If the money is right, Montreal may be next city to get MLB team

Last week, reports emerged that Rays owner Stuart Sternberg was having talks with wealthy Wall Street associates about moving the team to Montreal, which has been without a team since 2005, writes Paul Freelend.

A fan waits out the rain during a delayed start of the game between the Cleveland Indians and the Tampa Bay Rays earlier this season. Tampa Bay has strated to flirt with the idea of moving the club to Montreal. Jason Miller/Getty Images
Powered by automated translation

Congratulations, Montreal – you are every Major League Baseball team owner’s new best friend.

It is almost an annual rite that some professional team owner starts making coquettish glances toward other cities when he feels his stadium is insufficiently new and shiny. Unfortunately for the taxpayers in these cities, threatening to leave town has an almost unbeaten record in securing hundreds of millions of dollars of public money for a private business.

Los Angeles has long been the prospective destination of choice for National Football League owners who want taxpayers to remind their team how much they love them. For many years, Tampa Bay was baseball’s equivalent, until MLB commissioner Bud Selig gave the city an expansion team in 1998.

Montreal appears set to take Tampa Bay’s place. Last week, reports emerged that Rays owner Stuart Sternberg was having talks with wealthy Wall Street associates about moving the team to Montreal, which has been without a team since the Expos left in 2005 to become the Washington Nationals. The fact that the Rays’ lease on their stadium runs through 2028 with no buy-out clause renders Sternberg’s threats little more than posturing for a handout.

Still, Montreal should brace for a steady stream of such public flirtations. Never mind that the city only finished paying off Olympic Stadium, which was built for the 1976 Summer Games, in late 2006, or that the price tag rose from C$134 million (Dh438m) to a final cost of C$1.61 billion. MLB owners are banking on people’s nostalgia and civic pride to help them secure the free money they feel they deserve.

pfreelend@thenational.ae

Follow our sports coverage on twitter at @SprtNationalUAE