In an organized sports league, a season is the portion of one year in which regulated games of the sport are in session. For example, in Major League Baseball, one season lasts approximately from April 1 to October 1; in Association football, it is generally from August until May (although in some countries, especially those in Scandinavia and North America, the season starts in the spring and finishes in the autumn, due either to weather conditions encountered during the winter or to limit conflict with locally more popular football codes). A year can often be broken up into several distinct sections (sometimes themselves called seasons). These are: