Weekly Sports League and Franchise Report
by Dan Krieger
Published on October 5, 2026 under United Football League (UFL)
BASEBALL
Atlantic League: The ownership of the Gastonia (NC) Ghost Peppers in the independent Atlantic League announced the team is ceasing operations and is withdrawing from the league. The ownership will work with the city to find a new team or operator for the city's ballpark. Gastonia's Atlantic League history started with the Gastonia Honey Hunters team that played three seasons (2021-23) before being terminated by the league due to unpaid debts. New ownership took over Gastonia's Atlantic League market with a team that started in 2024 as the Gastonia Baseball Club while the team tested eight potential team names during the season before settling on the Gastonia Ghost Peppers name starting with the 2025 season.
Frontier League: The independent Frontier League completed its season-ending championship last weekend and it marked the final season playing as the Frontier League since the league has changed its name to the National Association of Professional Baseball (NAPB) for the 2027 season. The Cleburne (TX) Railroaders and Kane County Cougars (Geneva, IL) of the independent American Association have officially joined the NAPB for the 2027 season. The NAPB will grow from 18 to 20 teams now aligned in a ten-team Atlantic Conference with five-team North and East divisions and a ten-team Midwest Conference with five-team Central and West divisions. The NAPB announced its 2027 schedule will feature each team playing 102 games from May 6 through September 5, 2027. The American Association will drop to only eight teams with a new team in Blaine (MN) set to join in 2028. The Cleburne Railroaders were a 2017 American Association expansion team while the Kane County Cougars joined the American Association for the 2021 season after playing as an affiliated Midwest League team for 29 seasons (1991-2019) and sitting out the 2020 season due to the coronavirus (COVID-19).
North American Fall League: The proposed new NAFL professional pay-to-play showcase baseball league, which bills itself as ¬ÅThe Premier Professional Free Agent League ¬Â and was to start its inaugural 2026 season this week, recently announced its launch will be pushed back to 2027 due to a lack of player registrations. The NAFL was to have four teams called the Battle Angels, Lake Dawgs, Renegades and River Phoenix each play 18 games over a three-week period. All games were to be played at ForeFront Field, which is in Avon (OH) and home to the Lake Erie Crushers of the independent National Association of American Baseball, formerly the Frontier League.
Pacific Coast League: Minor League Baseball's 2026 Award for Best New Alternate Identity went to the Salt Lake Bees of the Triple-A Pacific Coast League for their Utah Dirty Sodas alternate identity that was used for every Wednesday home game in the 2026 season. The name paid tribute to the ¬Ådirty soda ¬Â term for carbonated beverages that are supplemented with creams and syrups and won via online fan voting over six other names. The Columbus Clingstones of the Double-A Southern League with the Columbus Scrambled Dogs came in second followed by the Louisville Bats of the Double-A International League with the Louisville Humidity.
BASKETBALL
94x50 League: The men's 94x50 minor professional basketball league, which played its inaugural 2026 season with eight teams, announced the addition of the Vancouver (WA) Bears and the Lilac City Legends (Spokane, WA) for the 2027 season. Both Vancouver and Lilac City were part of the 2026 rebirth of the United States Basketball League (USBL) that finished the season with only six teams. The eight 2026 teams in the 94x50 league were originally supposed to be part of the USBL but they left to form their own league.
Unrivaled Basketball: The eight-team Unrivaled 3-on-3 women's professional basketball league announced the final three of eight 2027 tour stops will include Houston (February 12), Los Angeles (January 8) and San Francisco (January 11). The five other announced tour stops will be in Detroit, Minneapolis, Boston, Brooklyn (NY) and Philadelphia. Miami served as the home for the majority of Unrivaled regular-season games over the league's first two seasons and will also host games on the 2027 schedule that is still to be released.
The Basketball League: The men's minor professional TBL announced the addition of a Chicago-based team called the Windy City Kings for the 2027 season.
National Basketball Association: As the NBA plans to start the NBA Europe league in 2027, the NBA is now reported to be in discussions about a possible alliance with Europe's current 20-team professional basketball league called the EuroLeague. The NBA wants to establish a 16-team NBA Europe league and has stated it will move forward with the new league with or without the EuroLeague's support. The NBA is also reported to be close to selecting the winning bid from three potential ownership groups for a Las Vegas expansion team.
FOOTBALL
Indoor Football League: The IFL's new Austin (TX) area expansion team that was originally called the ATX Draft recently announced a name change to the Texas Draft ahead of its inaugural IFL season in 2027. Last season, the IFL operated with 14 teams in seven-team Eastern and Western conferences but each conference will add 2 teams for 2027. The Texas Draft will be added to the Western Conference along with the move of the Tulsa Oilers from the Eastern Conference. The Eastern Conference will add the expansion Athens (GA) Crush and Savannah Leprechauns along with the Little Rock-based Arkansas Diamonds from last season's The Arena League.
National Arena League: The NAL announced its 2027 season schedule that will feature ten teams in a single-table format with each team playing ten games from March 13 through May 29, 2027. The NAL started the 2026 season with nine teams but the Dallas Bulls were removed midway through the season and did not return. The league added an expansion team called the Dallas Apex (Mesquite, TX) along with the returning Wheeling (WV) Miners, who played in the 2025 NAL before moving to the American Arena League in 2026.
