Tampa Bay Rays Exploring Splitting Season Between Tampa and Montreal

[Brodie]

Click to read more...

 

[Fenway]

 

[TheTotalPackage]

That seems like a pretty monumental development for the city of Montreal. Might be their way of backdooring back into the league.

 

[Albatros]

The Lightning should do the same with Québec City.

 

[Major4Boarding]

Wow! This is pretty significant

 

[Reality Check]

Why would any player want to play for that franchise if true? What a horrible idea.

 

[Sparty]

Why would any player want to play for that franchise if true? What a horrible idea.

It's not like the Rays even try to sign free agents anyways, don't see how things would be any different.

 

[VinikToWinIt]

The Lightning should do the same with Québec City.

Yeah, no.

 

[Coinneach]

Expos attendance in last three seasons:
2002: 10 031
2003: 12 662
2004: 9 356

 

[Pilky01]

Expos attendance in last three seasons:
2002: 10 031
2003: 12 662
2004: 9 356

Decent numbers for a farm team.

 

[Mightygoose]

I didn't think the lease in Tropicana field allowed them to play home games out of market.

Still, with 8 years left beyond this season remaining tell the fan base? It's almost along the time of the Expos playing part seasons in San Juan. Yeah it did wonders there.

If MLB is supporting this, then it shows they're OK with the Big O as a temporary venue.

 

[OG6ix]

Just move them to Montreal... Tampa has been a successful franchise and fail to draw a fan base. They would do well in Montreal.

 

[kgboomer]

Fenway's clip brought a tear off my eye.

 

[Dirty Old Man]

New logo: a skeleton. Call them the X-Rays (sounds better than Ray-pos)

 

[LadyStanley]

Just exploring now

 

[tarheelhockey]

I'm assuming this is a way to escalate pressure on Tampa to finance a new ballpark. Actually splitting a season would be so stupid that it's hard to believe they're taking that option seriously. It would be easier to imagine them just throwing up their hands and moving to Montreal, than doing some 2-city silliness.

 

[tony d]

I'd love to see baseball back in Montreal but something like this isn't a good idea. Will be interesting to follow this over the next while.

 

[LadyStanley]

Athletic debate/Q&A if this could be done in NFL.

Paywall

 

[MNNumbers]

I'm assuming this is a way to escalate pressure on Tampa to finance a new ballpark. Actually splitting a season would be so stupid that it's hard to believe they're taking that option seriously. It would be easier to imagine them just throwing up their hands and moving to Montreal, than doing some 2-city silliness.

The more I think of it, the more I think this is right. The move says that..

1- We have a relationship with a Montreal group.
2- The Montreal group has MLB permission to look into funding for a stadium
3- The more interesting part of the split season would be played in Montreal....

In other words - All advantage to Montreal. It puts pressure on TB-SP to look for a deal. All the while, I remain unconvinced that Montreal needs a roof - after all, Minnesota has no roof.

 

[Fenway]

This survey echos baseball's biggest problem - People under the age of 35 don't watch the game

Bring on baseball, but don't expect Quebecers to watch: survey

Fifty-nine percent of Quebecers would support a major league baseball team in the province, with 19 percent opposed and 22 having no opinion.

That's as long as no public money is spent on the team on a stadium. Fifty nine percent of Quebecers said that no tax money should be spent on baseball, while only 25 percent supported spending public funds on the game.

Even among baseball supporters, 44 percent were opposed to spending public money on a team or stadium.

If a team does come to Montreal just 42 percent of respondents said they were likely to ever go to a game.

About half, 52 percent, said they had no interest in watching games on television either.

People under the age of 35 had the least interest in baseball, with 63 percent saying they would never watch a game on TV, and even fewer would attend a game in person.

They were also the most opposed -- 61 percent -- to spending public funds on the sport.

 

[ucanthanzalthetruth]

I like the novelty but I don't get it. Right now no one goes because the stadium is a dump in the middle of nowhere. Now you're going to build a stadium outdoors but play all relevant late season and playoff games in another location? Can't see it working out.

 

[Hivemind]

This raises a lot of interesting questions.
A) How would this impact player recruitment and deals? Players having to find two homes and potentially pay two different home-game tax rates.
B) Would both TV deals be "full priced?" Even if they're modest TV deals (like the franchise currently has), having two deals alone would be a pretty notable bump in revenue.
C) Would sponsors from one city be willing to sponsor a full season? Would Montreal companies be putting up ads in the Tampa-area stadium?
D) Would the handful of Tampa fans still care about the team if there's no chance for them to watch the meaningful games down the stretch and into the playoffs? Seems like the Tampa portion of the season would essentially be an extended spring training
E) Seems like there's tons of potential for accidental visa headaches
F) How would this impact the spending of public funding to create new stadiums? There's already plenty of (justified) backlash towards public money being spent on stadiums, but this cuts their effective usage in half, making the already flimsy case for local economic impact even flimsier.

 

[HugoSimon]

I think it's a great idea, I wish hockey would consider doing something like this.

 

[Acesolid]

This is great news!

But I doubt there will be a single 50/50 season.

One of two things will happen:

1. Thanks to this good news, Montreal will build a new Stadium (with the help of new Premier and huge Baseball fan François Legault)... but after the Marlins disaster, Tampa Bay refuses to build one. In this case the team relocates.

2. Like in case one, Montreal builds a Stadium... but the State of Florida and a township around Tampa Bay does fold to the pressure and agrees to build a Stadium IF THE RAYS STAY. The Rays stay. In this case MLB Expands to Montreal.

Either way, I see no way Montreal doesn't have a team soon!

 

[Boris Zubov]

Where would they play their home games if they made the playoffs?