The practice is most common in North America, where a league franchise system is used and the teams are overwhelmingly privately owned.
Many current owners believe 32 is the optimal size for a major league due to playoff structure and ease of scheduling.
[citation needed] Under those conditions, an ambitious rival could often afford to lure away the sport's top players with promises of better pay, in hopes of giving the new league immediate respect and credibility from fans.
Today, however, established leagues derive a large portion of their revenue from lucrative television contracts that would not be offered to an untested rival.
[citation needed] Under present market and financial conditions, any serious attempt to form a rival league in the early 21st century would likely require hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in investment and initial losses,[citation needed] and even if such resources were made available the upstart league's success would be far from guaranteed, as evidenced by the failure of the WWF/NBC-backed XFL in 2001 and the UFL from 2009 to 2012.
Owners usually[citation needed] move teams because of weak fan support or because the team organization is in debt and needs an adequate population for financial support or because another city offers a bigger local market or a more financially lucrative stadium/arena deal.
For example, to attract the NFL's Cleveland Browns in 1995, the state of Maryland agreed to build a new stadium in Baltimore and allow the team to use it rent-free and keep all parking, advertising and concession revenue.
Opponents criticize owners for leaving behind faithful fans and governments for spending millions of dollars of tax money on attracting teams.
However, since sports teams in the United States are generally treated like any other business under antitrust law, there is little sports leagues can do to prevent teams from flocking to the highest bidders (for instance, the Los Angeles Rams filed suit when the other NFL owners initially blocked their move to St. Louis, which caused the NFL to back down and allow the move to proceed).
Newer sports leagues tend to have more transient franchises than more established, "major" leagues, but in the mid-1990s, several NFL and NHL teams moved to other cities, and the threat of a move pushed cities with major-league teams in any sport to build new stadiums and arenas using taxpayer money.
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 moves, 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 two most significant relocations in Australian history were the interstate relocations of the South Melbourne Football Club to Sydney (1983:963 kilometres (598 mi)) and the Fitzroy Football Club's move of playing operations to Brisbane (1996: 1,669 kilometres (1,037 mi)), both ambitious moves due also to crossing the cultural divide known as the Barassi Line.
On November 1, 2016, after achieving promotion back to the first division of the Campeonato Brasiliense, the club changed its name to Real Futebol Clube and moved to Brasília.
Team moves in Asia are done according to the type of sport played and/or the predominant style of league organization, as well as individual economic circumstances.
Throughout those years, the team retained the "Pelita" name until it was rebranded as Persipasi Bandung Raya for the ultimately abandoned 2015 Indonesia Super League, although the club's home base was actually in Bekasi at the time.
However, due to K League's decentralization policy, these three clubs were forced to move to other cities in 1996, changing their name in the process.
These moves are done under the accord that if any of these teams build a football specific stadium in Seoul, they can return there, of which two clubs took advantage of.