Hull City

Hull City Association Football Club took shape in 1904, when the city needed a senior football club to fill the gap left by a rugby-mad town, and it grew into the only league side Kingston upon Hull has ever really had. The name has stayed fixed since that first year — even a 2013–2014 push by owner Assem Aldam to rebrand the team "Hull Tigers" was blocked by the Football Association and the Premier League after supporters pushed back hard enough to stop it.

The club has spent most of its life shuttling between divisions rather than settling into one, and its clearest identity has come from getting back up whenever it fell. Three separate play-off final wins in the Championship, in 2008, 2016 and 2026, each sent Hull City into the Premier League, and the 2008 breakthrough is remembered above the others because Dean Windass scored the goal that won it. Kenny Wagstaff carried the club's attack through the 1960s, top scorer in five consecutive seasons, while Andy Davidson simply outlasted everyone else, making 520 appearances in black and amber. The nearest the club has come to a major cup was 2014, when it reached the FA Cup final and lost 3-1 to Arsenal.

Supporters place their real rivalry not with a Humber neighbour but across Yorkshire, with Leeds United — a poll of fans put Leeds well ahead of any other club as the one Hull City fans most want to beat, ahead of the more local needle matches with Grimsby Town and Scunthorpe United.

Hull City now plays its home games at the MKM Stadium, known as the KC Stadium until 2011, which holds 24,983 and sits in a city where this club has never had to share the football spotlight with a serious rival.