What happened to the Expos?

weren't they positioned to win everything before the strike in - what was it - '94?

weren't the loaded with talent?  pedro and alou.....

Montreal one step closer to MLB team as investors meet conditions

Montreal investors have a solid financial setup, support from two levels of government and several potential locations for a stadium, sources say.

By FREDERIC DAIGLE
The Canadian Press
Wed., March 29, 2017

MONTREAL — A group of Montreal investors has met the conditions laid out by Major League Baseball to get a team back in the city, a source has told The Canadian Press.

“I can tell you we are no longer looking for investors and that we believe we have all the ingredients to be able to welcome a team, be it an expansion one or one that already exists,” the person said on condition of anonymity.

The source said the investors have a solid financial setup, support from two levels of government, various potential locations for a stadium as well as at least five different designs for the venue.

“We are not going to say we favour one site or another,” the source said. “But it’s crucial for the (eventual) site to be well served by public transit.”

As for what the stadium would look like, the person said there is a lot of flexibility.

“We can choose the version we want,” the source added. “There are five. They are preliminary plans and we could easily rework them once the project has been launched.”

The investors are just waiting for a call from MLB commissioner Rob Manfred, to get the ball rolling.

“For me, the most important element in all this is the team,” the person said.” All the other areas are sufficiently advanced.”

Montreal businessmen Stephen Bronfman and Mitch Garber publicly revealed their commitment last year to the project, while Bronfman and Montreal Mayor Denis Coderre co-signed a 2015 letter that was sent to the 30 MLB teams as well as to Manfred.

The letter spoke of Montreal’s interest in rejoining the major leagues for the first time since 2004, when the Expos left to become the Washington Nationals.

Manfred said last year he would like two teams added to MLB in order to make scheduling easier.

But he also said that scenario had to wait until another collective bargaining agreement was signed with the players’ union and the issue of stadiums in Oakland and Tampa was settled.

While the new bargaining agreement was inked last December, the situation with the Tampa Bay Rays and the Oakland Athletics is far from clear.

Stuart Sternberg, the majority owner of the Rays, said last week he had to forgo his two preferred sites for a new stadium because they were not available.

The search for a new location won’t be complete until the end of the year.

There's a book on the Expos called Up Up and Away which is pretty good.

As @nxnwrocks said, Jeffrey Loria happened.

He said he would keep the team in town even if they struggled but in the end he moved it.

There might be other Montréalais around the forums and in this thread to give their views on it but as far as I'm concerned, from the late 90's to the end in 2004, the Olympic Stadium was never full nor near being full. There was something like 6000 fans on good days and sometimes as low as 2000. You could get VIP tickets for 20$ or so.

My parents, grand-parents and anybody I know from those age groups told me that when they were in the Parc Jarry, the ambience was great and it was full most of the time but it changed when they moved. Even if they had success later, the best times, from a crowd perspective, were back in the old Jarry Stadium.

These days they use the Toronto Blue Jays (the only Canadian team in the MLB) for exhibition games at the Olympic Stadium. They do this once or twice a year over a weekend. Every time they get a big crowd and we hear about enthusiasm for baseball in Montréal but the real question is, will those fans pay on a regular basis to see another team play here ? Not just twice, a year, but for a whole season ?

We still got the Alouettes (CFL) and even if the Expos were really popular, Montréal has always been a hockey town. Baseball has been losing ground to soccer for many years. The Impact, despite struggling a bit in its league, is very popular and over the last decade many small baseball fields were razed to see soccer fields being built.

While there might still be interest in baseball, from a financial standpoint, it's far from a guaranteed success. Same goes for a return of an NHL team in Québec.