Professional football in Canada
Only one professional football league has a permanent presence in Canada: the Canadian Football League (CFL), an organization founded in 1958 to accommodate the ongoing trend of professionalism in the Canadian football ranks since the 1940s. The CFL, like most amateur Canadian football leagues, plays on a larger field using a rulebook with several significant rule differences compared to the game as it is played in the United States. The league is composed of two divisions and nine teams in most of the largest Canadian markets, with at least one team in each province between British Columbia (BC Lions) and Quebec (Montreal Alouettes) inclusive. The only presence in Atlantic Canada is a semi-regular series of games in Moncton (Touchdown Atlantic) and a smattering of earlier preseason contests. The CFL operates a two-week preseason beginning in June, an 18-game season from July to October, and a six-team playoff tournament, culminating in the Grey Cup on the fourth weekend of November.
Playoff format
Like the NFL, the Canadian Football League also uses one game playoffs, and has used them almost exclusively since the 1973 season. In the CFL, six teams qualify for the playoffs, divided into two divisional brackets of three teams each. The second place teams in each division host the Division Semi-Final, while the division winners each receive a bye to the Division Final. The Division Final winners play in the Grey Cup. Unlike the NFL, divisional playoffs have been a regular fixture in professional Canadian football since the 1930s. The main rationale for their introduction was that Canadian football clubs were (and, to a considerable extent, still are) more heavily dependent on a steady stream of gate receipts compared to their NFL counterparts, largely due to their playing in relatively small markets and smaller stadiums compared to NFL teams. A more inclusive playoff structure was therefore seen as necessary to ensure as many games as possible up to the end of the season were "meaningful" so as to encourage fans to attend games.