OT: All-Purpose Expos Return Speculation Topic

[RealityBytes]

Baseball is an expensive sport.

A new stadium would cost at least $700M, plus the average value of a baseball team is $700M, and the average cost of player salaries is $116M per year. Those are also in USD.

Where is the big money needed for Montreal going to come from?

Toronto can make it because the first two items are already covered as sunk costs, plus, they have over three times of a fan base density than Montreal has in order to fill the stadium. (They have close to 11.5M people within 200 miles of the Rogers center and it is accessible by commuter train and public transit.)

Even if by some miracle Montreal did get a new stadium and an owner ready to cough up $700M USD for a team, with its 3.4M people Montreal could never draw fans and generate revenue like the big cities. It would be forever a non playoff team that people would soon get disenchanted with.

Can't see it happening, it's a big gamble needing too much money up front and has too many potential financial constraints.

 

[Adriatic]

Baseball is an expensive sport.

A new stadium would cost at least $700M, plus the average value of a baseball team is $700M, and the average cost of player salaries is $116M per year. Those are also in USD.

Where is the big money needed for Montreal going to come from?

Toronto can make it because the first two items are already covered as sunk costs, plus, they have over three times of a fan base density than Montreal has in order to fill the stadium. (They have close to 11.5M people within 200 miles of the Rogers center and it is accessible by commuter train and public transit.)

Even if by some miracle Montreal did get a new stadium and an owner ready to cough up $700M USD for a team, with its 3.4M people Montreal could never draw fans and generate revenue like the big cities. It would be forever a non playoff team that people would soon get disenchanted with.

Can't see it happening, it's a big gamble needing too much money up front and has too many potential financial constraints.

I pretty much agree with everything, however with the revenue sharing a smart management team can aspire to make the playoffs just like Oakland, Pirates and Royals have shown.

 

[Runner77]

Totally

You kill me. Thanks for your sense of humor.

 

[Scintillating10]

Baseball is an expensive sport.

A new stadium would cost at least $700M, plus the average value of a baseball team is $700M, and the average cost of player salaries is $116M per year. Those are also in USD.

Where is the big money needed for Montreal going to come from?

Toronto can make it because the first two items are already covered as sunk costs, plus, they have over three times of a fan base density than Montreal has in order to fill the stadium. (They have close to 11.5M people within 200 miles of the Rogers center and it is accessible by commuter train and public transit.)

Even if by some miracle Montreal did get a new stadium and an owner ready to cough up $700M USD for a team, with its 3.4M people Montreal could never draw fans and generate revenue like the big cities. It would be forever a non playoff team that people would soon get disenchanted with.

Can't see it happening, it's a big gamble needing too much money up front and has too many potential financial constraints.

I doubt they will be back. Even the Nordiques are subjective if they come back. That is with a salary cap and new arena

 

[Habs 4 Life]

If the Expos ever came back ( which I doubt ) don't see them building a ball park,

It would have to be in the AL, it makes too much sense to have rivals such as the Jays, Sox, Yankees and Orioles. Obviously the team moving out and coming to Montreal would be the Rays!

 

[MontrealCanadiens*]

Baseball is an expensive sport.

Even if by some miracle Montreal did get a new stadium and an owner ready to cough up $700M USD for a team, with its 3.4M people Montreal could never draw fans and generate revenue like the big cities.

I agree we'd never be a top spending team but to discount Montreal's size is a poor argument.

You are counting Toronto at 11.5 million, basically including all of Ontario and parts of the US. Toronto's metro is 5.5 million. For Montreal you stop counting at their metro, and don't include the US, eastern Quebec or eastern Ontario. Also, Montreal's metro is 3.8, not 3.4. The two cities difference is only 1.7 million. Not the almost 8 million difference your ridiculous post claims.

Montreal, which is pushing 4 million people, is larger or similar sized to 45% of the current metro populations of MLB. Larger than:

Pittsburgh
Minneapolis
St.Louis
San Diego
Tampa
Baltimore
Cincinnatti
Cleveland
Milwaukee
Denver

And nearly the same size as Seattle, Phoenix, Detroit and Boston.

Size has nothing to do with it. Montreal is not a massive metro but it is large.

I do agree that Montreal will have a hard time getting a rich owner, building a stadium, and being competitive even if they do. But it won't be because of city size.

 

[Pocket Hercules]

If you're referring to the Field of Dreams quote, it's actually: "If you build it, he will come".

Google "The Mandela Effect". It will blow your mind.

In my reality it's "If you build it, they will come".

 

[AllanMTL46]

Coderre and Cromartie's gang keep putting the efforts because they know the money's there. I was sceptic at first too, but I'm starting to believe there really are some deep pockets out there ready to throw some cash for this project, plus Bell apparently involved also.

For it to work, we need that stadium. Downtown or close to it, 38 000 seats. Get that and it will work. People will show up, no doubt about it. Big O is a dump. Only hardcore fans showed up. For the casuals to show up, you need an outdoor stadium (which automatically brings the atmosphere with it) for the 3 little months of summer we get, and you need it to be in a good location (downtown, metro...).

