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  #61  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2017, 1:50 AM
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Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce View Post
I'm not naive. I understand the nature of business. That it's cut-throat at times, that there are no friends in business and all those other cliches. But what irks me is that the Jays never looked to work with the Expos. They never saw the common good of keeping baseball alive in Montreal. All they seemed to see was the advantage of Montreal disappearing from the Canadian baseball map. And that's a shame for a team that exists only because baseball was a success in Montreal in the first place.
Montreal opened the door for Toronto to become not just a contender but a frontrunner for an expansion team however, it's a bit much to say the Jays exist only because of the Expos. It's about the same as saying Toronto owes its current economic position to the FLQ, etc.

What common good? A rivalry? The Jays marketed the hell out of it once interleague play start in 1997. It was 3 years to late for the Expos. The strike in 1994 was the beginning of the end. Only a string of World Series victories would have saved the Expos as they limped on for another ten years.
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  #62  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2017, 5:43 PM
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Originally Posted by blueandgoldguy View Post
$2 * 27,000 per game * 81 games * 25 years = approx. $100 million
You're math does not make sense.
The gov't spending $100 million only to get $100 million back in 25 years does not equate to the gov't getting their money back.
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  #63  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2017, 5:52 PM
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It's funny how that game 5 in 1981 only attracted 36K fans.
15K fans below capacity.
It's also funny how the Expos were attracting 24K fans/game in '94, their best year ever.
Bottom line is simple, there is no long term support for the Expos. Montrealers couldn't care less about baseball. It is what it is.
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  #64  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2017, 6:44 PM
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Glad to see them back in Canada playing tonight.

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  #65  
Old Posted Mar 31, 2017, 11:32 PM
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The Big 'Owe' looks better than it did in 2004. Impressive.
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  #66  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2017, 12:56 AM
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Originally Posted by telyou View Post
It's funny how that game 5 in 1981 only attracted 36K fans.
15K fans below capacity.
It's also funny how the Expos were attracting 24K fans/game in '94, their best year ever.
Bottom line is simple, there is no long term support for the Expos. Montrealers couldn't care less about baseball. It is what it is.
Unfair and untrue. There was a time in the late-70s and early-80s where the Expos were every bit as popular as les Canadiens - ask anyone who was there.

And you're cherry-picking your attendance figures - Game 5 was played on a Monday afternoon.

NLCS attendance figures at MTL (Baseball-reference):
Game 3 - 54,372
Game 4 - 54,499
Game 5 - 36,491 (Monday afternoon)

The situation got really dire in the mid-90s as we know. Year in and year out it was the same bloody thing:
*A constant threat of relocation/ contraction
*Great young players sold off to the highest (or sometimes the lowest) bidders
*Incompetent ownership/ management/ leadership (post-Bronfman)


No fan base could have withstood that sort of negativity.

In terms of fan interest, we can make similar statements about Toronto or have you forgotten all those seasons of perpetual losing with few bums in seats? As recently as 2010, the Jays drew only 1.5 million fans to the park. Why? No hope. No leadership. No money. The GM even proclaimed the Jays couldn't compete with the Yanks and Red Sox. I thought it was over, honestly.

No market currently outside MLB is an absolute 'coup de circuit.' A franchise in MTL would need strong, very deep-pocketed ownership to ensure success. Same goes for any team. And that's something Montreal didn't have at the end.
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  #67  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2017, 1:53 PM
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^^^ To add to this (all great points btw)

The economics of baseball have changed since the Expos existed. TV revenues have skyrocketed for many teams as local broadcasting rights prices have risen substantially.

