Author: Darragh McDonald

It is expected that Major League Baseball will look to expand from 30 to 32 teams at some point in the future. Several cities have been floated as possibilities over the years, including Nashville,  Salt Lake City, Portland and Orlando. In recent weeks, Vancouver and Sacramento have thrown their hats into the ring. Gary Mason of The Globe and Mail provided many of the details on the Vancouver situation last month while Evan Drellich of The Athletic amd Maury Brown of Forbes reported on the Sacramento bid this week.

A group led by real estate developer Zack Ross is pushing a Vancouver proposal that seems to have the backing of mayor Ken Sim. City council recently approved a motion directing staff to start a procurement process for the unsolicited bid proposal.

Vancouver is already host to the Canadians, the Single-A affiliate of the Blue Jays. Per Mason’s piece, Ross was asked by that club to look for a spot to build a new stadium. Nat Bailey Stadium, where the Canadians play, was built in 1951. While undergoing that process, he had the idea of potentially pursuing a big league club. The group is targeting a 20-acre plot of city-owned land on the south shore of False Creek. He is now looking for investors. The architecture firm Populous, which designed the Las Vegas Sphere, has put together a stadium rendering.

The piece says that the owners of the NFL’s San Francisco 49ers have expressed an interest, as has actor Ryan Reynolds. Reynolds was born and raised in Vancouver and is already the co-owner of Wrexham A.F.C., as documented in the TV show Welcome to Wrexham, which raised the profile of that club. Jed York, principal owner of the 49ers, is also a co-owner of the football clubs Leeds and Rangers. Mason also mentions the owners of the NHL’s Seattle Kraken as being interested.

It’s hard to tell exactly how much money would be needed for a new club, but it would be a total in the billions. As noted by Drellich, MLB commissioner Rob Manfred threw out a figure of $2.2 billion as a possible expansion fee back in 2021. That was before Steve Cohen bought the Mets for $2.4 billion and José E. Feliciano and Kwanza Jones agreed to purchase the Padres for $3.9 billion. Presumably, the price has gone up since Manfred made those comments.

The viability of Vancouver as a market is somewhat in debate. As Mason points out, Major League Soccer is looking to move the Whitecaps from Vancouver to an American market, something that might not bode well for investor confidence in the city. Vancouver does support the NHL’s Canucks and got an expansion franchise in the NBA in 1995, but the Grizzlies moved to Memphis in 2001. The Lions have played in the Canadian Football League since 1954. The popularity of baseball in the area can be seen whenever the Blue Jays play in Seattle, as Canadian fans stream across the border for those contests.

Though Vancouver is nowhere near Toronto, most of Canada is considered Blue Jays territory. That doesn’t seem like it will be much of an issue. Per Ben Nicholson-Smith of Sportsnet, Blue Jays president Mark Shapiro has said the Jays would support a team in Vancouver. “We are supportive of any effort to grow baseball in Canada, and that would include the opportunity to bring MLB to Vancouver,” Shapiro said.

Nicholson-Smith also quotes Manfred, from the 2025 postseason, broadly supporting the idea of a second team in Canada. “There’s no place you’re going to go where you’re not splitting the market,” Manfred said. “I’ve got probably four clubs that think Nashville’s part of their market. I’m not being funny. Literally, they do. So whenever you expand, you’re growing the business, you’ve got another revenue-generating point. You’re going to get a big payment on the way in and one of the things that happens is somebody’s market gets nicked a little bit. So this market, Canada, is no different. The advantages that Canada has is there are places you can go that are distant geographically from Toronto.” The Montreal Expos and the Jays co-existed in MLB for many years, starting with the creation of the Jays in 1977, but the Expos struggled to make that arrangement work. They were moved to Washington in 2005 and became the Nationals.

