Relocation of professional sports teams

See also: Expansion team
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Relocation of professional sports teams is a practice which involves a sporting club moving from one metropolitan area to another, but occasionally, moves between municipalities in the same conurbation are also included. In North America, a league franchise system is used, and as the teams are generally privately owned and operate according to the wishes of their owners, the practice is much more common there than it is in other areas of the world, where sporting teams are often identified with a specific location. Moving of teams is more commonplace among less established teams with small or nonexistent fan-bases. Reasons for relocations are commonly motivated by either problems with finances, problems with inadequate facilities, lack of support or the wishes of the owner(s). In most cases, it is a combination of some or all of those problems.

Franchise relocations in North America

Background

Unlike most professional sport systems worldwide, sports organizations in North America generally do not operate a system of promotion and relegation in which poorly performing teams are replaced with teams that do well in lower-level leagues. North America does not have comprehensive governing bodies whose authority extends from the amateur to the highest levels of a given sport. Unlike in other countries, where one may invest in a local lower-level club and through performance see that club rise to major league status, the only three ways a North American city can host a major league sports team are through league expansion, forming/joining a rival league, or most commonly, buying an existing league franchise and relocating it.

A city wishing to get a team in a major professional sports league can wait for the league to expand and award new franchises. However, as of 2015, each of the major leagues has 30 or 32 franchises. Many current owners believe this is the optimal size for a major league and aside from the possible expansion of the National Hockey League (NHL) to 32 teams (a 31st team already approved to begin play by 2018),[1][2] none of the major leagues is believed to be considering an imminent expansion. In fact, Major League Baseball (MLB) actually considered contracting the Montreal Expos and Minnesota Twins in 2002, which would have taken effect in the 2007 season, but the baseball players union sued MLB to prevent the dissolution of the teams. In the end, nothing happened to the Twins, which had the issue leading to their possible contraction, a new stadium, resolved with the opening of Target Field in 2010, and the Expos relocated to Washington, D.C. to become the Washington Nationals in 2005.

In past decades, aspiring owners whose overtures had been rejected by the established leagues would respond by forming a rival league in hopes that the existing major league will eventually agree to a merger. The new league would attain major league status in its own right and/or the established league is compelled to expand. The 1960s American Football League (AFL) is perhaps the most recent example of a successful rival league, having achieved each of the three goals listed above in reverse order. However, all major sports have had a rival league achieve at least some of these goals in the last half of the 20th century. Baseball's proposed Continental League did not play a game but only because Major League Baseball responded to the proposal by adding teams in some of the new league's proposed cities. The American Basketball Association (ABA) and World Hockey Association (WHA) each succeeded in getting some of their franchises accepted into the established leagues, which had both unsuccessfully attempted to cause their upstart rivals to fold outright by adding more teams.

However, the upstart leagues owed their success in large part to the reluctance of owners in the established leagues to devote the majority of their revenues to player salaries and also on sports leagues' former reliance primarily on gate receipts for revenue. Under those conditions, an ambitious rival could often afford to lure away the sport's top players with promises of better pay, in hopes of giving the new league immediate respect and credibility from fans. Today, however, established leagues derive a large portion of their revenue from lucrative television contracts that would not be offered to an untested rival. Also, the activism of players' unions has resulted in the established leagues paying a majority of their revenues to players, thus the average salary in each of the big four leagues is now well in excess of $1 million per season.

Under present market and financial conditions, any serious attempt to form a rival league in the early 21st century would likely require hundreds of millions (if not billions) of dollars in investment and initial losses, and even if such resources were made available the upstart league's success would be far from guaranteed, as evidenced by the failure of the WWF/NBC-backed XFL in 2001. At no point since the start of the 1980s have any of the established leagues even added expansion teams while a rival was operating (or establishment of a rival league was being seriously considered). Therefore, as long as leagues choose not to expand and/or reject a city's application, the only realistic recourse is to convince the owner(s) of an existing team to move it (or convince a prospective owner to purchase a team with the intent of moving it).

