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An exhibition game is the North American term for a sporting event in which there is no gain or loss from whether the competitors are victorious or not in the competition. The comparable British term is friendly match.
In North American sports, exhibition games usually take the form of a handful of preseason games that are intended to familiarize teammates and get them ready for upcoming matches. In professional sports, preseason games also help teams decide which players to keep for the regular season. Occasionally - though more commonly in other countries - exhibition games are parts of larger events; particularly fundraising for charity, or as over-the-top demonstrations of skill for the purposes of entertainment.
American football
National Football League teams play four or five preseason exhibition games a year. These games serve largely to help coaches narrow down the roster to the regular-season limit of 53 players. The NFL has played preseason games in Europe, Japan and Mexico to spread the league's popularity. Preseason games are quite unpopular with many fans, who resent having to pay for two home preseason games as part of a season-ticket package. College football teams do not play exhibition games, although many play a public intrasquad game in the spring.
Baseball
Major League Baseball's preseason is known as spring training. All MLB teams maintain a spring-training base in Arizona or Florida. The teams in Arizona make up the Cactus League, while the teams in Florida play in the Grapefruit League. Each team plays about 30 preseason games against other MLB teams. They may also play exhibitions against a local college team or a minor-league team from their farm system.
Several MLB teams used to play regular exhibition games during the year against nearby teams in the other major league, but regular-season interleague play has made such games unnecessary. The two Canadian MLB teams, the Toronto Blue Jays of the American League and the Montreal Expos of the National League, met annually to play the Pearson Cup exhibition game; this tradition ended when the Expos moved to Washington, D.C. for the 2005 season. It also used to be commonplace to have a team play an exhibition against Minor League affiliates during the regular season, but worries of injuries to players, along with travel issues, have made this very rare. The annual MLB All-Star Game is played in July between players from AL teams and players from NL teams.
Basketball
National Basketball Association teams play about seven preseason games per year. Nowadays, NBA teams almost always play each other in the preseason. However, from 1971 to 1975, NBA teams played preseason exhibitions against American Basketball Association teams. In the early days of the NBA, league clubs sometimes challenged the legendary barnstorming Harlem Globetrotters, with mixed success. The NBA has played preseason games in Europe and Asia. In the 2006 and 2007 seasons, the NBA and the primary European club competition, the Euroleague, will conduct a preseason tournament featuring two NBA teams and the finalists from that year's Euroleague. *
Traditionally, major college basketball teams would begin their seasons with a few exhibition games. They would play traveling teams made up of former college players or, on occasion, other countries' national teams. However, in 2003, the National Collegiate Athletic Association banned games with non-college teams. Some teams have begun scheduling exhibition games against teams in NCAA Division II and Division III.
Ice hockey
Under the 1995-2004 National Hockey League collective bargaining agreement, teams were limited to nine preseason games. From 1975 to 1991, NHL teams sometimes played exhibition games against teams from the Soviet Union, and in 1978, played against World Hockey Association teams also in pre-season training. Like the NFL, the NHL sometimes schedules exhibition games for cities without their own NHL teams.
In 1992, goaltender Manon Rheaume played in a preseason game for the Tampa Bay Lightning, becoming the first woman to suit up for a major pro sports team in North America.
The Flying Fathers, a Canadian group of Catholic priests, regularly tour North America playing exhibition hockey games for charity. One of the organization's founders, Les Costello, was a onetime NHL player who was ordained as a priest after retiring from professional hockey.
American college hockey teams occasionally play exhibition games against Canadian college teams as well as against USA or Canadian national teams. (In men's hockey, the senior national teams are selected from NHL and other pro players, and college teams would be overmatched against those teams even they were allowed to play them. College teams. However, the national Under-18 teams are made up of amateurs.)
Australian rules football
See Australian Football Exhibition Match
See also
External links
"Exhibition game"