competition, they instead split their season into two parts, typically known as the Apertura and Clausura (Spanish for "opening" and "closing").
A few others, such as Uruguay, crown one champion at the end of a playoff involving top teams from each half of the season.
The Campeonato Brasileiro Série A itself starts in May and ends in early December, and is played in a double round-robin format in the same way as the European championships.
A system similar to the Apertura and Clausura developed independently in Philippine professional basketball, with formerly two, now three tournaments (called "conferences") in one season, with each conference divided into an "elimination round" (the single round-robin group stage) and the playoffs in the North American sense.
The qualifying round and playoffs setup has permeated down to the local level and in most team sports, although seasons are not divided into conferences.
Although rugby union did not become professional until 1995, that sport has a long history of playoffs, primarily in France and the Southern Hemisphere.
When the UEFA Champions League reformatted in 1993, it added a "knockout stage" involving four teams that finished at the top two places in their respective groups.
Like North American sports leagues, this setup prevented some participants from facing each other, necessitating a two-round knockout stage to determine the champions.
The Copa Libertadores has applied a knockout stage since the 1988 tournament, expanding to the current four-round format next season.
For example, most European football league club competitions run from July or August to May, and so major international competitions such as the FIFA World Cup and UEFA European Football Championship are organised to occur in June and July.
Blank or white denotes off-season and pre-season months and solid colors mark the rest of the year.