British Columbia Football League

By a slight margin over rugby, association football is the most popular, averaging over 15000 spectators per Division One match. The fully professionalised league is the British Columbia Football League (BCFL), organised in three tiers; the top two, Divisions One and Two, are Dominion-wide; the third, Division Three, is divided into Northern and Southern groups. Beneath the League are five further tiers, collectively referred to as non-league, down to the city level; these are made up primarily of semi-professional and amateur clubs. At the end of each season of play, the champion and runner-up of the fourth tier (made up of four groups covering large areas) advance to a round-robin playout between themselves and the last-placed team in each of the Division Three groups; the top two finishers are promoted to (or remain in) League Three, the bottom two are relegated to (or remain in) the regional leagues.

The BCFL was established in its current form in 1929; prior to that, there were two competitions, one on Vancouver Island (established in 1899) and one on the Mainland (established in 1903 through the merger of three regional competitions), with the champion of each playing a home-and-away series to decide the national champion. The oldest football competition in BC still taking place is the British Columbia FA Cup, established in 1891 and modelled on the British (specifically, English) competition of the same name.