I'd fully expect a (hypothetical) new Expos team to be rapidly associated with Bell and/or Videotron to become a sports channel staple like the Jays are to Rogers/Sportsnet.
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  #68  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2017, 2:06 PM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
The day of the Expos final playoff game in 1981 against the Dodgers, when Rick Monday hit his home run off Steve Rogers, my school also had TVs so we could watch it. This wasn't in Quebec BTW. A lot of people in my class cried when the Expos lost.
So did we in Winnipeg. I'm sure the whole country did. The Expos were the most popular sports team in Canada, by far. Steve Rogers' wife was from Winnipeg, I seem to remember. He had played for the Winnipeg Whips, the Expos' old farm team.
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  #69  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2017, 8:24 PM
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Hope Montreal gets a team just to put a stop to the Jays' "Canada's Team" marketing BS.
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  #70  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2017, 9:24 PM
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Its funny how a harmless marketing pitch can cause so much resentment in some people.
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  #71  
Old Posted Apr 1, 2017, 10:35 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Andy6 View Post
The Expos were the most popular sports team in Canada, by far.
At no point in time were the Expos the most popular team in Canada.
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  #72  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2017, 12:22 AM
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Originally Posted by Berklon View Post
At no point in time were the Expos the most popular team in Canada.
Maybe not, but I remember the Expos from the 1970s, and the old Jarry Park. I was a real baseball fan back in those days, and players like Rusty Staub were heroes to me. Les Expos were very popular in the Maritimes, and it took a long time for the Blue Jays to surplant them. It was never quite the same.

Here's hoping that there is a new Montreal team back in MLB within the next decade. I'll even go up to watch a few games.......
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  #73  
Old Posted Apr 2, 2017, 5:19 AM
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97,000 fans plus this weekend. Well done.
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  #74  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2017, 5:23 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Berklon View Post
At no point in time were the Expos the most popular team in Canada.
Which team was most popular in Canada 1969-1977? It was surely the Montreal Expos. Even well after 1977 the Expos likely had more followers than any other team. Things started moving towards the Jays being most popular in the late 80s.
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  #75  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2017, 12:29 PM
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Originally Posted by isaidso View Post
Which team was most popular in Canada 1969-1977? It was surely the Montreal Expos. Even well after 1977 the Expos likely had more followers than any other team. Things started moving towards the Jays being most popular in the late 80s.
The Leafs and Habs were still the most popular sports teams in Canada during that time.
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  #76  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2017, 2:10 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Berklon View Post
At no point in time were the Expos the most popular team in Canada.
The most popular baseball team, though...
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  #77  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2017, 2:49 PM
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Originally Posted by Acajack View Post
The most popular baseball team, though...
Right, but the original post was "The Expos were the most popular sports team in Canada, by far.". The fact that the person went out of his way to state "sports team" instead of just "team" lead me to believe he was referring to any team in any sport - as opposed to just baseball.
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  #78  
Old Posted Apr 3, 2017, 3:00 PM
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Originally Posted by Berklon View Post
Right, but the original post was "The Expos were the most popular sports team in Canada, by far.". The fact that the person went out of his way to state "sports team" instead of just "team" lead me to believe he was referring to any team in any sport - as opposed to just baseball.
I agree that that specific claim would make no sense.
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  #79  
Old Posted Apr 4, 2017, 12:49 AM
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“The Montreal Expos in the early ’80s were more popular than the Montreal Canadiens,” Mitch Melnick of TSN Radio 690 says in the documentary. “That’s a fact. That’s not pie-in-the-sky thinking from hardcore baseball fans. They were giving away 2,000 tickets a game to fill the seats at the Montreal Forum in the early ’80s while the Expos were setting franchise attendance records.”

It's not a fact per se but there's pretty strong evidence in support of this claim. Full Gazette article here.

And during this period (from 1969 through the early '80s), the Expos were 'Canada's team.' It was only once the Jays got good (1983 ish) that they actually started to push Expo fans out of Southern Ontario and the rest of Anglo Canada. Some converted. Some just disappeared. ;-)

Last edited by Dr Awesomesauce; Apr 4, 2017 at 1:11 AM.
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  #80  
Old Posted Apr 4, 2017, 1:02 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Dr Awesomesauce View Post
“The Montreal Expos in the early ’80s were more popular than the Montreal Canadiens,” Mitch Melnick of TSN Radio 690 says in the documentary. “That’s a fact. That’s not pie-in-the-sky thinking from hardcore baseball fans. They were giving away 2,000 tickets a game to fill the seats at the Montreal Forum in the early ’80s while the Expos were setting franchise attendance records.”

Full Gazette article here.
And a quote from the article:

Quote:
Young Montreal sports fans might be shocked to learn there was a time during the 1980s when the Expos were actually bigger than the Canadiens in this city.
So once again, the Expos were NOT the most popular sports team in Canada.
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