USA NASL

On August 27, 2009, multi-national sports company Nike agreed to sell its stake in the United Soccer Leagues (USL) to Rob Hoskins and Alec Papadakis of Atlanta-based NuRock Soccer Holdings, instead of to the USL Team Owner's Association (TOA), a group comprising the owners of several USL First Division clubs and St. Louis Soccer United. After the purchase, several prominent TOA members began to voice their concerns about the state of the league in general, its management structure and ownership model, the leadership of USL president Francisco Marcos, and about the sale of the league to NuRock, which the TOA felt was counter-productive and detrimental to the development of the league.

Within several weeks, a number of TOA member clubs threatened to break away from USL and start their own league. On November 10, 2009, six USL-1 clubs along with St. Louis applied for approval to create a new North American Division 2 league. On November 20, 2009, one team from both USL-1 and USL-2 announced their intentions to join the new league, taking the membership of the new league to nine teams.

The official name of the league was announced on November 23, 2009. According to the official press release, the NASL name was intended to "pay respect to the players, coaches and leaders who were pioneers for men's professional soccer in North America, many of whom remain involved and committed to the growth of the game in various capacities throughout the U.S. and Canada".

The USL issued several press releases questioning the legality of the teams choosing to break away, suggesting that it considered litigation to protect its interests and those of the USL-1 teams from any breach of contract. The USL claimed that the NASL and the TOA ownership group was "interfering with USL-1 team owners that are contractually obligated to participate in the 2010 season" and "made several misleading statements in a variety of press releases to taint the reputation of USL and its long history of developing the sport of soccer."

NASL's inaugural season was expected to begin play in April 2010. However, after announcing that it would not sanction either the NASL or the USL First Division for 2010, U.S. Soccer announced in January 2010 that it would run a temporary USSF Division 2 Professional League for the 2010 season that included 12 teams from both the NASL and USL-1, putting the NASL on hold for at least a year.

Following the 2010 season, NASL admitted its member clubs to meet the new Division 2 standards set out by U.S. Soccer. The NASL was provisionally approved by U.S. Soccer on November 21, 2010. The provisional sanctioning was briefly revoked by U.S. Soccer in January 2011 due to the collapse of two of the ownership groups involved with NASL and serious questions about several others but was reinstated before the 2011 season.

As part of the re-organization that established the NASL as Division II, the USSF updated its Professional League Standards, in order to keep up with the growth of the sport and population growth in the United States since 1995. Another update to the PLS took effect in 2014, while a further update was discussed in 2015 but was dropped.

From the beginning of the league, Brazilian-based sports company Traffic Sports Marketing was a significant investor in the new league. Traffic Sports Marketing was heavily involved in its operations. Traffic was an early investor in four of the league's clubs, and the president of its American subsidiary, Aaron Davidson, also served as the chairman of the NASL's board of governors. Both Traffic and Davidson himself were implicated in the 2015 FIFA corruption case, and both would eventually plead guilty to racketeering, conspiracy, and wire-fraud conspiracy. Traffic Sports continued to hold a large amount of stock in the NASL until the league finally arranged for a sale to an unnamed buyer in November 2016.

Since the league's founding, the USSF had demonstrated a willingness to work with leagues who could show they were moving into compliance with the PLS; the NASL applied for, and was granted, waivers for specific provisions every year of its existence.

In September 2015, the NASL announced its intent to challenge MLS and secure Division I status, despite never having met the criteria for Division II. To that end, the league sent a letter to U.S. Soccer president, Sunil Gulati, objecting to proposed updates to the Division I PLS. NASL took issue with three proposed changes: increasing the minimum stadium size to 15,000, increasing the minimum number of teams to 16, and changing the minimum population required in 75% of the teams from a population of 1 million to 2 million. NASL accused U.S. Soccer of colluding with MLS to protect MLS's monopoly as the only Division I league in the United States. The USSF denied the league's Division I application on March 30, 2016, but continued to grant waivers for the NASL to play in Division II.

In September 2017, it was reported that after having granted provisional Division II status to both the NASL and the MLS-backed United Soccer League in 2016, that U.S. Soccer had voted to stop extending PSL standards waivers to the NASL, resulting in the loss of its Division II status. NASL stated that it "does not believe that the federation acted in the best interest of the sport. U.S. Soccer's decision negatively affects many stakeholders in soccer: fans, players, coaches, referees, business partners, and the NASL club owners who have invested tens of millions of dollars promoting the sport. The decision also jeopardizes the thousands of jobs created by the NASL and its member clubs." For its part, the USSF explained its decision was the result of the NASL's continued failure to meet agreed-upon league standards, particularly that "(d)espite multiple chances, NASL has not even come up with a plan for eventual compliance with the Division II standards."

On September 19, 2017, NASL filed suit against U.S. Soccer citing antitrust violations related to the change of sanctioning criteria. The decision to pursue the lawsuit was not unanimous among NASL clubs. FC Edmonton was not involved in the lawsuit, having "found out about the lawsuit over the telephone"; and North Carolina FC did not support the lawsuit. The U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of New York ruled against the NASL's motion for a preliminary injunction on November 4, 2017, and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit denied an appeal February 23, 2018.

Following the District Court ruling, the NASL announced it would move to the "international calendar", playing from August through June. The announcement was met with skepticism, with commentators pointing out the difficulty in playing a winter schedule in northern markets such as New York or Indiana. Others characterized it as a desperation move, suggesting the change had more to do with the NASL not being able to field enough teams to play its regular spring schedule and that the league had not worked through the "logistical nightmare" of such a schedule change.

On February 27, 2018, the league announced that the 2018 season had been canceled in the wake of the court ruling. They were looking for ways to return in 2020. At that time, the New York Cosmos, Miami FC and Jacksonville Armada, chose to participate in the National Premier Soccer League for the 2018 season while the NASL's future was being determined. FC Edmonton briefly stopped operations before joining the newly formed Canadian Premier League in advance of the 2019 inaugural season, while San Diego 1904 FC left the league and tried unsuccessfully to join the USL.

After initially postponing the 2018 season, the league was denied a preliminary injunction to prevent the loss of its Division II sanctioning and announced it had canceled its 2018 season and hoped to return for a 2019 season. By July 2018, the league pushed back its potential return to the 2020 season. In November 2018, two of the four remaining NASL clubs announced that they would launch a new professional league in 2019 associated with the National Premier Soccer League and the NASL effectively became defunct.