The MLB consist of 30 teams

The NBA consists of 30 teams and 450 players

The teams are divided into two conferences, the Eastern and Western, each playing 82 games from mid-October to mid-April. Conference champions meet in the NBA Finals each year in late May or June to crown a league champion.

Major League Baseball, explained

Major League Baseball is America’s oldest professional sports league. Alongside triumphs, the league has faced scandals, including drug abuse and steroid use, shaping its path over the decades. Today, MLB embraces new rules, international talent, and a growing connection to legalized sports betting.

MLB teams can travel with roughly 12,000 pounds of gear and luggage.

MLB 2023 rules changes were the most dramatic alterations in decades, drastically speeding up the game.

Every baseball used by the MLB only lasts about 7 pitches before it's discarded.

NFL explained

The NFL is the premier professional American football league, founded in 1920 in Canton, Ohio. It consists of 32 teams playing an 18-week regular season from September to January, culminating in the Super Bowl championship in February. The NFL has grown into the world's most valuable sports league, generating nearly $20B in revenue in 2023, and with teams valued at $163B combined. Learn its history here.

There are 32 teams in the NFL

Click a team's name to see their current record and opponent for the day; read the latest news, including injuries; view the remaining schedule; find out where the team is in the standings; discover the current roster; explore all player and team stats; and watch the latest video highlights.

Measuring which nation has the most baseball fans

It's known as America's pastime, but just how devoted are Americans to baseball? FiveThirtyEight outlines several metrics indicating Puerto Rico may have the most devoted fanbase. See how they used an adjusted metric to rank the world's biggest...

The NFL is the most valuable sports league in the world.

National Hockey League, explained

Founded in 1917, the NHL started with four Canadian teams and now spans 32 franchises across North America. Its iconic Stanley Cup, first awarded in 1893, remains a unique prize, with winners' names hand-engraved each year. The league generates billions in annual revenue, aided by key expansions, lucrative TV deals, and global fan engagement. While player safety and labor disputes have posed challenges, the NHL remains a cornerstone of professional sports, offering an 82-game season culminating in the fiercely contested Stanley Cup Final.

MLB pitchers were charged with benefiting from sports betting

In November 2025, two pitchers for the Cleveland Guardians were charged with coordinating with sports bettors to enrich themselves and others. In many instances, they shared the kinds of pitches they would throw at specific points in the game. Bettors then placed money on those actions.

Minor leaguers once unionized for better pay, housing, and medical care

For decades, Minor League baseball players endured overcrowded housing, indifferent medical care, and all-night bus rides for a chance to make it to “The Show.” And they did it for as little as $4,800 a year.

The MLB's reserve clause gave owners rights to players after their contracts expired

The clause was added to contracts in 1879, allowing owners to hang on to players after the expiration of their contracts, sometimes in perpetuity.

There are 32 teams in the NHL

Click a team to see their current record and opponent for the day; read the latest news, including injuries; view the remaining schedule; scan where the team is in the divisional standings; review the current roster; skim all the player and team stats; and watch the latest video highlights.

The 2026 MLB season is the first to allow players to challenge umpires' calls on balls and strikes.

NBA players are the best paid athletes in major US sports

The NFL is the most valuable pro league in the world, but its players aren’t making nearly as much as NBA players. This CNBC video dives into how league structure, salary cap, and guaranteed contracts define how much an athlete will make, and shows how NBA players are able to use those to get almost double the average annual salary of other pro leagues.

Leagues like the Premier League differ from the World Cup.

The Premier League and other similar club leagues are professional organizations like the NFL or the NBA, where owners purchase player contracts. World Cup teams, on the other hand, are organized by citizenship.

In 1975, a Major League Baseball clause that kept players legally tied to their teams after retirement was dismantled, creating the modern concept of free agency.

The WNBA includes 13 teams

Many teams share markets with an NBA team, and some share arenas; however, seven are independently owned. The WNBA will expand into Canada in 2026.

Fourteen ways to make baseball cool again

Baseball, while commonly known as America's pastime, gets a bit of a bad rap for being long, slow, and boring. Here are fourteen fun ideas to make the sport more interesting to combat dwindling attendance.

100 years of NFL history in under four minutes

Founded in 1920 in Canton, Ohio, professional football has grown into the premiere sport in the US. Generating more than $20B annually, the NFL gained significant popularity after merging with the American Football League in 1970, a move which among other things established the Super Bowl.

The 2026 FIFA World Cup will feature 48 teams, making it the largest field in World Cup history.

The PGA Tour features over 30 tournaments per year, but the most important are its 4 majors: the Masters, the PGA Championship, the US Open, and the Open Championship.

Statcast, MLB's sophisticated real-time data analytics system, runs machine learning models in the 23-second gap between every pitch.

How Shohei Ohtani made baseball fun again

To rise to the level of Major League Baseball in recent decades, a player needs to become a specialist in at least one of the sport's many skills: hitting, pitching, throwing, running, fielding. For decades, this specialization has made a so-called...

Explore the data behind every Major League Baseball player's success rate with ABS, its new tech-assisted challenge system.

1440: The National Football League

Explore the best resources we found on the NFL

Jackie Robinson's iconic 42 is the only number that's been retired leaguewide, meaning no current players can wear it except in his honor.

The first MLB All-Star Game was designed by a sports journalist who believed the spectacle would boost baseball's reputation during the Great Depression.

