Sports Teams Trivia
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60 free Sports Teams trivia questions with answers — sports quiz, new questions added Aug 2026.
Fifty free sports teams trivia questions with answers, all about the teams themselves rather than the players: where their names came from, which cities they abandoned, who owns them and which records they hold. It spans the NFL, NBA, MLB and NHL plus the biggest soccer clubs in England, Spain, Germany and Scotland. The easy questions ask which state the Lakers are named after, who is called America's Team and which NFL club is owned by its fans. The medium ones want the Astros' original name, the film behind the Toronto Raptors and the city the Colts fled overnight in moving vans. The hard end asks which king put the Real in Real Madrid, which Indiana city the Pistons started in and which ABA franchise became the San Antonio Spurs. Every answer is checked against club histories and reference sources, so it is safe for a bar trivia round, a fantasy-league night or a family argument about who moved where and when.
30 of 60 questions with answers and explanations. Play the quiz
Q 01The Lakers' name refers to the many lakes of which state, where they played until 1960?
Minnesota
Minnesota, the Land of 10,000 Lakes; the team kept the name after moving to lake-scarce Southern California.
Q 02John Stockton and Karl Malone led which team to back-to-back NBA Finals in 1997 and 1998?
Utah Jazz
Utah Jazz: both Finals ended in defeat by Michael Jordan's Chicago Bulls, with Jordan named Finals MVP each time.
Q 03Which team is the only non-profit, community-owned major league franchise in the United States?
Green Bay Packers
Green Bay Packers: shareholders get no dividends, and league rules now bar any other non-profit from owning an NFL team.
Q 04Which product did the Indian Packing Company, Curly Lambeau's employer and his team's first sponsor, produce?
Canned meat
Canned meat: the company paid for the team's first uniforms and let it practise on a field beside its plant.
Q 05The Cleveland Guardians are named after Art Deco statues on which city structure?
Hope Memorial Bridge
Hope Memorial Bridge: a local roller derby team already called the Cleveland Guardians sued over the name, and a settlement let both teams keep using it.
Q 06The Oklahoma City Thunder began life as which NBA franchise?
Seattle SuperSonics
Seattle SuperSonics: the owners paid the city $45 million to break the arena lease, and the SuperSonics name and colours stayed in Seattle.
Q 07After Art Modell relocated his Cleveland team in 1996, fans picked a new name inspired by which writer's poem?
Edgar Allan Poe
Edgar Allan Poe: 'Ravens' beat 'Marauders' and 'Americans' in a newspaper phone poll, honouring a poet who had lived in the team's new city.
Q 08Which Raptors star's buzzer-beater bounced on the rim four times before dropping to win a 2019 playoff Game 7?
Kawhi Leonard
Kawhi Leonard: the Raptors had traded for him the summer before, and they went on to win the 2019 NBA title with him as Finals MVP.
Q 09The Dodgers' name comes from 'trolley dodgers', a nickname for residents of which borough?
Brooklyn
Brooklyn: streetcar lines then crisscrossed the borough, and residents had to dodge the trolleys when crossing the tracks.
Q 10Which NFL team is the only one to put its logo on just one side of the helmet?
Pittsburgh Steelers
Pittsburgh Steelers: the logo went on one side as a trial of how it looked on gold helmets, and interest in the look made it permanent.
Q 11Pittsburgh's NFL team first took the field in 1933 under what name?
Pittsburgh Pirates
Pittsburgh Pirates: the name nodded to the baseball club whose Forbes Field the team rented, until a 1940 newspaper contest replaced it.
Q 12Which NHL franchise won its record 24th Stanley Cup in 1993?
Montreal Canadiens
Montreal Canadiens: the H on their crest stands for 'Hockey', from Club de Hockey Canadien, not 'Habitants' as many fans believe.
Q 13Which team's 2016 World Series win ended a 108-year championship drought?
Chicago Cubs
Chicago Cubs: during a 17-minute rain delay before the 10th inning of Game 7, Jason Heyward rallied his teammates in a weight room, and they won 8–7.
