Franchise generally means a right or privilege. It may refer to:
- Suffrage, the civil right to vote
- Jurisdictions used to be treated as property rights, and could be referred to as franchises.
- Franchising, a business method that involves licensing of trademarks and methods of doing business, such as:
- Chain store, retail outlets which share a brand and central management
- An exclusive right, for example to sell branded merchandise
- Media franchise, ownership of the characters and setting of a film, video game, book, etc., particularly in North American usage
- Rail franchising in Great Britain
- A television franchise, a right to operate a television network.
- A cable franchise, a right to operate a cable television network.
- a clause used by insurance companies as a threshold for policy payments, as in deductible
- "Franchise" (short story), a 1955 short story by Isaac Asimov
- Dem Franchize Boyz, an American hip hop group from Atlanta
- Franchise Pictures, a film production company
In sport:
- Franchise, a term for a team in the type of professional sports league organization most commonly found in North America; see North American professional sports league organization
- Franchise player, a player on such a team around whom an entire competitive squad can be built
- Franchise tag, a designation of a player in the US National Football League whose contract is soon to expire that binds him to the team for one year at an enhanced salary
- League franchise, a local or regional business franchising operation under a particular sporting league in activities such as pool, darts, etc.
Famous quotes containing the word franchise:
“Many famous feet have trod
Sublunary paths, and famous hands have weighed
The strength they have against the strength they need;
And famous lips interrogated God
Concerning franchise in eternity....”
—Philip Larkin (19221986)
“To-day women constitute the only class of sane people excluded from the franchise ...”
—Mary Putnam Jacobi (18421906)
“...feminism differs from reform of any kind, even franchise reform. Feminists, I should say, are not reformers at all, but rather intellectual biologists and psychologists.”
—Rheta Childe Dorr (18661948)