Professional Sports-front

Arizona may have arrived late to the professional sports game, but our momentum is unstoppable. For three decades, the NBA Suns were Arizona’s only representative in professional sports. After Phoenix acquired the NFC's Cardinals in 1988, taking over one of the oldest professional football teams in the nation, the city gained its first professional hockey team, the Coyotes, in 1996, again providing a new home to an old team. In 1998, after hosting spring training for other teams for decades, the Arizona Diamondbacks were hatched as one of America’s newest professional baseball franchises.

In the 1990s, Arizona led the nation in joining the newly established professional leagues of Arena Football League (AFL) and the Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA). The Arizona Rattlers and the Phoenix Mercury are some of the oldest teams in these young leagues, and they are some of the strongest, both winning two championships in under twenty years.

These teams continue to gain fans and inspire athletes. Watch them play in their state-of-the-art home arenas, and see what our athletes can do.