Professionalism[edit]

Football was played in different local associations in an amateur manner until the twentieth century, when football started to turn professional in Valparaíso and Santiago, where football competitions were consistently at the prominent level in Chile at that time. Chilean football truly professionalized in the 1930s. At that time, different teams paid salaries to their players, despite being illegal, and this phenomenon occurred even on international level. In 1933, eight big clubs at that time, namely, Unión Española, Badminton, Colo-Colo,Audax Italiano, Green Cross, Morning Star, Magallanes and Santiago National, left the ASF over a dispute on salaries policy, and used the reduced percentage of their income which originally had to submit to the AFS to found the Liga Profesional de Football de Santiago (LPF) on May 31, 1933. The newly formed body was recognized by the Federación de Fútbol de Chile on June 2, 1933.

The first edition of professional competition was contested by the eight founding teams and was won by Magallanes after defeating Colo-Colo in a decisive match. In the following year, according to the disposition of Federación de Fútbol de Chile, Liga Profesional returned to integrate with the AFS. Like part of the negotiations for reunification, four teams from AFS, namely, Ferroviarios, Carlos Walker, Deportivo Alemán, and Santiago F.C., would join the 1934 professional competition. Moreover, it was also decided that the last six teams in the 1934 competition would be eliminated to form the new second division in 1935. The title of the 1934 edition was again clinched by Magallanes, which won 10 out of the 11 matches this year.[2]

Universidad de Chile and Universidad Católica entered to compete in 1938 and 1939, and obtained their first titles in 1940 and 1949, respectively.

The professional competition was confined to teams from Santiago at the first few years. Santiago Wanderers joined the league in 1937 and was the first club in the league coming from other regions. However, its participation in the league was just occasional and it did not contest in the league in the following years, until it rejoined the league with Everton de Viña del Mar, its classic rival, in 1944. Everton de Viña del Mar captured the title in 1950, becoming the first national champions not coming from the capital city. Not until 1953 did a third team from other areas, Rangers de Talca, was admitted to the league, after which had been crowned the runners-up of the second division in 1952.