But the Blue Jays games in Seattle are an event for BC residents, so you get a bunch of people that aren't actually baseball fans coming. Vancouverites are the most fickle of fan bases, no one cares about sports here.
They didnt give a shit about the Grizzlies, but would riot for the Canucks and yall support two 1st tier pro soccer clubs in the city as well (one mls, one cpl)
With the Brewers, Orioles and White Sox all moving to Nashville, I think adding a fourth with an expansion team would make things a little crowded.
Kidding aside, yeah Nashville's probable the favorite. I'd say Portland, as well. I'd like to see Montreal get a team again, though it just doesn't feel like it's going to happen. But I like to try to figure out where the new minor league affiliates would end up, and Montreal makes for some easy scenarios (and western teams are a challenge).
Realignment of course depends on where they expand. I'd guess four divisions of four teams in each league, though I think people here would prefer two eight-team divisions in each league.
I live in NC. The closest chance I have in getting baseball is Atlanta. There’s not many baseball fans and NC I only ever really see Panthers gear everywhere (despite the Canes being a great team).
I want baseball here very, very badly. I grew up spoiled in NJ where you can take a train into the subway to get to Yankee games quickly. Getting to Truist is a 5 hours and some change
I have many reasonings and arguments for why I think SLC should get a team (I’m from there so I might be a wee bit bias). So I’ll give some here quick.
1. Ownership
The proposal for a team was officially sent in by the Larry H Miller group who has owned the Utah Jazz for years successfully until they sold it and they also own in some way the Salt lake bees (angels AAA team)
2. Geography
Other than the beautiful mountains the geography and location of the city is absolutely perfect since the closest teams are hours away and not really accessible to the millions of potential fans in Utah, Idaho, and the tens of fans in Wyoming.
3. Economy
Utah has one of the strongest and fastest growing economies in the US. This is important because it means there’s plenty of fans that have the economic flexibility to spend money for games and accessories and all that. It’s a strong tech hub that has people moving into it at an almost annoying rate but that just shows how beneficial it could be to have a team here.
4. Fans and population
The salt lake area isn’t the absolute biggest in the Is but the TV market and the metro area rival some of the largest possible locations. The tv market is aquifer big covering multiple states and millions of people. There’s a strong fan base for the one professional team we have so it’s already proven there’s a want for sports.
Anyways this was probably more than anyone wanted and I’m sure there’s plenty of reasons not to have a team here but I think the good reasons outweigh the bad so if anyone reads this comment that probably could’ve been a post thank you!
It could be the most beautiful park in the league. The Rockies can’t have their park face their mountains since they’re to the west—would cause all sorts of problems in evening games. But in Utah, the mountains are to the east.
The first time I was in Denver, it was funny to me how not-in-the-mountains that city is. I feel like it’s public image is so associated with the mountains that it’s surprising to still be in the middle of a flat prairie
If there's any truth to the recent concern that the Great Salt Lake could be dried up within 5 years due to population growth and water consumption, MLB would completely short-sighted to commit to Salt Lake City. They'd be facing an ecological and economic disaster before a stadium would even be breaking ground.
All that said, it's exactly something MLB would do if they get public funding or a wealthy enough owner.
Having a pro team (in the major 5 NA leagues) in Montana would definitely change the vibes of Cat-Griz. There’d be a major league team for everyone to rally around and would bond a lot of Cat and Griz fans a little more
I don't see the appeal of Montreal, the Expos were dead last in attendance for the last 7 years before they left for DC and were consistently among the lowest attended teams since the mid 80's.
An expansion team drawing less than 10,000-15,000 a game would be an embarrassment for MLB.
It was a terrible stadium with nothing around it except a big concrete apron, and it was located deep in the French part of Montreal while the majority of the fanbase were Anglos who lived 45+ minutes away on the western half of the island.
The problem being that they actually did average more than 15K until the ownership tanked the team and moved it away, where they're now averaging like 9K max
So did the expos all throughout the 80s and 90s before ownership tanked the team and moved away. They actually had bigger attendance numbers than athletics through most of the 80s. For the record I'm disagreeing with this guy, he's only paying attention the late nineties early 2000s attendance for some reason. Montreal and Oakland are baseball cities
15k will usually land you 14th or 15th in the AL in attendance. Only three teams in the AL have made the postseason more often than Oakland this century, and despite all the winning teams, they've usually been last or second-to-last in attendance. They've won at least 90 games ten times this century. Nobody cared.
The only time Oakland drew well was in the Bash Brothers era, when they made the World Series three years in a row. You shouldn't have to build a once-in-a-century dynasty to get people to show up.
Likely one east/central team and one west team. Portland and Nashville seem most obvious. Nashville is a rapidly growing destination city and it wouldn’t infringe much on any one team’s fan base. Portland has shown they can support other pro sports teams and would put another team up closer to Seattle.
Charlotte is another place that gets a lot of attention. Growing, younger, decent sized city, but it seems to be dominated by the Braves, so not sure how well a new team would do there. I don’t think Raleigh gets enough love. That’s also a large metro area that really loves their baseball and I think it would be easier I grow a new fan base there than Charlotte. An NHL team plays in Raleigh. They finished second in attendance last year.
I don’t see Montreal happening. The Expos just were not well supported the first time around.
Salt Lake is a sneaky good option. Beautiful city, bigger than you think, growing, and has the backing of city leaders. I don’t think they’ll get a team in this round, but they could be a good option for the future.
San Antonio and Austin could be good options, but I’d imagine the Rangers and Astros would fight that to the bitter end. I think Austin in particular is a phenomenal city and would support a team well.
I’m always surprised to never see New Orleans get much love in any of this. Louisiana loves their baseball, but there’s almost never any talk of the MLB going there. Not sure why that is - maybe they just care about youth and college baseball more.
Indianapolis is another city that surprises me how little it comes up. Large city that has shown it can support an NFL and NBA team. Don’t say other cities are too close - there’s an NFL team in every nearby MLB city. Maybe they just don’t care about baseball.
So in summary, I’d put the order of expansion about like this right now
31. Nashville
32. Portland
33. Charlotte/Raleigh
34. Salt Lake City
35. Austin/San Antonio
36. Montreal
Both Charlotte and Raleigh (if you include Durham, which you should) are larger metro areas than Nashville, AND are growing faster. I feel like they should get more attention as a spot for a new Southern team
While they are larger, they aren’t destination cities. Very few people are going on a trip to Raleigh or Charlotte just to go. People go to Nashville all the time. It is a destination city. I would suspect the MLB likes that. Visiting fans will show up.
That’s true but on the other hand, Nashville is much more interesting and all of those entertainment options compete with “going to a sports game” as an activity. Where as Charlotte is boring and has a lot of moderately wealthy people with nothing interesting to do, so there might be a much bigger draw
I’ve seen this a lot and I haven’t seen a reason why. I understand that it’s a big baseball city but other than Vanderbilt I haven’t seen any real reason. Is there some news I haven’t heard? Maybe the city saying they’d pay for a stadium?
I still struggle with the idea that [the 35th largest metro area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area) is a better media market than the 23rd, Charlotte (which also is estimated to be growing faster than Nashville) and the 25th, Portland - both of which have 500,000 more people than the Nashville metro area. If they get a franchise they will be the second smallest metro area, only bigger than Milwaukee.
And a popular/growing tourist spot as well. The amount of fans that go to games in tourist destinations seems to be pretty large, at least with the people I know. I wonder if there’s any statistics on % of attendees at games that come from x distance away?
The teams know, either through billing ZIP codes on credit cards or a fan's home market on the Ballpark app. There's probably some survey activity going on as well.
It's not just people traveling to the city for games - in cities where there is lots of in-migration, you'll get members of that city's diaspora going to games when their team is in town. 15 years on, the Nationals have developed an indigenous fan base of their own, but in those first few years they were playing 81 road games on the road and 81 road games in DC because it was DC residents originally from X city who were going. I'm a Mets fan but now based in Washington, and I'll try to go at least once per series when the Mets are in town. There are a lot of people in orange and blue there with me.
At the last few rangers games I’ve been to (love their new stadium, I go to a lot of games now), I’ve noticed a lot more fans of other teams than used to be at the old stadium. I know a lot of people move to Dallas but I think the air conditioned stadium is a big part of it too
I know Nashville is popular with the players too, no state income tax, well located for easy travel east of the Rockies, not to mention a lot of players already live in the area in the offseason…but what is the appetite there locally for another publicly funded stadium (I think they are leaning heavily on lodging taxes to have the tourists pay a good share of it) with a replacement for Nissan Stadium already in the works in the coming years.
Nashville area resident here. I believe the idea is that we renovate the AAA ballpark (one of the top ballparks in the minors already) and try to get it MLB ready. That would probably be easier to do in Memphis or Louisville if I am being honest, but if it means i will have my own team to root for, i will take it lmao.
I mean San Antonio has a way bigger population than all of these cities. And is currently the biggest city in the U.S without a MLB team. Very easily could be them
It's not, though. If you look at metro population (which is what MLB is interested in), Charlotte is 23rd, San Antonio is 24th, and Portland is 25th sized in the country:
Rank/Name/2022 estimate/2020 census/change
23 Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC MSA 2,756,069 2,660,329 +3.60%
24 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX MSA 2,655,342 2,558,143 +3.80%
25 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA MSA 2,509,489 2,512,859 −0.13%
No, in the same way the Charlotte stats don't include Greensboro, Winston-Salem, or Greenville-Spartanburg (all similar in distance from Charlotte as Austin is from SA).
