The Liga Pro Betcris, simply known as the Liga Pro, or the Serie A, is a professional football league in Ecuador. At the top of the Ecuadorian football league system, it is the country's premier football competition. Contested by sixteen clubs, it operates a system of promotion and relegation with the Serie B, the lower level of the Primera Categoría. The season runs from February to December and is usually contested in multiple stages. The main sponsor is Betcris and it is known as Liga Pro Betcris. While initially not a league, the Serie A has its roots in the national championship between the top teams of Ecuador's two regional leagues. For the first nine editions, teams from Guayaquil and Quito qualified to the competition through their professional regional leagues. It abandoned the qualification format to form a proper league in 1967. Since the first edition in 1957, the tournament has been held annually (except 1958 and 1959); the 2005 season had two champions. It was ranked by IFFHS as the 11th strongest football league in the world for 2022, and the 4th strongest league in South America. Eleven clubs have been crowned Ecuadorian champions, but four teams have a combined total of 54 championships. The most successful club is Barcelona with sixteen titles. Aucas are the defending champions. Format The format for the Serie A national championship changes consistently. The most common format is a two-stage tournament, in which teams qualify to a mini-league () to determine the champion. The current format was introduced for the 2010 season and consists of three stages. The First and Second Stages each follow the double round-robin format. The winners of each stage play against each other in the Third Stage for the championship. A third-place match also takes place in the Third Stage between the next two-best teams in the aggregate table. If the same team wins both the First and Second Stage, they are automatically the champion. In this case, the second and third best teams in the aggregate table play against each other for runner-up. Relegation takes place after the Second Stage and is determined using an aggregate table of the first two stages. As well as playing to win the championship and avoid relegation teams also compete for places in the following season's Copa Libertadores and Copa Sudamericana. History All football in Ecuador was played at amateur level until