Sports in Rochester, New York
overview article
The city and metropolitan area of Rochester, New York, has several sports teams.
Rochester was named the top minor league sports market in the country by Street & Smith's Sports Business Journal in July 2005, the number 10 "best golf city" in America by Golf Magazine in 2007, and the fifth-best "sports town" in the country by Scarborough Research in September 2008.
Professional sports
Although Rochester is home territory to the Buffalo Bills and the Buffalo Sabres, Rochester has several professional sports teams of its own.
Rochester does not have a team in any of the top leagues in major North American team sports (American football, Baseball, Basketball, or Ice Hockey). Of the current teams, two play in affiliated minor leagues: the baseball Rochester Red Wings, affiliated with the Washington Nationals, and the hockey Rochester Americans, affiliated with the Buffalo Sabres. Only one professional team in Rochester plays at the highest level of its sport, the indoor lacrosse Rochester Knighthawks; all others are independent minor-league teams.
As recently as 1994, there were only two professional sports franchises in Rochester: the baseball Red Wings and the hockey Americans. Since then, a number of new teams have been instituted and several have folded. In 2007, among cities in North America with at least seven (at the time) professional teams, Rochester was determined to be the only one whose teams all had cumulative winning regular season records.
Major league professional teams in Rochester
Minor league professional teams in Rochester
Semiprofessional teams in Rochester
The Rochester Red Wings baseball club, the AAA affiliate of the Washington Nationals, are one of the oldest existing franchises in all of professional sports.
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