Owners usually move teams because of weak fan support or because the team organization is in debt and needs an adequate population for financial support or because another city offers a bigger local market or a more financially lucrative stadium/arena deal. Governments may offer lucrative deals to team owners to attract or retain a team. For example, to attract the NFL's Cleveland Browns in 1995, the state of Maryland agreed to build a new stadium in Baltimore and allow the team to use it rent-free and keep all parking, advertising and concession revenue. (This move proved so unpopular in Cleveland that the move was treated as the Baltimore Ravens being awarded an expansion franchise, and the Browns name and their official lineage would remain in Cleveland for a "reactivated" team that rejoined the NFL three years later.) A little more than a decade earlier, the Baltimore Colts left for Indianapolis (NFL owners voted to give Colts owner Robert Irsay permission to move his franchise to the city of his choosing after no satisfactory stadium would be built).

The relocation of sports teams is often controversial. Opponents criticize owners for leaving behind faithful fans and governments for spending millions of dollars of tax money on attracting teams. However, since sports teams in the United States are generally treated like any other business under antitrust law, there is little sports leagues can do to prevent teams from flocking to the highest bidders (for instance, the Los Angeles Rams filed suit when the other NFL owners initially blocked their move to St. Louis, which caused the NFL to back down and allow that relocation to proceed). Major League Baseball, unique among the major professional sports leagues, has an exemption from antitrust laws won by a Supreme Court decision but nonetheless has allowed several teams to change cities. Also recently, courts denied the attempted relocation of the team then known as the Phoenix Coyotes by siding with the NHL, which claimed that it had final authority over franchise moves.

Newer sports leagues tend to have more transient franchises than more established, "major" leagues, but in the mid-1990s, several NFL and NHL teams moved to other cities, and the threat of a move pushed cities with major-league teams in any sport to build new stadiums and arenas using taxpayer money. The trend continued in the 2000s, when three National Basketball Association (NBA) teams moved in a seven-year span after there were no relocations at all in the 16 years before it. Critics referred to the movement of teams to the highest-bidding city as "franchise free agency."

List of relocations

The following charts list movements of franchises in the modern eras of the major North American sports leagues. It does not include:

Major League Baseball

National Basketball Association

National Football League

National Hockey League

Relocations in the NHL have been unique in that most of the teams have changed their names after relocating, as opposed to keeping their identity with the old market. Only one NHL team that relocated—both in the pre-Original Six era and in the modern era—kept their names: the Calgary Flames.

The Edmonton Oilers nearly relocated to Houston in 1998, but the team remained in the city after a limited partnership raised enough money to purchase the franchise before the deadline.[5][6] The then-Phoenix Coyotes were placed into bankruptcy with the intent to circumvent the league's relocation rules, but this was blocked by a judge. Other relocation threats came from two of the 1967 expansion teams, the Pittsburgh Penguins (on multiple occasions) and St. Louis Blues (in 1983), but ultimately stayed in their existing markets.

Arena Football League

Major League Soccer

Women's National Basketball Association

Women's Professional Soccer

The league, started in 2009, saw its first major relocation before the 2011 season. The former Washington Freedom, which previously played in the Maryland suburbs of Washington, D.C., was purchased by Dan Borislow, founder of the VoIP company magicJack, and moved to Boca Raton, Florida. The team played as magicJack in the 2011 season, which was marked by near-constant conflict between the league and Borislow. WPS terminated the franchise after that season. The fallout from a subsequent legal battle between WPS and Borislow, combined with major financial losses, led the league to disband in 2012.

The effective successor of WPS, the National Women's Soccer League, has had no teams relocate outside their original markets since its launch in 2013 (several teams have moved to different stadiums within their existing markets).

Canadian Football League

The Baltimore Stallions moved to Montreal in 1996 to become the Montreal Alouettes despite high attendance and success on the field (reaching the Grey Cup championship game in both seasons and winning it once). When the Cleveland Browns announced that they would relocate to Baltimore, the Stallions recognized that they could not compete with it and relocated to Montreal where it assumed the defunct Montreal Alouettes' name along with its records, history, and traditions. Although cosmetic rather than substantive, the CFL officially considers the modern Alouettes to be a continuation of the previous Alouettes team in an effort to distance itself from the American expansion experiment of which the Stallions were members and to keep the Alouettes' legacy viewed collectively. The current Alouettes do not consider the Stallions' legacy, including its Grey Cup victory, as part of the team's current legacy, even though the two teams never played concurrently. The only other team to relocate in the CFL's history was the Sacramento Gold Miners, another American team, who moved to become the San Antonio Texans in 1995. Coincidentally the Stallions' move ultimately lead to the collapse of the entire US expansion. The staff of the Ottawa Rough Riders moved from Ottawa to Shreveport, Louisiana to become the Shreveport Pirates in 1993, but the CFL forced the team itself to be left in Ottawa, where a new owner kept the franchise alive. The Ottawa franchise itself ceased operations in 1996, but re-joined the league in 2003 as the Ottawa Renegades. The Renegades would in turn cease operations in 2006. In 2014, Ottawa re-joined the FL once again as the Ottawa Redblacks.