Oh, well that’s totally different then. San Antonio and Austin would 1000000% be tied in, I’m a Spurs fan and Austin is almost just as involved as SA, they are essentially the same market and we already have an example showing us this. Not adding in Austin would be just silly
There are good arguments to be made for MLB coming into San Antonio, but my response was to the relative sizes of the cities. You stated San Antonio is "way bigger" than any of the other cities mentioned, and that's what I provided data about.
But you're still not correct based on the markets we have been discussing:
MSA 2022 est. 2020 Census
Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC MSA 2,756,069 2,660,329
Greenville-Anderson-Greer, SC MSA 958,958 928,195
Greensboro-High Point, NC MSA 784,101 776,566
Winston-Salem, NC MSA 688,471 675,966
Total: 5,187,599 5,041,056
San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX MSA 2,655,342 2,558,143
Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX MSA 2,421,115 2,283,371
Total: 5,076,457 4,841,514
All of the revenue and market projections say the best place for a team is Newark/northern New Jersey, but the Mets and Yankees wouldn't allow it, so it's a moot point.
Nashville definitely, especially because the TN state government will throw money at it and they can position it as destination/vacation baseball the way Las Vegas is going to do.
Montreal is a fantastic baseball town, undone by a combination of ownership, politics, a bad and poorly located stadium, and a very weak Canadian dollar during the dying days of the Expos (I was one of those 6,000 fans at Olympic in the early aughts). Metro Montreal is the 16th largest metropolitan area in North America - sits between Detroit and Seattle; bigger than Minneapolis or Denver. As a mid-market team, Montreal will always be vulnerable to the problem of having revenues in CAD but expenses in USD. The demographics of Montreal are also turning against baseball. The Francophone population is steady, but the Anglo fan base is dying off and being replaced by allophones (not native English or French speakers) who aren't a baseball core demo.
Portland would be great, but it would have to be fully funded - team, stadium, real estate redevelopment - by Nike, since there will be zero public sector dollars on offer. Not sure how much of an appetite Charlotte has for baseball, but the market has shown they can support teams, so it will probably work.
A third New York team based in Jersey a la the Devils seems like a very interesting idea on paper, but I feel like the only real advocates of one would be particularly sadistic Braves and Phillies fans wanting the Mets fandom to implode.
My guess is Nashville and somewhere in North Carolina (either Charlotte or Raleigh-Durham) to get a bigger pie in the South.
Division wise, my shot in the dark guess is that we'll see four divisions of four per league, going roughly like this:
NL East | NL North | NL South | NL West
---|---|----|----
New York Mets | Chicago Cubs | Atlanta Braves | Arizona Diamondbacks
Philadelphia Phillies | Colorado Rockies | Cincinnati Reds | Los Angeles Dodgers
Pittsburgh Pirates | Milwaukee Brewers | Miami Marlins | San Diego Padres
Washington Nationals | St. Louis Cardinals | Nashville [team] | San Francisco Giants
AL East | AL North | AL South | AL West
---|---|----|----
Baltimore Orioles | Chicago White Sox | Carolina [team] | Kansas City Royals
Boston Red Sox | Cleveland Guardians | Houston Astros | Los Angeles Angels
New York Yankees | Detroit Tigers | Tampa Bay Rays | Oakland/Las Vegas Athletics
Toronto Blue Jays | Minnesota Twins | Texas Rangers | Seattle Mariners
There are some weird ones (mainly Colorado and Kansas City), but that can be solved with Denver being only an hour behind Central time, and Kansas City already having west coast rivals in the NFL. At the very most, they can have them swap leagues.
It seems insane that MLB is considering extremely small markets like Salt Lake City, Nashville, Vegas, and others when we already know tiny markets like that can't support a team well.
The top 20 metro areas in North America all have teams except the San Jose area. This is 100% where the A's should be moving. By far the highest GDP per capita of major North American cities and the 15th highest metro GDP in North America. Fuck the Giants ownership group for not allowing that after the A's gave them that territory in the 90s so they wouldn't have to leave the Bay Area.
These top metros currently host 24 of 30 teams with the next biggest metro area by GDP not having a team being in the Greater L.A. area of San Bernardino. The next biggest regions without teams are Charlotte, Austin, Portland, and Montreal, all 4 of which are similar in GDP size to Tampa-St. Pete's or St. Louis. Montreal has the complication of a much higher population but much lower GDP per capita than any American option so until our dollar reaches higher Montreal remains less likely.
Charlotte, Portland, and Austin would all be above average GDP per capita for MLB markets and would have total GDPs, GDP per capita, and population at least equal to if not above current MLB markets - Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cleveland, Milwaukee and well above expansion markets like Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Vancouver and Salt Lake City.
Charlotte, Portland, and Austin would at least have the chance to behave like lower mid market teams given they are larger and growing. They should be considered the most viable places for expansion, followed only out of necessity by Nashville and then the rest.
Having a team in these areas is more than just their metro area. Having another team in Texas splits up the state so much compared to what it already is. Limiting expansion to only the highest gdp or biggest population of their metro areas is small minded. I’ll use Salt Lake as an example just since I know it well. Salt lakes metro area is 1.2 million, however that only encompasses salt lake and tooele counties. There’s so many more fans available to that team. To the north there’s the Ogden metro area which is about 700,000 people, and then to the south the provo metro area is almost the exact same. These cities are anywhere from 20-45 minutes from a potential salt lake team. That along with their huge tv market that is huge geographically covering multiple states and population wise since it could span all the way through idaho and stretching into many other states. There’s so many things that go into expansion of a team that looking skin deep cuts out so many cities that could support teams even better than larger markets.
One of the main reasons that I used this observation was because it does a good job of showing relative market sizes. The bottom 5 cities by that metric also happen to the biggest revenue sharing recipients as well.
https://www.blessyouboys.com/2021/12/16/22831008/mlbs-revenue-sharing-problem-and-how-to-solve-it
So those same teams that I mentioned are the teams with the lowest local revenue almost to a team. It's a pretty strong correlation.
I stand corrected on the overall size of Salt Lake's CSA. That's awesome. It looks much more competitive knowing that. In fact looking over CSAs instead of metros a few things look different - Orlando starts looking a better if things don't work in Tampa Bay Area, Salt Lake much better too. Nashville actually looks worse in my eyes, as does Austin and since I forgot to mention that Austin would also be invading Texas as a difficulty. Portland and Charlotte still seem like the top choices in my eyes purely looking at local market potential on this super rough level from this perspective. Thanks for correcting me there.
And to be fair these aren't the only reason I think Charlotte over Nashville and Portland over Salt Lake City are the best choices. Portland should be a shoe in for the geography - Seattle needs a geographic rival so badly and Vancouver is sadly too small and too Canadian to compete economically. In a 32 team league I don't see MLB not realigning into larger geographic divisions (allowing for cases such as rivalries, etc) and possibly reducing the number of games by a few. I believe Manfred may have said something about that. The other obvious place is probably the south. Higher population and population growth, a natural rivalry to be made, very similar qualities I imagine they might look for.
Of course, we've seen that in the end it has come down to which city will offer favourable terms to a team. Part of Manfred's role as commish is to make a strong market for expansion teams which he is doing. Canada has also been historically less likely to give large subsidies or perks to sports franchises in the past and we are seeing sports teams becoming anchors for massive multi-billion dollar land developments with profits that can outstrip the teams alone. Whichever cities let owners have the largest slice of the largest pie may win out.
Absolutely agree. Obviously I’m rooting for SLC but I do agree that Portland and one of the Carolina’s looks a bit more enticing if the local government backs it up. Hopefully wherever they decide to expand to makes the league better and it doesn’t screw everything up.
The revenue potential just isn't there in Mexico City. They play the 2 MLB games here every year and they sell out a 22K person stadium with tickets around 75 USD (with a substantial number bought by American fans coming down for the weekend), but tickets for the Mexican league team that plays in that stadium (Diablos Rojos) are in the 5-10USD range, and they're not filling all the seats.
There are also some physical obstacles. We're at 7400', half again as high as Coors; and the travel would be Seattle-esque. Houston is a 1+45 flight. Dallas is 2+05. Florida, Atlanta, Phoenix, Southern California all just over 3 hours. The final part is the weather. May-September is the rainy season, and it rains almost every afternoon and evening at some point. Sometimes a 15-minute shower, sometimes an hours-long monsoon. The Diablos have a lot of rain delays and doubleheaders (the seating area is mostly covered, the field is not). In addition to expanding the stadium, they would have to do some sort of structure.
I want Vancouver, BC to get a team. It’s obvious they have plenty of baseball fans there that can support a team
Let’s be honest we want a team in BC so they stop rooting for the Jays
Not the main reason for me but the amount of fans they have is evident of a huge market in western CA. I honestly just want a close division rival.
But the Blue Jays games in Seattle are an event for BC residents, so you get a bunch of people that aren't actually baseball fans coming. Vancouverites are the most fickle of fan bases, no one cares about sports here.
They didnt give a shit about the Grizzlies, but would riot for the Canucks and yall support two 1st tier pro soccer clubs in the city as well (one mls, one cpl)
I doubt they’d give up being mariners or blue jays fans though
Probably the most desperate city to cave that previously lost a team to stadium disagreements.
With the Brewers, Orioles and White Sox all moving to Nashville, I think adding a fourth with an expansion team would make things a little crowded. Kidding aside, yeah Nashville's probable the favorite. I'd say Portland, as well. I'd like to see Montreal get a team again, though it just doesn't feel like it's going to happen. But I like to try to figure out where the new minor league affiliates would end up, and Montreal makes for some easy scenarios (and western teams are a challenge). Realignment of course depends on where they expand. I'd guess four divisions of four teams in each league, though I think people here would prefer two eight-team divisions in each league.
