Sports and sporting events in the United States are widespread. It is possibly the largest network of sports in the entire world. The U.S. boasts not only a great number of professional sport teams and leagues, but also a great amateur network of sports and events. In the U.S., there are four major professional leagues of sports teams. They are Major League Baseball (MLB), the National Basketball Association (NBA), the National Football League (NFL), and the National Hockey League (NHL). Each one of these leagues is very popular and is also very profitable for the owners of the teams. Nearly every major city in the United States has a team from each one of the leagues. Some cities have more though.
Los Angeles has two NFL teams, the Rams and the Chargers; two baseball teams, the Dodgers and the Angels; two basketball teams, the Lakers and the Clippers; two NHL teams, the Kings and the Ducks. It is one of a handful of cities that have multiple teams within its region. There is also a professional soccer league in the U.S. now. It came into existence in the mid-1990s after the U.S. hosted the World Cup in Southern California in 1994. The league was created as a condition imposed by the international football association FIFA to host the games in the U.S. Soccer, as the rest of the world calls it, is not as popular in the U.S. as in much of the world, but it has gained some momentum since 1994.
Amateur sports also thrive in the U.S. One of the most popular sports in the amateur world is college football. Nearly every university across the country has an American football team, and there are thousands of colleges and universities in the country. Most of these schools belong to a league that can contain several schools, and most of these schools field basketball, baseball, hockey, and soccer teams, too.
