Quote:
Originally Posted by WhipperSnapper
The Expos departure was a huge embarrassment for MLB however, enough time may have passed for the right price.
I don't think Canadian billionaries can afford either. In any event, you're not factoring the price of the team by bringing up the Bell Centre vs a new ball park. You can build a nice ballpark for $3 billion and that's a conservative difference between the high price NBA franchise vs the lower price MLB franchise. Both are overpriced considering both are bleeding fan bases.
As a baseball fan, it would be nice to have a decent club in Canada. The Jays with their high value $250 million dollar payroll are probably going to lose 90 or more games again. The situation having the fifth highest payroll and likely missing the expanded playoffs couldn't be any worse
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Always have to factor the cost of expansion fees... they are huge now for the NBA. Montreal still just makes sense as an NBA expansion city, despite the CAD/USD disparity.
From what I understand the Big O became an embarrassment. I've seen some pictures of it in baseball configuration and it looked pretty brutal. I'm not sure a baseball specific renovation could fix Olympic Stadium like Toronto has done with the Skydome, but maybe.
It doesn't look
totally terrible, but the area around the scoreboard is pretty atrocious. A baseball specific renovation isn't impossible, but I don't think the MLB will go for it. I remember discovering the term "white elephant" when looking up Olympic Stadium online a few decades ago, and it seems to still be the case. 😅 A
Tokyo-Dome style renovation might be possible for Olympic Stadium, but would it be worth it? 🤔
A lot of people in Montreal say it's just a bad location, and no one wants to go there... but I don't know about that. It's connected to the metro, and it's a lot easier to park out there than in downtown Montreal (where most people say a new baseball stadium should be built) but do I tend to agree that it would be a lot cooler to have a stadium closer to downtown with the skyline as a backdrop. When I think of the best stadiums in the US, almost all of them are located in downtown areas, or have a great view of the the downtown skyline.
Personally, I've always thought Jean-Drapeau Park would be the best place to build a new baseball stadium, especially considering the name of the team.
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I'd love to see Montreal build a new ballpark within Jean-Drapeau Park, and bring back to the mini rail and
expo express.
Expansion fees are going to be huge, but I still think the possibilities of sharing an arena with the Habs make an NBA expansion for Montreal more likely than a baseball expansion. Would really like to see Montreal get both the MLB and NBA though.