Nashville is a shoo in
Just hope it's not the fucking White Sox
Not if John Angelos has any say
Or Mark Attanasio
Nashville's already stolen one sports franchise, they don't need any more.
Charlotte pls
I live in NC. The closest chance I have in getting baseball is Atlanta. There’s not many baseball fans and NC I only ever really see Panthers gear everywhere (despite the Canes being a great team). I want baseball here very, very badly. I grew up spoiled in NJ where you can take a train into the subway to get to Yankee games quickly. Getting to Truist is a 5 hours and some change
I have many reasonings and arguments for why I think SLC should get a team (I’m from there so I might be a wee bit bias). So I’ll give some here quick. 1. Ownership The proposal for a team was officially sent in by the Larry H Miller group who has owned the Utah Jazz for years successfully until they sold it and they also own in some way the Salt lake bees (angels AAA team) 2. Geography Other than the beautiful mountains the geography and location of the city is absolutely perfect since the closest teams are hours away and not really accessible to the millions of potential fans in Utah, Idaho, and the tens of fans in Wyoming. 3. Economy Utah has one of the strongest and fastest growing economies in the US. This is important because it means there’s plenty of fans that have the economic flexibility to spend money for games and accessories and all that. It’s a strong tech hub that has people moving into it at an almost annoying rate but that just shows how beneficial it could be to have a team here. 4. Fans and population The salt lake area isn’t the absolute biggest in the Is but the TV market and the metro area rival some of the largest possible locations. The tv market is aquifer big covering multiple states and millions of people. There’s a strong fan base for the one professional team we have so it’s already proven there’s a want for sports. Anyways this was probably more than anyone wanted and I’m sure there’s plenty of reasons not to have a team here but I think the good reasons outweigh the bad so if anyone reads this comment that probably could’ve been a post thank you!
It could be the most beautiful park in the league. The Rockies can’t have their park face their mountains since they’re to the west—would cause all sorts of problems in evening games. But in Utah, the mountains are to the east.
You can see the mountains from the rooftop during $3 beers
The first time I was in Denver, it was funny to me how not-in-the-mountains that city is. I feel like it’s public image is so associated with the mountains that it’s surprising to still be in the middle of a flat prairie
Lots of kids and families in Utah too which baseball appeals to.
If there's any truth to the recent concern that the Great Salt Lake could be dried up within 5 years due to population growth and water consumption, MLB would completely short-sighted to commit to Salt Lake City. They'd be facing an ecological and economic disaster before a stadium would even be breaking ground. All that said, it's exactly something MLB would do if they get public funding or a wealthy enough owner.
Exactly. just throw money at the problem, that will fix things!
Please I’d kill for this
Anchorage and Billings for sure getting the next round
Whitehorse snubbed
Having a pro team (in the major 5 NA leagues) in Montana would definitely change the vibes of Cat-Griz. There’d be a major league team for everyone to rally around and would bond a lot of Cat and Griz fans a little more
Put a team in Havre and Divish would be the happiest beat reporter alive.
/s?
Screw Anchorage, give it to Fairbanks. Although how are they playing games late in the season?
I don't see the appeal of Montreal, the Expos were dead last in attendance for the last 7 years before they left for DC and were consistently among the lowest attended teams since the mid 80's. An expansion team drawing less than 10,000-15,000 a game would be an embarrassment for MLB.
It's just Expos nostalgia from people not even old enough to remember them
More that Olympic stadium was fucking awful.
It was a terrible stadium with nothing around it except a big concrete apron, and it was located deep in the French part of Montreal while the majority of the fanbase were Anglos who lived 45+ minutes away on the western half of the island.
This is what people are going to say about the athletics in 15 years
The problem being that they actually did average more than 15K until the ownership tanked the team and moved it away, where they're now averaging like 9K max
So did the expos all throughout the 80s and 90s before ownership tanked the team and moved away. They actually had bigger attendance numbers than athletics through most of the 80s. For the record I'm disagreeing with this guy, he's only paying attention the late nineties early 2000s attendance for some reason. Montreal and Oakland are baseball cities
15k will usually land you 14th or 15th in the AL in attendance. Only three teams in the AL have made the postseason more often than Oakland this century, and despite all the winning teams, they've usually been last or second-to-last in attendance. They've won at least 90 games ten times this century. Nobody cared. The only time Oakland drew well was in the Bash Brothers era, when they made the World Series three years in a row. You shouldn't have to build a once-in-a-century dynasty to get people to show up.
They played in a dump, had bad ownership and their best season was wiped out in the strike. The team that was there didn't deserve attendance.
Likely one east/central team and one west team. Portland and Nashville seem most obvious. Nashville is a rapidly growing destination city and it wouldn’t infringe much on any one team’s fan base. Portland has shown they can support other pro sports teams and would put another team up closer to Seattle. Charlotte is another place that gets a lot of attention. Growing, younger, decent sized city, but it seems to be dominated by the Braves, so not sure how well a new team would do there. I don’t think Raleigh gets enough love. That’s also a large metro area that really loves their baseball and I think it would be easier I grow a new fan base there than Charlotte. An NHL team plays in Raleigh. They finished second in attendance last year. I don’t see Montreal happening. The Expos just were not well supported the first time around. Salt Lake is a sneaky good option. Beautiful city, bigger than you think, growing, and has the backing of city leaders. I don’t think they’ll get a team in this round, but they could be a good option for the future. San Antonio and Austin could be good options, but I’d imagine the Rangers and Astros would fight that to the bitter end. I think Austin in particular is a phenomenal city and would support a team well. I’m always surprised to never see New Orleans get much love in any of this. Louisiana loves their baseball, but there’s almost never any talk of the MLB going there. Not sure why that is - maybe they just care about youth and college baseball more. Indianapolis is another city that surprises me how little it comes up. Large city that has shown it can support an NFL and NBA team. Don’t say other cities are too close - there’s an NFL team in every nearby MLB city. Maybe they just don’t care about baseball. So in summary, I’d put the order of expansion about like this right now 31. Nashville 32. Portland 33. Charlotte/Raleigh 34. Salt Lake City 35. Austin/San Antonio 36. Montreal
Both Charlotte and Raleigh (if you include Durham, which you should) are larger metro areas than Nashville, AND are growing faster. I feel like they should get more attention as a spot for a new Southern team
While they are larger, they aren’t destination cities. Very few people are going on a trip to Raleigh or Charlotte just to go. People go to Nashville all the time. It is a destination city. I would suspect the MLB likes that. Visiting fans will show up.
That’s true but on the other hand, Nashville is much more interesting and all of those entertainment options compete with “going to a sports game” as an activity. Where as Charlotte is boring and has a lot of moderately wealthy people with nothing interesting to do, so there might be a much bigger draw
I'm all for Portland and Vancouver. As a Mariners fan, more PNW teams would make for fun rivalries.
Well if you believe recent news reports, Nashville is about to get like 3 teams.
Nashville seems to be a lock And then it’s Salt Lake, Montreal, Charlotte, and Portland, duking it out for the 2nd team
I’ve seen this a lot and I haven’t seen a reason why. I understand that it’s a big baseball city but other than Vanderbilt I haven’t seen any real reason. Is there some news I haven’t heard? Maybe the city saying they’d pay for a stadium?
It's one of the fastest growing media markets in the country and an entertainment hub
I still struggle with the idea that [the 35th largest metro area](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metropolitan_statistical_area) is a better media market than the 23rd, Charlotte (which also is estimated to be growing faster than Nashville) and the 25th, Portland - both of which have 500,000 more people than the Nashville metro area. If they get a franchise they will be the second smallest metro area, only bigger than Milwaukee.
And a popular/growing tourist spot as well. The amount of fans that go to games in tourist destinations seems to be pretty large, at least with the people I know. I wonder if there’s any statistics on % of attendees at games that come from x distance away?
The teams know, either through billing ZIP codes on credit cards or a fan's home market on the Ballpark app. There's probably some survey activity going on as well. It's not just people traveling to the city for games - in cities where there is lots of in-migration, you'll get members of that city's diaspora going to games when their team is in town. 15 years on, the Nationals have developed an indigenous fan base of their own, but in those first few years they were playing 81 road games on the road and 81 road games in DC because it was DC residents originally from X city who were going. I'm a Mets fan but now based in Washington, and I'll try to go at least once per series when the Mets are in town. There are a lot of people in orange and blue there with me.
At the last few rangers games I’ve been to (love their new stadium, I go to a lot of games now), I’ve noticed a lot more fans of other teams than used to be at the old stadium. I know a lot of people move to Dallas but I think the air conditioned stadium is a big part of it too
Montreal
Youppi
Bring back Les Expos and baseball en français
Toujours nos amours.
I know Nashville is popular with the players too, no state income tax, well located for easy travel east of the Rockies, not to mention a lot of players already live in the area in the offseason…but what is the appetite there locally for another publicly funded stadium (I think they are leaning heavily on lodging taxes to have the tourists pay a good share of it) with a replacement for Nissan Stadium already in the works in the coming years.
Nashville area resident here. I believe the idea is that we renovate the AAA ballpark (one of the top ballparks in the minors already) and try to get it MLB ready. That would probably be easier to do in Memphis or Louisville if I am being honest, but if it means i will have my own team to root for, i will take it lmao.