We need to be in the same division as Toronto, New York and Boston, whether it's by replacing Tampa or in the case of an expansion, division realignement.

As mentionned, revenue sharing changes everything. We can survive as much as half the cities in this league.

And that comment on x-games and soccer killing baseball is bullsh**.

 

[danyhabsfan]

Why did the Impact build their stadium in the olympic stadium area?

I thought it was well known that their is nothing in that area and people wanted a stadium downtown.

 

[MontrealCanadiens*]

Why did the Impact build their stadium in the olympic stadium area?

I thought it was well known that their is nothing in that area and people wanted a stadium downtown.

I assume the land was cheap and there wasn't a good spot downtown. I like Stade Saputo but a state of the art downtown stadium it is not.

 

[TRG]

Why did the Impact build their stadium in the olympic stadium area?

I thought it was well known that their is nothing in that area and people wanted a stadium downtown.

They wanted to build it at Technoparc at first. That's when the RIO offered the deal to Saputo. Also, the fact that the Casino project at Bassin Peel and some other projects of the time in that area went down played a role.

 

[DangerDave]

Wait till the Canadian dollar is higher at least.

 

[George Lebay]

 

[George Lebay]

I just don't see a way that baseball could work in Montreal. The younger generation is more interested in other sports than baseball. Even in the United States, baseball has the same problem with the increasing popularity of other sports including soccer.

In this era of X-Games, Soccer, etc. baseball just does not click in my opinion.

Well that didn't take long

btw...
MLS Cup 2014 : 1.887 million viewers
MLB game 7 of the 2014 WS: 23.5 million viewers

 

[Laurent]

Posted this on another thread a few weeks ago. Thought it might be relevant, or maybe it's just redundant information you guys already know

Got to meet with one if the investment managers for the Bronfmans family fund (Claridge Inc) today. Got some cool info about the expos.

Told us nothing is close really. Met with the commish on multiple occasions. The public (Govt) won't fund a new stadium, and nobody in the private wants to take that risk now. So MLB won't come until new stadium is built.

He also talked about the CAD/USD exchange and mentionned that because of that, no 100% canadian investors want to do it. That if the expos came back, it would necessitate an American owner (likely the current owner of the team being relocated) to remain majority owner and entertain the possibility of having local co-investors. Said that if a team came back, the Bronfmans would invest in it as one of those co-investors

That's what I recall. If i rememeber anything else I'll let you guys know

 

[c3z4r]

Well that didn't take long

btw...
MLS Cup 2014 : 1.887 million viewers
MLB game 7 of the 2014 WS: 23.5 million viewers

I don't agree with soccer overtaking baseball, but baseball's been losing a lot of fans, especially younger ones. From a Washington Post article from April 2015:

According to Nielsen ratings, 50 percent of baseball viewers are 55 or older/ ESPN, which airs baseball, football and basketball games, says its data show the average age of baseball viewers rising well above that of other sports: 53 for baseball

Now, considering 33% of the American population is aged over 50, directly from the 2012 US census,, it easily explains why baseball still draws strong numbers, but:

For the first time, the ESPN Sports Poll’s annual survey of young Americans’ 30 favorite sports figures finds no baseball players on the list/ Kids ages 6-17 made up 7 percent of the TV audience for postseason games a decade ago; in the past couple of years, that figure is down to 4 percent./ For many years, Little League detailed youth participation in baseball and softball, but as those numbers declined, from nearly 3 million in the 1990s to 2.4 million two years ago, the organization stopped releasing tallies.

Lastly, I think this image does a good job explaining how much baseball's declined in the past 30 years.

 

[CanadiensforLife]

If the Expos ever came back ( which I doubt ) don't see them building a ball park,

It would have to be in the AL, it makes too much sense to have rivals such as the Jays, Sox, Yankees and Orioles. Obviously the team moving out and coming to Montreal would be the Rays!

The Expos coming back is conditional to Montreal building a new ball park. MLB will not agree to a team in this city without a new stadium.

 

[Runner77]

I don't agree with soccer overtaking baseball, but baseball's been losing a lot of fans, especially younger ones. From a Washington Post article from April 2015:



Now, considering 33% of the American population is aged over 50, directly from the 2012 US census,, it easily explains why baseball still draws strong numbers, but:



Lastly, I think this image does a good job explaining how much baseball's declined in the past 30 years.

The theories espoused by the above graphic are distinguishable when viewed from a wider perspective:

Another well-worn aspect of the “baseball is dying” narrative centers on the aging demographic, and how the slowness of the game is so far out of touch with the short attention span of youth, it’s no wonder more kids watch football than baseball.

Don’t be stupid, it’s not just baseball that sees lower interest of kids for broadcasts, it’s happening to all sports, including the NFL.

Several things have happened with how baseball and television have intersected over the years that speak to how the numbers changed.

The first is, the television landscape in the 1960s was far different than it is today. By the last of the 60s, cable television was available but the subscribers base was exceptionally smaller, as was the number of channels that were available. According to The History of Cable Television, by the 1960s there were approx. 800 cable systems serving 850,000 subscribers. According to The National Cable & Telecommunications Association (NCTA), there are now 5,208 cable systems in the U.S. with the estimated total of channels offered at over 900. In the 1960s, you had the Big 3 networks (ABC, CBS, and NBC), and depending on your market potential UHF channels as the majority of television households. Baseball was shown once a week (The Game of the Week), and the All-Star Game aired on NBC. This limited slate of game inventory on television meant higher demand.

