Baseball study ignores exchange rate
La Presse reports on a new study of Montreal’s possibilities as a market for major league baseball (which it calls, deplorably, “the return of the Expos”) that completely ignores the fact of the exchange rate of the loonie.
Patrick 12:15 on 2019-01-23 Permalink
And yet Toronto has a team…How do they afford it? I think the real problems are elsewhere, with TV rights and other revenue streams for MLB. Ideally, the US Congress would rescind the law protecting MLB from anti-monopoly legislation, but that will never happen.
Kate 14:23 on 2019-01-23 Permalink
Toronto’s got a lot more money sloshing around in it, and I suspect having a baseball team makes them feel they’re playing with the big boys, i.e. American cities.
Uatu 14:57 on 2019-01-23 Permalink
The GTA is a huge market and one of the reasons why hockey night in Canada always has a Maple Leafs game every week. CBC knows it gets the most eyeballs to advertisers with the GTA audience tuning in. Baseball is the same and even has Punjabi commentary which can also mean an overseas audience of expats and their families as well….
Kevin 17:15 on 2019-01-23 Permalink
Torontonian sports fans have been conditioned to spend lots of money on low-quality entertainment. And they have the nostalgia of “I came here with my dad.”
Montreal and Quebec no longer have that.
Add in the fact that more people would rather play video games or do yoga than watch sports, and that is why Montreal will never a baseball team and Quebec will never get a hockey team.
Josh 18:12 on 2019-01-23 Permalink
The economics of baseball have changed since the Expos left, such that most if not all teams are in the black each season now before a pitch has even been thrown. (Part of the impetus for the changes that make this so was, indeed, the demise of the Expos.) There’s lots of information on this out there for anyone willing to take a look.
Revenue sharing changed the game, but keep on talking like it’s 2004.
The other wildcard is the Tampa Bay Rays. Their stadium deal just fell through. Their owner lives in New York and has no ties to the Tampa area. It could come to pass that Major League Baseball needs a soft landing spot for the Rays, just as the NHL did in 2011 when the team in Atlanta fell apart and, as all Winnipeggers will tell you, Kate, *the Jets returned to Winnipeg*.
Kevin 18:16 on 2019-01-24 Permalink
The Rays are locked into their current stadium until 2027.
The deal was they could move to a new stadium in the same city if they could get funding, and they couldn’t.
And Montreal is not Winnipeg. The Expos left because, among other things, people stopped attending games long, long before they finally left. Only 5 seasons out of the final 20 did they average more than 20,000 fans a game.
For seven seasons they averaged fewer than 12,000.
Whereas Winnipeg fans raised $13 million in a matter of days when the team threatened to leave. Can you imagine that happening here, in a city nearly 6 times the size?