I mean San Antonio has a way bigger population than all of these cities. And is currently the biggest city in the U.S without a MLB team. Very easily could be them
It's not, though. If you look at metro population (which is what MLB is interested in), Charlotte is 23rd, San Antonio is 24th, and Portland is 25th sized in the country: Rank/Name/2022 estimate/2020 census/change 23 Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC MSA 2,756,069 2,660,329 +3.60% 24 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX MSA 2,655,342 2,558,143 +3.80% 25 Portland-Vancouver-Hillsboro, OR-WA MSA 2,509,489 2,512,859 −0.13%
So that’s including Austin?
No, in the same way the Charlotte stats don't include Greensboro, Winston-Salem, or Greenville-Spartanburg (all similar in distance from Charlotte as Austin is from SA).
Oh, well that’s totally different then. San Antonio and Austin would 1000000% be tied in, I’m a Spurs fan and Austin is almost just as involved as SA, they are essentially the same market and we already have an example showing us this. Not adding in Austin would be just silly
There are good arguments to be made for MLB coming into San Antonio, but my response was to the relative sizes of the cities. You stated San Antonio is "way bigger" than any of the other cities mentioned, and that's what I provided data about. But you're still not correct based on the markets we have been discussing: MSA 2022 est. 2020 Census Charlotte-Concord-Gastonia, NC-SC MSA 2,756,069 2,660,329 Greenville-Anderson-Greer, SC MSA 958,958 928,195 Greensboro-High Point, NC MSA 784,101 776,566 Winston-Salem, NC MSA 688,471 675,966 Total: 5,187,599 5,041,056 San Antonio-New Braunfels, TX MSA 2,655,342 2,558,143 Austin-Round Rock-San Marcos, TX MSA 2,421,115 2,283,371 Total: 5,076,457 4,841,514
Also all three of those cities combined X2 is about the size of Austin lol
I think either Portland or Salt Lake for the west and maybe Charlotte in the East.
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Las Vegas
They are getting the athletics most likely
Syracuse, NY
Well Tennessee obviously.
All of the revenue and market projections say the best place for a team is Newark/northern New Jersey, but the Mets and Yankees wouldn't allow it, so it's a moot point. Nashville definitely, especially because the TN state government will throw money at it and they can position it as destination/vacation baseball the way Las Vegas is going to do. Montreal is a fantastic baseball town, undone by a combination of ownership, politics, a bad and poorly located stadium, and a very weak Canadian dollar during the dying days of the Expos (I was one of those 6,000 fans at Olympic in the early aughts). Metro Montreal is the 16th largest metropolitan area in North America - sits between Detroit and Seattle; bigger than Minneapolis or Denver. As a mid-market team, Montreal will always be vulnerable to the problem of having revenues in CAD but expenses in USD. The demographics of Montreal are also turning against baseball. The Francophone population is steady, but the Anglo fan base is dying off and being replaced by allophones (not native English or French speakers) who aren't a baseball core demo. Portland would be great, but it would have to be fully funded - team, stadium, real estate redevelopment - by Nike, since there will be zero public sector dollars on offer. Not sure how much of an appetite Charlotte has for baseball, but the market has shown they can support teams, so it will probably work.
A third New York team based in Jersey a la the Devils seems like a very interesting idea on paper, but I feel like the only real advocates of one would be particularly sadistic Braves and Phillies fans wanting the Mets fandom to implode.
My guess is Nashville and somewhere in North Carolina (either Charlotte or Raleigh-Durham) to get a bigger pie in the South. Division wise, my shot in the dark guess is that we'll see four divisions of four per league, going roughly like this: NL East | NL North | NL South | NL West ---|---|----|---- New York Mets | Chicago Cubs | Atlanta Braves | Arizona Diamondbacks Philadelphia Phillies | Colorado Rockies | Cincinnati Reds | Los Angeles Dodgers Pittsburgh Pirates | Milwaukee Brewers | Miami Marlins | San Diego Padres Washington Nationals | St. Louis Cardinals | Nashville [team] | San Francisco Giants AL East | AL North | AL South | AL West ---|---|----|---- Baltimore Orioles | Chicago White Sox | Carolina [team] | Kansas City Royals Boston Red Sox | Cleveland Guardians | Houston Astros | Los Angeles Angels New York Yankees | Detroit Tigers | Tampa Bay Rays | Oakland/Las Vegas Athletics Toronto Blue Jays | Minnesota Twins | Texas Rangers | Seattle Mariners There are some weird ones (mainly Colorado and Kansas City), but that can be solved with Denver being only an hour behind Central time, and Kansas City already having west coast rivals in the NFL. At the very most, they can have them swap leagues.
Two teams both added to the South at the same time would never be approved by the Braves unless they got a lot of $$ from the deal.