Q 21The Colts fled which city overnight in Mayflower moving vans in March 1984?
Baltimore
Baltimore: Maryland lawmakers were passing a bill to let the city seize the team by eminent domain, and the governor signed it only after the vans had gone.
Q 22In which Indiana city were the Pistons founded as a company team, before moving to Detroit in 1957?
Fort Wayne
Fort Wayne: owner Fred Zollner's company there made engine pistons for carmakers, so a name that seems made for the Motor City actually began in Indiana.
Q 23Which team reached the Stanley Cup Final in its first season, 2017–18?
Vegas Golden Knights
The 'Knights' honours owner Bill Foley's alma mater, West Point, and the club won the Cup for real in 2023.
Q 14Which animal did William Sianis bring to a 1945 World Series game, supposedly sparking a curse?
A goat
A goat: it was not allowed to stay, and the team Sianis supposedly cursed did not return to the World Series for 71 years.
Q 15Manchester United were formed in 1878 under what name?
Newton Heath LYR
Newton Heath LYR: Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway workers formed the club, and local businessmen who took it over renamed it Manchester United in 1902.
Q 16In 1968 Manchester United became the first English club to win the European Cup, beating whom?
Benfica
Benfica: Bobby Charlton, a survivor of the Munich air disaster, scored twice and lifted the trophy as captain in the 4–1 win at Wembley.
Q 17Which Spanish king granted the title 'Real' (Royal) to Madrid's football club in 1920?
Alfonso XIII
Alfonso XIII: in 1902 the club had proposed Spain's first national football tournament, held in honour of his coronation.
Q 18Real Madrid won their 15th European Cup in 2024 by beating which club in the final?
Borussia Dortmund
Borussia Dortmund: defender Dani Carvajal headed in a corner in the 74th minute, and Vinícius Júnior added a second for a 2–0 win.
Q 19Which star did Red Sox owner Harry Frazee sell to the Yankees in 1919?
Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth: the Red Sox had won the 1918 World Series with him but did not win another until 2004, a drought fans blamed on the 'Curse of the Bambino'.
Q 20Before officially becoming the Yankees in 1913, the New York club was known by what name?
Highlanders
Highlanders: the renamed club became tenants of the rival Giants at the Polo Grounds, until the Giants tried to evict them and Yankee Stadium opened in 1923.
Q 24Which NHL team was last in the league in January 2019 but won the Stanley Cup that June?
St. Louis Blues
St. Louis Blues: rookie goalie Jordan Binnington, who made his first start for them only on January 7, led the franchise to its first Stanley Cup.
Q 25Which NFL franchise began as the Decatur Staleys, a team sponsored by a starch company?
Chicago Bears
Chicago Bears: in 1921 the company gave George Halas $5,000 to take the team to Chicago, on condition that he kept the Staleys name for that season.
Q 26What name did the Commanders franchise play under in the 2020 and 2021 seasons?
Washington Football Team
Washington Football Team: the stopgap followed a July 2020 request from FedEx, which held the stadium's naming rights, that the team change its name.
Q 27In which city did George Preston Marshall found the Commanders franchise in 1932?
Boston
Boston: over poor support there, the owner moved the team's 1936 title game to New York's Polo Grounds, then took the team to Washington, where it won the 1937 NFL title.
Q 28Which current NBA franchise won the 1951 NBA title while based in Rochester, New York?
Sacramento Kings
Sacramento Kings: as the Rochester Royals they won the first three games of that Final, lost the next three to the New York Knicks, then won Game 7 79–75.
Q 29Which team, dating to 1898, is the oldest continuously run pro football franchise in the US?
Arizona Cardinals
Arizona Cardinals: owner Chris O'Brien once bought used college jerseys for the team and called their faded maroon 'Cardinal red'.
Q 30The Golden State Warriors were founded in 1946 in which city?
Philadelphia
Philadelphia: the team moved west to San Francisco in 1962, left for Oakland in 1971, then returned to San Francisco in 2019.