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A dispersal draft is a process in professional sports for assigning players to a new team when an existing team folds or is merged into another team. Like most other sports drafts, most dispersal drafts are conducted in closed leagues and are intended to prevent bidding wars and to maintain a league's competitive balance when a folded or merged team's roster of players is absorbed into the rest of a league's teams. As generally all or most of a team's players would become free agents following their team's disestablishment or merger.
Dispersal drafts are more commonly seen in emerging sports (such as soccer or women's basketball in the United States) or alternative leagues where initial support for a team failed to remain consistent and the team was unable to survive financially resulting in a team folding or merging with another team.