Based on our report just days ago, there was an average of 148 games aired during the regular season on regional sports networks. Not only has supply dramatically increased over the years, but over 90 percent of regular season games are aired on regional sports networks. This has turned baseball into a regional phenomenon. Baseball dominates prime time television at the cable and broadcast levels on these RSNs. Of the 30 teams in Major League Baseball, eleven—more than one-third of the league—had the highest-rated, most-watched local programming in prime time on both broadcast and cable. And overall, 17 MLB teams—over half the league—rank in the top 3 in local prime time (7p-11p) TV ratings on their respective RSNs. So, the question is, is baseball interest lowering nationally, or growing vastly at the regional level? As The AP story notes:

All of those numbers have made the regional sports networks more valuable to cable and satellite providers. And because each channel makes much of its revenue from fees those providers pay to carry it, the audience demographics don’t affect profits in the way they do for the traditional broadcast networks, which rely more on advertisers who want to reach younger viewers. In other words, baseball’s older viewership is less of a problem for regional sports networks.

So, don’t be stupid. Lower supply meant higher demand “back in the good old days”, the massive increase in games being broadcast has increased supply, and interest has become vastly popular in the markets where games are hosted.

http://www.forbes.com/sites/maurybrown/2014/10/08/baseball-is-dying-dont-be-stupid/

 

[SB164]

Developer buys former Children's hospital site for possible baseball stadium

The old Montreal Children's Hospital site has been sold to a Montreal developer.

Condos and stores could be built on the site, but there's also a possibility of building a downtown baseball stadium.
Since the hospital moved six months ago, the 120,000-square-metre site at the corner of Atwater Ave. and Rene Levesque Blvd. has been empty.
Montreal developer Luc Poirier purchased it from the Quebec government.

“It's probably the best site for the new stadium, so it will be gorgeous like [the stadium in] San Diego,†he said.

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/develope...-site-for-possible-baseball-stadium-1.2680910

 

[duckwellboots]

Developer buys former Children's hospital site for possible baseball stadium

The old Montreal Children's Hospital site has been sold to a Montreal developer.

Condos and stores could be built on the site, but there's also a possibility of building a downtown baseball stadium.
Since the hospital moved six months ago, the 120,000-square-metre site at the corner of Atwater Ave. and Rene Levesque Blvd. has been empty.
Montreal developer Luc Poirier purchased it from the Quebec government.

“It's probably the best site for the new stadium, so it will be gorgeous like [the stadium in] San Diego,†he said.

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/develope...-site-for-possible-baseball-stadium-1.2680910

Not so likely, by the sounds of it.

http://www.ledevoir.com/politique/m...-de-l-ancien-hopital-de-montreal-pour-enfants

 

[AllanMTL46]

Developer buys former Children's hospital site for possible baseball stadium

The old Montreal Children's Hospital site has been sold to a Montreal developer.

Condos and stores could be built on the site, but there's also a possibility of building a downtown baseball stadium.
Since the hospital moved six months ago, the 120,000-square-metre site at the corner of Atwater Ave. and Rene Levesque Blvd. has been empty.
Montreal developer Luc Poirier purchased it from the Quebec government.

“It's probably the best site for the new stadium, so it will be gorgeous like [the stadium in] San Diego,†he said.

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/develope...-site-for-possible-baseball-stadium-1.2680910

Rumors say Coderre doesn't want that location. Not big enough and doesn't want to touch Square Cabot. Nothing confirmed though.

 

[Burke the Legend]

Developer buys former Children's hospital site for possible baseball stadium

The old Montreal Children's Hospital site has been sold to a Montreal developer.

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/develope...-site-for-possible-baseball-stadium-1.2680910

Great news. As I said earlier it is absolutely the best site. Central Walking Proximity to downtown and residential neighbourhoods. On metro. On ville Marie expressway, near turcotte. Lots of parking.

The peel basin would be pretty but it is kind of outside the action and would be missing most of these things.

The Atwater location would be a huge boost to a team's potential.

 

[Whitesnake]

Not sure why this developer said that he's meeting the MLB in the upcoming weeks if Coderre doesn't want that site....

 

[AllanMTL46]

Not sure why this developer said that he's meeting the MLB in the upcoming weeks if Coderre doesn't want that site....

I guess what I read might just be bullsh**

 

[Burke the Legend]

Developer buys former Children's hospital site for possible baseball stadium

The old Montreal Children's Hospital site has been sold to a Montreal developer.

http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/develope...-site-for-possible-baseball-stadium-1.2680910

Great news. As I said earlier it is absolutely the best site. Central Walking Proximity to downtown and residential neighbourhoods. On metro. On ville Marie expressway, near turcotte. Lots of parking.

The peel basin would be pretty but it is kind of outside the action and would be missing most of these things.

The Atwater location would be a huge boost to a team's potential.