British Columbia Football League

British Columbia's professionalised association football competition is the British Columbia Football League (BCFL).

= Structure = The BCFL is organised in Dominion-wide three tiers called Divisions One, Two, and Three respectively; this is the realm of professional football in BC. Since 1999, each division's formal name contains the name of the primary sponsor, signed for five-year terms; since the 2000 season, the names are BC Football League Rover-Leyland Division One, BC Football League PetroBC Division Two, and BC Football League Inter-Dominion Air Lines Division Three.

Division One comprises twelve clubs, with each playing the rest three times during the season, whilst Divisions Two and Three contain 16 teams each playing two matches against the others. At the end of the season, the bottom two finishers in Division One are relegated to Division Two, and are replaced by the two top finishers from Division Two; similarly, the bottom three of Division Two are relegated to Division Three, replaced by the top three Division Three clubs. The last four in Division Three are relegated into the regional leagues. The Division One champion qualifies for the following season's CONCACAF Champions League.

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, but there are a number of professional sides in the fourth tier. There are four regional leagues in the fourth tier divided by geographic region: the Northwest Football Championship, the Northeast Football Championship, the Southwest Football Championship, and the Southeast Football Championship. League play in the fourth tier is divided into two stages. The first stage is regular league competition, with the first-placed finisher becoming the regional champion. The top four finishers in each regional competition enter a round-robin Division Three Qualification Competition, held at a neutral venue with each team playing the others once; the top four finishers in this competition earn promotion into Division Three.

= History = 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. After the outbreak of the Pacific War in December 1941, play was suspended for the duration of the conflict, and has continued uninterrupted since 1946.