In 1996, a group based in Miami intended to purchase the remains of the dissolved Las Vegas Posse and move to Miami to become the Miami Manatees (even staging an exhibition game there) but plans fell through when the league chose to end the US expansion.

Outside of the American expansion, the CFL has never relocated any of its core Canadian franchises from one market to another.

National Basketball League of Canada

The NBL, founded in 2011, has had three teams relocate in its history, although one of the relocations was within the Greater Toronto Area (GTA) and is not listed here. The other two were:

Team relocations in Australia and New Zealand

The two major professional sporting leagues in Australia are the Australian Football League (AFL) and National Rugby League (NRL). Both competitions were originally based in one city (Melbourne and Sydney respectively) and expanded to a national level, and through that process, there have been team relocations, mergers and closures in both leagues. The clubs are owned by members, not privately, but the North American franchise model exists, which means entry to the league is restricted. The hybrid model has meant that the leading promotor of relocation is the league itself, trying to grow the football code by encouraging poorly performing clubs to relocate interstate.

AFL

The AFL is the national competition in Australian rules football and grew out of the mostly suburban Melbourne based Victorian Football League competition; as a result, the member clubs have had to move to adjust to a changing national focus.

Major interstate relocations and mergers

Minor relocations

Home ground-only relocations

Secondary interstate 'home's

Some Melbourne based clubs began selling home games interstate in the late 1990s and conducting community camp clinics to build up local supporter bases.

A-League

New Zealand Knights FC, who played in Auckland, New Zealand, were dissolved and moved to Wellington in 2004, becoming Wellington Phoenix FC. During the later stages of the 2006–07 A-League season, Football Federation Australia (FFA) removed New Zealand Knights A-League licence due to the club's financial and administrative problems and poor on-field performance. After much delay, the final amount needed for the application came from Wellington property businessman Terry Serepisos in the latter stages of the bid. Serepisos, the club's majority owner and chairman, provided NZD $1,000,000 to ensure the beginnings of a new New Zealand franchise and a continuation of New Zealand's participation in the A-League. FFA finalised a three-year A-League licence to New Zealand Football who then sub-let the licence to the Wellington-based club.[7] The new Wellington club was confirmed on 19 March 2007. The name for the new club was picked from a shortlist of six, pruned from 250 names suggested by the public, and was announced on 28 March 2007.[8][9] Serepisos said of the name, that "It symbolises the fresh start, the rising from the ashes, and the incredible Wellington support that has come out".[10]

NRL

The NRL is the national competition in rugby league and was born out of the Sydney-based Australian Rugby League and New South Wales Rugby League competitions. In 1987, the Western Suburbs Magpies agreed to relocate from its (inner) Western suburbs base to the outer south-western Macarthur district following a prior move west to Lidcombe Oval. In 1999, they merged with the remaining Inner Western team, the Balmain Tigers, (both teams having been established in 1908) to become Wests Tigers. The North Sydney Bears attempted to move from their Northern Suburbs base to the swiftly growing Central Coast region just north of Sydney in 1999, however problems with construction at the proposed home ground now known as Bluetongue Central Coast Stadium meant that the Bears continued to play home matches in a variety of Sydney grounds before being forced into a merger with the Manly Sea Eagles as the Northern Eagles. The merged clubs played home matches at both the Central Coast and Manly's home ground of Brookvale Oval, but after the bears were expelled from the partnership, poor crowds at the former location led to a reversion to the name of Manly and games played exclusively at Brookvale Oval. Subsequently, one of the owners of Bluetongue Central Coast Stadium, John Singleton, has attempted to lure another club to play there, notably the South Sydney Rabbitohs who have experienced poor crowds at their new home ground of ANZ Stadium.

