What is a wild card in playoffs?

A wild card is a postseason spot given to a team that failed to win its division or conference but had one of the best remaining records. Leagues introduced them to solve a fairness problem, since a second-place team in a strong division could have a better record than a division winner elsewhere and still miss the playoffs, and a business problem, since more teams in contention in the final weeks keeps more markets watching. The number of wild cards has grown steadily across major American leagues as playoff fields expanded.

Formats vary. The NFL awards three wild cards per conference, and wild-card teams are seeded below the division winners regardless of record and play on the road in the opening round. Major League Baseball awards three per league, with the wild-card round played as a best-of-three series in which the higher seed hosts every game, and the top two division winners in each league receive a bye past it. The NBA and NHL use different structures, with the NBA's play-in tournament serving a similar function of extending contention to teams outside the automatic berths.

The term comes from card games, where a wild card can stand in for any other, and it entered sports through the NFL in 1970 following the merger with the AFL. Two consequences worth noting. Wild-card teams have won championships in every major league, which undercuts the argument that they are undeserving, and the NFL's rule that a division winner with a poor record hosts a wild-card team with a better one produces a predictable annual complaint that the league has so far declined to change.