United Football League: With the off-season elimination of the Birmingham Stallions and the Houston Gamblers and the recent addition of new teams in Colorado (Colorado Springs) and Rhode Island (Pawtucket) for 2027, the UFL announced the head coach and roster changes for the new teams. The head coach and roster of the Birmingham Stallions have been assigned to the new Rhode Island team; the head coach and roster of the Houston Gamblers have been assigned to the Dallas Renegades; and the head coach and roster of the Dallas Renegades have been assigned to the new Colorado team.
HOCKEY
American Hockey League: The AHL started its 2026-27 season this week and will again feature 32 teams each affiliated with a National Hockey League (NHL) team and each team playing a 72-game schedule through April 1, 2027. One change was the Bridgeport (CT) Islanders, the NHL affiliate of the New York Islanders, being relocated to become the Hamilton (Ontario) Hammers for the 2026-27 season. The team was moved from the Atlantic Division to the North Division creating a seven-team Atlantic Division and an eight-team North Division in the Eastern Conference. The Western Conference remains the same with a seven-team Central Division and a ten-team Pacific Division.
Greater Metro Hockey League: Canada's independent Junior-A GMHL recently started its 2026-27 season with 17 teams, 15 in Ontario and 2 in Quebec, aligned in an eight-team North Division and a nine-team South Division. Each team will play 42 games through February 14, 2027. The league had 14 teams last season but the Niagara Predators will be sitting out the 2026-27 season. The league added two new Ontario teams called the Orangeville Blitz and the Brighton Vikings and added two returning teams called the Almaguin Spartans (Ontario) and the Temiscaming Titans (Quebec). The Spartans last played in the 2024-25 season when they dropped out after only eight games while the Titans last played in the 2023-24 season.
National Hockey League: The NHL started its 2026-27 season this week with the same 32 teams and alignment as last season. Each team will play an 84-game schedule through April 10, 2027.
Professional Women's Hockey League: As the PWHL grows from 8 to 12 teams with the addition of new yet-to-be-named teams in Detroit, Hamilton (Ontario), Las Vegas and San Jose for the 2026-27 season, the league will realign from a single-table format to six-team Eastern and Western conferences. The league also announced its 2026-27 season schedule will feature each team playing 30 games from December 5, 2026, through April 18, 2027.
SOCCER
Major Arena Soccer League: The men's professional MASL has posted its 2026-27 season schedule that will feature nine teams aligned in a single-table format with each team playing 24 games from November 27, 2026, through April 4, 2027. All eight teams from last season will return and an expansion team called the Lehigh Valley Spirts (Allentown, PA) has been added for the 2026-27 season.
Major League Soccer: The Quebec government recently approved funding for additional improvements to Montreal's 50,000-seat Olympic Stadium that could become the future indoor home of the MLS's CF Montreal. With the MLS switching its season schedule next year to feature more winter games, the MLS commissioner is pushing for the Olympic Stadium over the team's current 19,000-seat outdoor home at the Stade Saputo and stated the renovated indoor stadium will be essential to the survival of the CF Montreal.
MLS NEXT Pro League (Major League Soccer): The attempt by the Jacksonville Armada FC to build a new stadium for an unaffiliated independent team in Major League Soccer's Division-III MLS NEXT Pro league has taken another hit. In 2020, the city of Jacksonville gifted a six-acre plot to a group promising to build a new soccer stadium for the Armada with a deadline of September 1, 2026. Although the Armada stated it would develop the property for the 2026 season, there has been no progress on the stadium and the city is now asking the developer to pay for the land or give it back to the city. The Armada was issued a permit in December 2025 for a 2,545-seat stadium that could be expanded in the second phase. The Armada announced a sale of the team in late 2025 and the new owner wanted to move forward with the stadium plans but that purchase has not been finalized.
National Women's Soccer League: The NWSL's new Atlanta expansion team announced it will be called the Atlanta City Football Club, or Atlanta City FC, when it starts playing in the league's 2028 season. The group that owns Major League Soccer's Atlanta United FC will own and operate the new Atlanta NWSL team.
USL League One (United Soccer League): The Fort Lauderdale United FC, which has a women's team in the USL's Division-I professional Gainbridge Super League, will start its men's team by the same name in the 2027 season of the Division-III professional USL League One. The city had a former USL League One team called the Fort Lauderdale Club de Futbol, or Fort Lauderdale CF, for the 2020 and 2021 seasons. This team served as a developmental team for Major League Soccer's Inter Miami CF before moving to the MLS NEXT Pro league for the 2023 season as the Inter Miami CF II.
OTHER
Professional Bull Riding - Team Series: The PBR's Team Series is in the final month of its 2026 regular season that features ten teams competing in 34 matches during 12 PBR events from July 11 through October 25, 2026. The ten teams for 2026 include the New York Mavericks (Belmont Park) and Oklahoma Wildcatters (Oklahoma City), Florida Freedom (Sunrise), Texas Rattlers (Fort Worth), Arizona Ridge Riders (Glendale), Austin Gamblers, Carolina Cowboys (Greensboro, NC), Kansas City (MO) Outlaws, Missouri Thunder (Ridgedale) and Nashville Stampede. Each of the ten teams hosts a PBR event along with two neutral-site events in Fort Collins and Anaheim.
Dan Krieger is the creator of the Weekly Sports League & Franchise Report, which has been tracking the changes in the sports world's leagues, teams, and nicknames since April 2007.
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The opinions expressed in this article are those of the writer(s), and do not necessarily reflect the thoughts or opinions of OurSports Central or its staff.