The Canterbury Bulldogs were formed in 1935 and played their first season without a home ground. In 1936, they settled at Belmore Oval (renamed the Belmore Sports Ground) and played home matches there until the end of the 1998 season. The Bulldogs trialled a number of alternative home grounds during the 1990s, including Concord Oval in 1994. In 1995 they changed their name to the Sydney Bulldogs played most of the Premiership winning season at Parramatta Stadium, sharing the ground with bitter rivals, the Parramatta Eels and the also renamed and relocated Sydney (Balmain) Tigers. They finally settled on Stadium Australia, the main stadium for the Sydney 2000 Olympic Games as their home ground, and in 2008, relocated their training and administration facilities from Belmore to the Homebush Olympic Park Site.

Other clubs have relocated to new home grounds but have retained their original base.

Team relocations in Europe

In Europe, moves are very rare because of the different relationship between clubs and their league in the European system of professional sports league organization. In most sports, teams can be relegated from their current league down to a lower one or promoted up a league to the one above.

Armenia

Austria

Azerbaijan

Belgium

Cyprus

At least three clubs were forced to move due to the 1974 Turkish invasion of that country:[18]

Czech Republic

Estonia

France

Georgia

Due to the Abkhaz–Georgian conflict several clubs from the region cannot compete in the Georgian league and therefore several clubs have been re-founded by internally displaced persons from Abkhazia in Tbilisi, and although the original clubs continue to exist in exile, and no actual relocation has occurred, the Abkhaz peoples who had founded these club consider the clubs to be the continuation of the original club:

Due to the Georgian–Ossetian conflict, several teams have been displaced:

Germany

While football club relocation has so far been unusual in West German football, it was a rather common practice in communist East Germany. As teams were dependent on the regime, it intervened several times to promote an equal distribution of teams across the country. A number of prominent East German teams were affected by these political moves, and even in modern-day Germany, the reason for the regional dominance of some teams and the roots of many strong rivalries can be found there.

Major relocations in the DDR-Oberliga:

In recent times, team relocation has become a more common feature in sports that are less popular with the German public. Notable examples include former ice hockey team München Barons (became the Hamburg Freezers in 2002), former handball side VfL Bad Schwartau (became HSV Handball in 2002) and basketball club Bayer Giants Leverkusen (Düsseldorf Giants since 2008).

Greece

Italy

Current Italian football laws allow relocation of clubs only between bordering cities. Some examples of current football clubs born as relocation of previous ones include:

In basketball, before the 2010–11 season, Triboldi were legally domiciled in Soresina, but played their home games in nearby Cremona, a community in the same province. The club has now changed its domicile to Cremona. Nuova Sebastiani Basket moved from Rieti, a city in the Lazio region near Rome, to the southern city of Naples effective with the 2009–10 season.

Ireland

Irish clubs relocating out of their original district are slightly more common. In certain cases, the club has moved within a conurbation.

Israel

Kazakhstan

Latvia

Lithuania

Moldova

Netherlands

Team relocation is very rare in the Netherlands. The most prominent case involves professional football club Almere City FC. When 1964 Eredivisie champion and 1964–65 European Cup quarter finalist Door Wilskracht Sterk was merged into FC Amsterdam, its supporters founded amateur football club De Zwarte Schapen, named after their nickname, which translates as Black Sheep. The club quickly rose through the ranks of amateur football, eventually reaching the Hoofdklasse. After several violent incidents on the pitch and a six-month suspension by the Royal Dutch Football Association, the club moved from Amsterdam to nearby Almere (a "new town") and changed its name to Sporting Flevoland. That name was changed to FC Omniworld in the 1990s, and FC Omniworld was admitted to the Eerste Divisie for the 2005–06 season.

Team relocation is slightly more common in other sports in the Netherlands. Volleyball club AMVJ, for instance, moved from Amsterdam to Amstelveen in 1980. The men's team was subsequently relocated to Almere in 1999, becoming Omniworld.

Norway

Team relocation is rare, although mergers, for instance of teams of neighboring settlements, are common. Relocation has sometimes happened on the top level of women's football. SK Sprint-Jeløy was moved from Jeløy to Moss under the new name FK Athene Moss. Asker Fotball's women's team was absorbed by Stabæk Fotball ahead of the 2009 season. Ahead of the 2010 season Team Strømmen FK (which formerly had been moved from Aurskog-Høland) was absorbed by Lillestrøm SK, and Gjøvik FK absorbed by Raufoss IL.

