Pro League

The Pro League is the Nintendo Switch Sports equivalent of the Skill Level system in previous Wii Sports games. Pro Leagues are unavailable offline. Online matchmaking usually considers the player's rank when determining an opponent.

Unlocking the Pro League

The Pro League is inaccessible at the start of the game, and can only be unlocked after a Nintendo Switch Online member has played ten matches in a sport. Pro League access must be unlocked for each individual sport, including both control styles in Soccer.

Note: The player can choose to pause the Pro League for each sport, resulting in their rank for that sport being frozen until they unpause.

Nintendo Switch Online non-members cannot earn or lose rank points. If an ex-member with a rank played a match, their rank would remain frozen until they renewed their subscription.

If a player disconnects during a match (due to poor connection on their end or manually leaving), they will be deducted rank points.

Rank Calculation

Every player starts off at rank E. After matches, a bar under the rank fills or empties depending on the results. Once the bar fills to the top, the player advances a rank and starts off at 1/3 of a full bar. Once the bar empties, the player is dropped to the previous rank (or, in rare cases, multiple ranks).

After passing E, E+, D-, D, D+, C-, C, C+, B-, B, and B+ (There is no A-), the player is placed in the A League, starting off between A1 and S3 (A33 before v1.1) depending on their performance before passing B+. The player can fall as low as A0, but cannot be demoted to B+ or below.

Before v1.1, the maximum rank was A39. After the update, A30-A39 were turned into S0-S9, and the maximum rank was increased to ∞49 (essentially A89).

If the player passed A29 after v1.1 was released, they would be promoted to S0. After the player passed S9, they would be promoted to ∞0.

Prior to A, the amount of points earned or lost each match is solely determined by the player's current rank, and is not affected by the other players' ranks during the calculation. In bowling, the player earns points for placing at or above 8th and loses points for placing below it. This means that the player could actually lose points if more than eight players survive to round 2 (in the event of a tie) and they place below 8th.

When playing online in Two Players mode, ranks do not increase or decrease (nor do non-Pro League players get Pro League invitations after any wins or good results). Similarly, ranks do not decrease after soccer matches where the player was on a short-staffed team (e.g. 3v4; 2v4).

Matchmaking

In 1v1 sports and in volleyball, there usually won't be too big differences in ranks between players, and a player who have reached A rank or higher would rarely be matched with a player who hasn't. It is fully possible with e.g. B+ versus E matchups, however.

Tennis does much the same, but if one or both teams are using Two Players mode with all players having reached Pro League, the Two Players team's rank will be an average of the two players' ranks. This would for instance result in "(A + C) versus B" matchups.

Bowling and golf are done very differently due to larger player counts. It is fully possible and commonplace for a bowling match to have players covering A through E, or ∞ through C-. A golf match can also cover ∞ through B-, much to the frustration of B rank players struggling to reach A rank. The game usually awards or detracts ranking points based on which match position the game expects a rankholder to get, often with no regard at all as to the rank of any of the other opponents in that match.

It is possible to a small extent to influence the matchmaking to get easier opponents, by simply blocking the harder opponents the player have played against in the Nintendo Switch system settings (Profile image → Add Friend → Search for Users You've Played With → Profile name → Block). This could for example be done by golf players who keep getting matched with many highly skilled S and ∞ rank players in most matches before having reached A rank, and thus would be very likely to lose ranking points in those matches.

Once A rank has been reached, the opponents can be unblocked in Profile image → User Settings → Manage Blocked-User List → Profile name → Unblock.

Unlockables

Upon reaching A or above in all 8 sports, the player is awarded the Legend title. Only 1 of the 2 Soccer ranks need to reach A in order to be counted for this.

There are currently no rewards for reaching S or ∞ in all sports.

Trivia

• There are 101 total ranks (11 pre-A, 30 A, 10 S, 50 ∞).
• A0 is shown as the A-rank badge without a number.
• Despite what the name would indicate, participants in Pro League are not known to actually be professionals who'd get any more paid or rewarded for playing sports than what non-Pro League players do, besides the possibility of earning crown accessories or a title for reaching A ranks.
• When playing in Two Players mode, both players must already be in the Pro League in order to enter Pro League matchmaking. It's not sufficient to have only one player be in the Pro League.
• If a player disconnects from a match, they lose approx. 1/6th of their rank bar progress.