Geographically, Vancouver is closer to Seattle, but it’s possible the Mariners would be on board. As noted by Tim Booth of The Seattle Times, the Mariners would probably be more concerned about Portland having a team, since they would view that area as part of their current territory. Since Vancouver is seen more as Jays country, the M’s may not be too concerned about a team there, and might even welcome the travel impacts. Seattle is so isolated on the MLB map that they currently have to cover large distances for every road game. A team in Vancouver would lead to a few road games with modest travel, while not dramatically impacting the club’s territorial rights.

Turning to Sacramento, West Sacramento mayor Martha Guerrero announced last week that the city would be pursuing an MLB expansion club. A local real estate developer named Mark Friedman is leading the charge to sell the area as viable for a big league club more permanently. West Sacramento, a distinct city from Sacramento but part of the same metropolitan area, is the temporary home of the Athletics. Ideally, that would give the region proof of concept, but the A’s haven’t drawn especially large crowds to Sutter Health Park.

The group isn’t deterred by that, expressing belief that turnout would be greater if the area had its own team, as opposed to one just passing through. The group doesn’t have a lead investor but claims to already have $800MM in place in terms of land and private investment. They also claim to have access to $1 billion in public money. They are targeting a 50-acre segment of land in West Sacramento, an area that includes Sutter Health Park.

“We may elect to build a new stadium next to the existing stadium, and then tear that one down, or we may choose to tear down the existing stadium and build a new one on the same site,” Friedman said. “We just haven’t gotten to the design part of this, and are waiting until we bring the lead investor on, because that person will undoubtedly want to place their stamp on what the project looks like.” Brown notes that Sacramento natives Dusty Baker and Derrek Lee are involved in the pitch, though the degree of their involvement is not clear.

As a market, Sacramento supports the NBA’s Kings. They also had the Monarchs in the WNBA starting in 1997 but that team folded in 2009. The River Cats, the Triple-A affiliate of the Giants, are the more permanent host club for Sutter Health Park. They are sharing the stadium with the A’s for the 2025 to 2027 seasons while the A’s finish their stadium in Las Vegas. Sutter Health Park and the River Cats are owned by the Kings.

At this point, the possibility of expansion is still fairly theoretical. Manfred has consistently said that he would like the A’s and Rays to figure out long-term stadium plans before expansion could be on the table. The A’s are on track to be in Las Vegas for the start of the 2028 season but the Rays are still in a limbo zone.

The Rays have a lease at Tropicana Field through 2028 but don’t have anything in place beyond that. The new owners are in talks with the city of Tampa and Hillsborough County about a new stadium plan. Per Marc Topkin of The Tampa Bay Times, the team and government officials have agreed to a memorandum of understanding about a plan to build a $2.3 billion domed stadium near Raymond James stadium, home of the NFL’s Buccaneers, but the MOU is nonbinding. Per the plan, the county would contribute $796MM and the city $180MM, with the Rays covering the rest as well as any overruns and maintenance. The team will also spend $8 to $10 billion on a mixed-use development to surround the stadium.

It’s unclear if they can get through the next hoops to proceed with the project. As Topkin notes, Tampa city council passed the nonbinding MOU 4-3 but councillor Bill Carlson plans to change his vote for the actual deal. He only voted “yes” on the nonbinding MOU to keep the discussion going for now. If something can’t be worked out in the Tampa/St. Petersburg area, it’s expected that a move to Orlando may be pursued.

Drellich notes that MLB would likely prefer that the expansion locations be split with one to the west and one to the east. If that proves to be true, then Vancouver and Sacramento could be competing with each other, as well as with Salt Lake City and Portland.

The current collective bargaining agreement between MLB and the MLBPA expires this coming December 1st and negotiations are ongoing. Expansion is something that would have to be collectively bargained between those two parties and it’s possible that it comes up in those talks. Manfred has said he would like to make progress on that front before his expected departure in January of 2029. On the other hand, there are bigger priorities in those talks and expansion may still be on the backburner until the Rays get a more concrete plan in place.

Photo courtesy of Dennis Lee, Imagn Images