Poland

Romania

Russia

Slovakia

Spain

Sweden

Although no major relocations have occurred, two clubs from the capital Stockholm have changed municipality (AIK) and acquired another team into their club colours (Hammarby Ishockey) respectively. AIK was formed in Stockholm in 1891 but then moved to neighbouring Solna in 1937. Hammarby IF had an ice hockey section that was shut down in 2008. In 2013 the club Bajen Fans Hockey then changed their name to Hammarby Ishockey,[48] thereby becoming one of very few clubs in Sweden that have acquired another club and made it their own.

Switzerland

In Switzerland only one "relocation" has happened so far. The Zürich based football club Grasshoppers Zürich under company name "Die Neue Grasshopper Fussball AG" controversially moved their headquarters in 2005 from the city itself to Niederhasli. The addition of Zurich was remained in the club's name and the team is still playing in the city of Zurich at Letzigrund (the home stadium of their old rival FC Zürich, a temporary measure while Stadion Zürich is being built). All other teams of the club are playing Niederhasli.

The fans of Grasshoppers Club protested the move, claiming the club has lost part of its identity.

Turkey

Ukraine

Due to the War in Donbass, several clubs have temporarily relocated for an indefinite period of time due to safety concerns. Shakhtar Sverdlovsk and Avanhard Kramatorsk could not find alternative venues and withdrew from all competitions as a result. Those teams that successfully relocated continue to participate in all competitions:

Due to the 2014 Crimean Conflict initially none of the Crimean clubs, Tytan Armyansk, Tavriya Simferopol, Zhemchuzhina Yalta or FC Sevastopol were able to relocate due to the Annexation of Crimea by the Russian Federation, and subsequently they all disbanded or became dormant. However some have managed to re-establish themselves:

United Kingdom

Team relocations in Latin America

Team relocations in Latin America occur very rarely for the established teams with established bases. Smaller teams, either small team from large agglomerations or provincial teams with little or no fan base frequently move in search of a larger market and/or more affordable facilities, as frequently, there are only large complexes available with a necessity to groundshare with a larger club.

Brazil

In Brazil, the first relocation of a first division football team was in 2010. Grêmio Barueri relocated to Presidente Prudente, becoming Grêmio Prudente, only to return as Grêmio Barueri in the middle of 2011. In other sports, such as volleyball, basketball or futsal, relocation is a bit more common, although it doesn't occur frequently.

Colombia

In Colombia historic teams from First Division are rarely relocated, but newer teams created in second division are often moved from city to city looking for a responding fan base.

Costa Rica

Mexico

Liga MX has a relegation system but its teams have some territorial rights recognized, perhaps due to U.S. influence as many league matches are aired in the U.S., where only traditional top-flight teams are perceived to most effectively reach the immigrant fan-base.

Peru

In Peru several teams have had to use already built large stadiums, including ones in the interior of the country, to be able to participate in Peruvian Primera División; this includes several teams from the capital, Lima, who have not been able to establish fanbases in their districts due to the required moves.

Venezuela

Team relocations in Asia

Relocations in Asia are done according to the type of sport played and/or the predominant style of league organization, as well as individual economic circumstances. For instance, in Japan there is a difference between Nippon Professional Baseball which is run like MLB, and the J.League which is run like European football leagues.

Club relocations are also common when an amateur or semiprofessional club tries to acquire its own facilities to become a professional club, and no money and/or space is available to build their own in a long-established location.

China

Relocation of teams in China is very common, as teams are privately owned or owned by businesses, and there are neither rules regarding relocations nor many established fan bases outside of the handful of established top teams:

Basketball

Football

Hong Kong

Japan

Baseball

Nippon Professional Baseball is run in similar fashion to MLB and has relocated several franchises out of crowded markets. Moves also happened when the teams changed ownership (which also sometimes involved changing the team name).

Football

The J.League is run similarly to the European football leagues has by contrast to the baseball league it has allowed only a few teams to move out of crowded or unprofitable markets:

Kyrgyzstan

Lebanon

South Korea

In South Korean major professional sports such as Korea Professional Baseball, Korean Basketball League, V-League, relocations were common.

Association football

Football club relocations were frequent in the 1980s and 1990s. South Korea has three national tiers, but as in the North American system, there is no promotion or relegation between them. This is because of disagreement between the Korea Football Association and the chaebols that back the top clubs. Now many, if not most, of Korea National League and Challengers League clubs are fan-owned teams.

