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Insport, achampionship is acompetition in which the aim is to decide which individual or team is thechampion.
Various forms of competition can be referred to by the term championship.
In this system, a competitor has to challenge the current champion to win the championship. A competitor (callednumber 1 contender) can challenge the current champion after defeating other challengers. This form of championship is used in individual head-to-head competitions and is particularly associated with combat sports such aswrestling,boxing andmixed martial arts.
The term championships (in the plural) is often used to refer totournament competitions, either using aknockout format, such as atWimbledon and other championships intennis, or a mixed format with agroup stage followed by knockout rounds, such as used in theEuropean Football Championships.
A variation of the knockout format is the "best-of-X" or series format where two teams face each other for a specified number of times until one team wins the majority of specified games, most of the time the remaining games are not played anymore; only then is the losing team eliminated from contention and the winning team advances to the next level. This format is predominant in American sports such as baseball, ice hockey and basketball, and on test cricket.
Championships in various sports, includingrugby union andsoccer use aleague system in which all competitors in the league play each other, either once or a number of times. This is also known as around robin system.
Some competitions use a hybrid system that combines traits of two or more of these systems.
The game showJeopardy! uses a title match system during regular play, then holds aTournament of Champions with the longest-running champions under the title match system that operates on a tournament system to determine that season's "Grand Champion." This type of system works best in competitions with numerous competitions in a short period of time (game shows such asJeopardy!, in particular, fit this description, since there are five new title matches every week).
In many sport leagues, a playoff system is used to determine a championship winner. Teams compete in aregular season of varying formats and a limited number of teams qualify forplayoffs. Although this system is mostly identified with theUnited States andCanada, it is frequently found in otherNorth American countries, and is also standard in sports influenced by North America (e.g. basketball, baseball, ice hockey) as well as most football codes other than soccer. The playoffs (known in some countries, notablyAustralia, as the "finals series") are a tournament where teams play head-to-head in knockout competition. The championship is often considered the final of the playoffs (e.g.,Super Bowl,Stanley Cup Finals,NBA Finals,World Series, etc.). The playoff system can be seen as a hybrid between the league system and tournament system, where a league is used to determine qualifiers for the tournament.
In theNFL, the term "Championship game" is used to refer to the matches which decide the champions of each of the two conferences, theNFC (NFC Championship Game) andAFC (AFC Championship Game).[1][2] These games are effectivelysemi-finals as they determine the two competitors in the Super Bowl. The quirk in naming stems from when the NFC and AFC were separate leagues (see:American Football League) with a respectiveNFL Championship andAFL Championship, the winners of which would in the AFL's later years meet in the World Championship, now known as theSuper Bowl.
In sports such as motor racing, a season consists of a number of individual races, with points being awarded for finishing in the top positions. At the end of the season, the driver/team with the most points wins the championship. Examples includeFormula 1 and theWorld Rally Championship.
