Dispersal draft

A dispersal draft is a process in professional sports for assigning players to a new team when their existing team folds or is merged with another team. Like most other sports drafts, most dispersal drafts are conducted in closed leagues and are intended to prevent bidding wars and to maintain a league's competitive balance when absorbing a folded or merged team's roaster into the rest of a league as generally they would all turn into free agents following their team's destablishment.

Dispersal drafts are more commonly seen in emerging sports (such as soccer or women's basketball in the United States) or alternative leagues where initial support for a team failed to remain consistent and the team was unable to survive financially resulting in a team folding or merging with another team.

Examples of dispersal drafts

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Baseball

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Basketball

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  • The National Basketball Association (NBA) had two dispersal drafts in the 1950–51 season: In October 1950, a dispersal draft for the Chicago Stags franchise was conducted, and in January 1951, the Washington Capitols demise led to a second dispersal draft.
  • The American Basketball Association (ABA) had a dispersal draft in June 1972 when two teams folded[2] and had two drafts within a month of each other in October and November 1975 as two more teams folded during what turned out to be the final season of the ABA.
  • On August 8, 1976, as part of the ABA-NBA merger agreement, a dispersal draft was conducted to assign teams for the players on the two ABA franchises which had folded.
  • The Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA) had five such drafts over a seven-year period. In the 2003 season, a dispersal draft was held after Miami and Portland folded. This was followed by four other times: the 2004 season, after Cleveland folded; the 2007 season, after Charlotte folded; the 2009 season, after Houston folded; and the 2010 season, after Sacramento folded. In each draft, all remaining WNBA teams were allowed a draft pick in reverse order of their regular-season record for the preceding season.

Gridiron football

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Ice hockey

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  • In June 1978, the National Hockey League (NHL) allowed the financially struggling Cleveland Barons and Minnesota North Stars to merge under the North Stars banner. The North Stars were allowed to keep some of the players from each team, and the remaining players went into the 1978 NHL Dispersal Draft.
  • In 1991, the NHL conducted a Dispersal Draft in order to split a new team, the San Jose Sharks, from the Minnesota North Stars as a compromise after the North Stars owners requested permission to move the financially struggling franchise to the San Francisco Bay Area, effectively undoing the 1978 merger between the Stars and the California Golden Seals.
  • On January 5, 2007, the Southern Professional Hockey League conducted a one-round seven team dispersal draft after the SPHL terminated the Florida Seals franchise midway through the season; the seven players who were drafted went to their new teams, while the remaining players became free agents.

Soccer

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References

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  1. ^ "New teams choose 107 players in distribution draft". The Japan Times. Kyodo News. November 9, 2004. Retrieved August 20, 2020.
  2. ^ "Lincoln Journal Star 14 Jun 1972, page 44".