A 1930s card game birthed modern fantasy sports

"National Pastime" used the statistics of real Major League Baseball players to determine a winner, creating the template for the modern fantasy sports model.

A Bay Area lab was supplying MLB players with steroids

The Bay Area Laboratory Co-operative, also known as BALCO, began as a modest vitamin shop, but by the 1990s it was at the center of a doping scheme that rocked Major League Baseball and other professional sports.

Each July 1, six-time Major League Baseball All-Star Bobby Bonilla gets $1.19M from the New York Mets, thanks to a 25-year-long deferred payment agreement.

Every MLB baseball needs to be rubbed with a special kind of mud, provided by one New Jersey family.

Integration of Latino players in MLB

The Senators’ spectacular losing record obscures one of the most important stories in baseball history: the club’s role in integrating Latino players into the major leagues

X Games League to debut team-based format in 2026

Beginning in 2026, the X Games League will feature four city-based franchises with male and female athletes competing in skateboarding, BMX, and motocross—introducing season-long team competition to the event’s structure.

A look into Major League Soccer supporter clubs

Supporter clubs are legion in Europe and South America, where soccer is an obsession. The sport is not nearly as popular in the United States, but that does seem to be changing, due in no small part to the slow success of Major League Soccer and its dedicated fan bases. This brief documentary examines a handful of American supporter clubs who sing songs, cheer wildly, and commit themselves and their families to their hometown clubs.

How baseball shaped Black America during Reconstruction

A cornerstone of the budding Black culture following the Civil War was baseball, with several clubs springing up in Black neighborhoods and leaders like Frederick Douglass cheering on the players, including his son, who played for a team in Washington. This detailed history of the early Black leagues unpacks how the game enhanced the upwardly mobile community—and why that fact led to the segregation of what would become Major League Baseball.

The Big Ten is the oldest Division I collegiate athletic conference in the US

Established in 1896 with seven members, the Big Ten has expanded far beyond its Midwestern roots. As of 2024, it includes 18 schools—stretching coast to coast from Rutgers in New Jersey to UCLA in California.

Explaining the rise in adult sports leagues

Community sports leagues shifted from publicly supported entities to privatized ones in the 1990s, as tech advances streamlined registration processes. Millennial interest drove significant growth in social sports leagues for adults, growing much faster than other kinds of sports. A few industry leaders have benefited from this shift.

Fenway Park is the oldest professional baseball stadium in use

The legendary park was built in 1912 and is considered hallowed ground for baseball fans, along with iconic venues like Yankee Stadium in the Bronx and Wrigley Field in Chicago.

Cricket used to be America's pastime

Before baseball, American football, basketball, or hockey ever organized in the US, there was one sport which could be found up and down the East Coast: cricket. The second-most popular sport in the world, cricket is mostly ignored by Americans, despite its prevalence in early American history. Learn more about the forgotten role cricket played in the US with this article.

Before 1920, during the Deadball Era, a single baseball was used throughout a Major League game, leading to a notoriously dirty style of play.

The Super Bowl is the National Football League’s championship game

Played annually in early February between the league’s two conference champions, the game was created as part of the 1966 merger between the American Football League and the National Football League. It has become the most-watched sporting event in the US each year.

The rising cost of taking a family to the ballgame

While inflation affects the price of all goods and services across an economy, some hit harder for consumers than others. Taking data from the average cost of tickets all the way down to the number of hot dogs a family would buy, the average pricetag for a family of four to attend a baseball game is now just over $200–making America’s pastime cost-prohibitive for many families.

100 moments that shaped baseball history

Published in 2018 by baseball historian Jacob Kornhauser, this list examines the defining moments throughout more than a century of play on the field, from Pittsburgh Pirates pitcher Dock Ellis purportedly throwing a no-hitter while on acid to Jackie Robinson breaking the color barrier.

There are over 800 annual marathons, but only seven deemed World Marathon Majors

The races—Tokyo, Boston, London, Berlin, Chicago, Sydney, and New York City—are on some of the best-known courses in the world and are run by some of the sport’s top athletes.

The NFL is so successful because it is perfectly suited for television

The predictable weekly cadence of football games ritualizes the experience of watching together, and their relative scarcity makes every game meaningful. With the stop-and-go play of the sport, there are predictable, repeating stoppages to allow broadcasters to sell lots of advertising inventory. The league sits in the sweet spot compared to MLB (many games) and NBA and soccer (continuous play with fewer ads). This Acquired episode distills fascinating insights into the NFL's business and history.

How fantasy baseball fights the loneliness epidemic

Experts believe the erosion of traditional community organizations has led to a loneliness epidemic. This deep dive explores how fantasy baseball has filled the gap for some men, providing a stand-in social network.

An estimated 49 million people played fantasy football in 2022

The number, estimated by the Fantasy Sports and Gaming Association, has grown exponentially since the start of the century. While fantasy sports in general are popular, football is the most popular, with an estimated 79% of fantasy participants playing fantasy football.

Sports leagues have attempted to prevent athletes from betting

As pro and collegiate sports embrace betting (and the revenue that comes with it), each league works diligently to ensure the integrity of the games by hiring private firms to analyze irregular bets. These companies have flagged bets that led to the firing of Alabama’s baseball coach, the suspension of multiple athletes at Iowa and Iowa State, and, most recently, a lifetime ban on former Toronto Raptors forward Jontay Porter by the NBA in April 2024.