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The growing popularity of roller skating in the United States led to the formation of organized multi-day endurance races for cash prizes, as early as the mid-1880s. Speed and endurance races continued to be held on both flat and banked tracks in the century's first three decades and spectators enjoyed the spills and falls of the skaters. The term "roller derby" was used to refer to such races by 1922.

Today, roller derby is a growing phenomenon in under-ground sports. It is now played worldwide, but it was born in the United States and grew throughout the 20th century.

History
Roller derby as we know it today is a distinctly 21st century phenomenon but its roots begin during the Great Depression with a man named Leo Seltzer in Chicago Illinois. During this time, Seltzer and his participants were looking for creative ways to make money. He organized marathon races where partners would trade laps until they exhausted themselves. This idea was inspired by earlier events in New York City’s Madison Square Garden in May of 1885 but reimagined to include "personality players" and more significantly, women. These events were large spectacles and drew in large crowds. Winners had the opportunity to take home cash prizes which led to defensive skating such as brawling, tripping, and fighting. A spectator, and newspaper man by the name of Damon Runyon, suggested to Seltzer that he create a more structured sport. This led to a traveling team with large crowds and fan-favorite players complete with early versions of roller derby nicknames. By 1940, CBS began filming the roller derby bouts and televising them, broadcasting them to fill in dead air time. The sport enjoyed success in the decade to come but by 1951 they were off the air and in 1958 Leo Seltzer handed the league over to his son, Jerry. Jerry Seltzer took the league to San Francisco where he founded the San Francisco Bay Bombers. By the early 1970s the sport was disappearing.

Little success was made to revive the sport until 2001 in Austin, Texas where a group of women, initially under the leadership of "Devil Dan", a group of women established how we now think of Roller Derby and founded Bad Girl Good Woman (BGGW) Productions. They held their first public bout on June 23rd, 2003. There was a major revival from 2003-2004 not only in Texas but around the country. The major impact BGGW had on the sport was revive the game and establish ground rules. By 2005, despite BGGW split, RollerCon was hosted in Las Vegas, Nevada and the Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) was established. As of 2019, WFTDA has more than 450 member leagues located throughout six continents.

Associations
There are a multitude of roller derby associations in the United States.


 * Men's Roller Derby Association (MRDA) - 25 member leagues
 * Modern Athletic Derby Endeavor (MADE) - 8 member leagues
 * Junior Roller Derby Association (JRDA) - 118 junior roller derby member leagues as of Dec 2017
 * Roller Derby Coalition of Leagues (RDCL) - 8 banked track member leagues
 * USA Roller Sports (USARS) - 10 member leagues
 * Women's Flat Track Derby Association (WFTDA) - 402 member leagues and 57 apprentice leagues as of December 2017
 * World Organization of Roller Derby (WORD)

Leagues
Due to historical accident, the term "league" in modern roller derby means something more akin to a football club than to a traditional sports league thus, there are a very large number of leagues sometimes even including two or more based in a single city.