2015-04-07

Bring back the Expos?

http://www.thestarphoenix.com/sports/return+Montreal+faces+hurdles/10945619/story.html

Somehow I doubt any franchise is going to relocate to Montreal any time soon ...

"Getting a stadium and getting a team are different classes of hurdle. Take, for example, the Tampa Bay Rays, the franchise most often mentioned in bringback-the-Expos fantasizing. They check a lot of the boxes of a team that might want to relocate: fan support is tepid, averaging fewer than 18,000 a game in 2014, and not much more than that in years when the team was making the playoffs.

The market is small, about half that of Montreal, depending on where the circle is drawn around the respective metropolitan areas, and the Rays' stadium is old, in a bad location and seemingly doomed to remain that way for, well, ever. The mayor of St. Petersburg this week surrendered on a proposal that would have allowed the Rays to search the surrounding area for a suitable site for a new ballpark, so that makes the team, in theory, that much closer to decamping."

... still, I'd say it has more of a chance than does Seattle getting an NHL franchise.

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