Soccer Goes Pro

Two professional soccer leagues began play in 1894. The American League of Professional Football was formed by baseball club owners in Boston, Brooklyn, Philadelphia, New York, Baltimore, and Washington DC. A rival league called the American Association of Professional Football (AAPF) had four teams in Philadelphia, Trenton, Newark, and Paterson, New Jersey. The chapter argues that baseball owners launched a soccer league because they wished to maintain control over professional team sports and viewed it as an additional revenue stream that would allow them to make money year-round. The motivations for launching the AAPF are less clear. Both competitions were failures, shutting down after just weeks, with only twenty-five games played. Ultimately the leagues flopped because of poor organization, low attendance, and higher than expected costs. The failed experiments of 1894 meant that a major, fully professional soccer league would not return to the United States until 1921.