By Jamie Barrie W ith the boys of Summer back on the fields there is lots of talk of Major League Baseball expansion, something the league has resisted since adding teams in Tampa Bay and Arizona in 1998. It has been over 20 years, which is the longest active expansion gap among major North American sports leagues, since MLB added team to the league, but there is a lot speculation the expansion drought maybe coming to an end. MLB has been very successful with its growth to a 30 team League that grossed $10.3 billion (USD) in revenue in 2018, a revenue record for the 16th straight year, according to Forbes. However, that revenue come largely from the league’s investment in MLB Advanced Media, the digital media company of Major League Baseball. Like many other professional sport leagues declin- ing attendance and a lack of competitive balance remain issues in the game, that being said MLB might follow the likes of the NFL and NHL and
increase the numbers of teams in the league to 32.
It is not a matter of if the MLB decides to expand again, but when it will expand, and we think that these are the top 10 cities that would make a great home for an MLB expansion team. If the MLB expands north of the boarder than Montreal, QC, Canada should be at the top of their list. Yes, some are going to say that they had their chance and they could not make a go of it, but when the Expos and Major League Baseball left Montreal in 2005, it was because of a fan boycott from the 1994 strike and Expos management’s inability to land a new stadium with the city and provincial governments not because the people of Montreal had lost their love for the game in fact we think it has grown and if the MLB was to go north of the border again, Montreal would do whatever it would takes to land an expansion team, or even one via relocation. Putting the love of the Expos aside, Montreal has all the demographics of a major league baseball city. It has almost 2 million passionate sports fans
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APRIL 2019 • SPOTLIGHT ON BUSINESS MAGAZINE
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