There were 3 professional football clubs Ilhwa Chunma (currently Seongnam Ilhwa Chunma), LG Cheetahs (currently FC Seoul), Yukong Elephants (currently Jeju United) in Seoul by 1995. However, due to K-League's decentralization policy, these three clubs were forced to move to other cities in 1996, changing their name in the process. These relocations are done under the accord that if any of these teams build a football specific stadium in Seoul, they can return there, of which 2 clubs took advantage of. As a result, the following relocations occurred:

Team relocations in Africa

South Africa

In South Africa most football clubs are privately owned, and club relocation is relatively common. Several clubs, including top division Premier Soccer League clubs have moved and taken on new identities. There are many other cases of South African relocations. The ease of selling and buying of club licences make relocations common and sometimes difficult to determine what determines a continuation of a relocated club or whether it is a an entirely separate new entity.

See also

References

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  57. ↑ ""Las Águilas Doradas fueron expulsadas de Itagüí", Fernando Salazar" ["The "Golden Eagles" were expelled from Itagüí", Fernando Salazar]. Win Sports. Retrieved July 14, 2014.
  58. ↑ "De manera unánime, la DIMAYOR autorizó a Águilas Doradas jugar en Pereira" [Unanimously, DIMAYOR authorized Águilas Doradas to play at Pereira]. Win Sports. Retrieved July 15, 2014.
  59. ↑ "Águilas ya tiene 'nido': jugará en Rionegro". Futbolred.com (in Spanish). March 18, 2015.
  60. ↑ "Centauros ya no es de Villavicencio y ahora es de Popayán" [Centauros is no longer from Villavicencio and now it is from Popayán]. Antena 2. Retrieved February 15, 2016.
  61. ↑ http://www.uniautonomafc.com/historia.html. Missing or empty |title= (help)
  62. ↑ Alejandro Fonseca Hidalgo (12 January 2010). "Otro nombre y mismas deudas" (in Spanish). diarioextra.com. Retrieved 13 September 2011.
  63. ↑ Brujas es un hervidero Trasladarse de Nicoya a Escazú aumentó penurias a jugadores Nación (Spanish)
  64. ↑ Brujas a Desamparados Nación (Spanish)
  65. ↑ 重庆翱龙正式变更为北京控股男篮 (Chinese)
  66. ↑ "China League 1996". rsssf.com. 19 Jun 2003. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
  67. ↑ "中国球队消失多数因为钱 汉军退赛八一受困体制". sports.sohu.com. 2012-11-13. Retrieved 17 September 2014.
  68. ↑ 关于湖北华凯尔工商迁移并更名的公示 (Chinese)
  69. 1 2 2008年中国足球协会乙级联赛（确定） 江西球迷论坛（南昌八一衡源足球俱乐部唯一指定官方球迷论坛） – powered by phpwind.net
  70. ↑ 东进更名主场落户呼和浩特 老总:只是换了个名字
  71. ↑ 昆明锐龙足球俱乐部成立 云南人迎来职业足球队(Chinese)
  72. ↑ 山西嘉怡足球俱乐部在并成立(Chinese)
  73. ↑ 关于太原中优嘉怡足球俱乐部有限公司工商迁移并更名的公示 (Chinese)
  74. ↑ 拖欠安徽九方540万元转让费 天津润宇隆处境难
  75. ↑ 沈阳沈北足球队成立 收购天津润宇隆征战中甲
  76. ↑ 润宇隆已更名沈阳沈北 队员沈阳报到开始新生活 (Chinese)
  77. ↑ 毅腾证实主场迁离大连 近卫军时隔三年重返冰城 at sports.163.com. 01-04-2011. Retrieved 10-04-2013
  78. ↑ 군경기단체 국군체육부대로 통합 팀 명칭 상무, 마스코트는 불사조로 (in Korean). Dong-a Ilbo. 1984-01-11.
  79. ↑ 육,해,공 3군통합 스포츠팀 상무 창단 (in Korean). Maeil Business Newspaper. 1984-01-12.
  80. ↑ https://www.facebook.com/HellenicFootballClub/posts/1106847482726750
  81. ↑ Dawid Van Lill (2004). "Van Lill se Suid-Afrikaanse trivia". page 137.
  82. ↑ "Platinum Stars club history". Retrieved 9 December 2010.
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