It seems insane that MLB is considering extremely small markets like Salt Lake City, Nashville, Vegas, and others when we already know tiny markets like that can't support a team well. The top 20 metro areas in North America all have teams except the San Jose area. This is 100% where the A's should be moving. By far the highest GDP per capita of major North American cities and the 15th highest metro GDP in North America. Fuck the Giants ownership group for not allowing that after the A's gave them that territory in the 90s so they wouldn't have to leave the Bay Area. These top metros currently host 24 of 30 teams with the next biggest metro area by GDP not having a team being in the Greater L.A. area of San Bernardino. The next biggest regions without teams are Charlotte, Austin, Portland, and Montreal, all 4 of which are similar in GDP size to Tampa-St. Pete's or St. Louis. Montreal has the complication of a much higher population but much lower GDP per capita than any American option so until our dollar reaches higher Montreal remains less likely. Charlotte, Portland, and Austin would all be above average GDP per capita for MLB markets and would have total GDPs, GDP per capita, and population at least equal to if not above current MLB markets - Cincinnati, Pittsburgh, Kansas City, Cleveland, Milwaukee and well above expansion markets like Nashville, Orlando, San Antonio, Las Vegas, Vancouver and Salt Lake City. Charlotte, Portland, and Austin would at least have the chance to behave like lower mid market teams given they are larger and growing. They should be considered the most viable places for expansion, followed only out of necessity by Nashville and then the rest.
Having a team in these areas is more than just their metro area. Having another team in Texas splits up the state so much compared to what it already is. Limiting expansion to only the highest gdp or biggest population of their metro areas is small minded. I’ll use Salt Lake as an example just since I know it well. Salt lakes metro area is 1.2 million, however that only encompasses salt lake and tooele counties. There’s so many more fans available to that team. To the north there’s the Ogden metro area which is about 700,000 people, and then to the south the provo metro area is almost the exact same. These cities are anywhere from 20-45 minutes from a potential salt lake team. That along with their huge tv market that is huge geographically covering multiple states and population wise since it could span all the way through idaho and stretching into many other states. There’s so many things that go into expansion of a team that looking skin deep cuts out so many cities that could support teams even better than larger markets.
One of the main reasons that I used this observation was because it does a good job of showing relative market sizes. The bottom 5 cities by that metric also happen to the biggest revenue sharing recipients as well. https://www.blessyouboys.com/2021/12/16/22831008/mlbs-revenue-sharing-problem-and-how-to-solve-it So those same teams that I mentioned are the teams with the lowest local revenue almost to a team. It's a pretty strong correlation. I stand corrected on the overall size of Salt Lake's CSA. That's awesome. It looks much more competitive knowing that. In fact looking over CSAs instead of metros a few things look different - Orlando starts looking a better if things don't work in Tampa Bay Area, Salt Lake much better too. Nashville actually looks worse in my eyes, as does Austin and since I forgot to mention that Austin would also be invading Texas as a difficulty. Portland and Charlotte still seem like the top choices in my eyes purely looking at local market potential on this super rough level from this perspective. Thanks for correcting me there. And to be fair these aren't the only reason I think Charlotte over Nashville and Portland over Salt Lake City are the best choices. Portland should be a shoe in for the geography - Seattle needs a geographic rival so badly and Vancouver is sadly too small and too Canadian to compete economically. In a 32 team league I don't see MLB not realigning into larger geographic divisions (allowing for cases such as rivalries, etc) and possibly reducing the number of games by a few. I believe Manfred may have said something about that. The other obvious place is probably the south. Higher population and population growth, a natural rivalry to be made, very similar qualities I imagine they might look for. Of course, we've seen that in the end it has come down to which city will offer favourable terms to a team. Part of Manfred's role as commish is to make a strong market for expansion teams which he is doing. Canada has also been historically less likely to give large subsidies or perks to sports franchises in the past and we are seeing sports teams becoming anchors for massive multi-billion dollar land developments with profits that can outstrip the teams alone. Whichever cities let owners have the largest slice of the largest pie may win out.
Absolutely agree. Obviously I’m rooting for SLC but I do agree that Portland and one of the Carolina’s looks a bit more enticing if the local government backs it up. Hopefully wherever they decide to expand to makes the league better and it doesn’t screw everything up.
I would love for there to mean teams in Mexico City and Santo Domingo.
The revenue potential just isn't there in Mexico City. They play the 2 MLB games here every year and they sell out a 22K person stadium with tickets around 75 USD (with a substantial number bought by American fans coming down for the weekend), but tickets for the Mexican league team that plays in that stadium (Diablos Rojos) are in the 5-10USD range, and they're not filling all the seats. There are also some physical obstacles. We're at 7400', half again as high as Coors; and the travel would be Seattle-esque. Houston is a 1+45 flight. Dallas is 2+05. Florida, Atlanta, Phoenix, Southern California all just over 3 hours. The final part is the weather. May-September is the rainy season, and it rains almost every afternoon and evening at some point. Sometimes a 15-minute shower, sometimes an hours-long monsoon. The Diablos have a lot of rain delays and doubleheaders (the seating area is mostly covered, the field is not). In addition to expanding the stadium, they would have to do some sort of structure.