montreal expos tampa bay rays shared baseball team
News, Sports

The Montreal / Tampa Bay Rays shared baseball team plan is dead

by Lorraine Carpenter

Rays owner Stu Sternberg says the Montreal contingent of the sister-city project is “devastated.”

The proposed plan for a shared baseball team between Montreal and Tampa Bay is dead.

Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg spoke to the media at 1 p.m., saying that he found the MLB executive council decision “discouraging” and still believes that sister-city franchises are “the way of the future” in sports. Sternberg theorizes that the MLB just didn’t want to be the first league to do it.

He also noted that the Montreal contingent working on the plan, including Stephen Bronfman, were “devastated” by the news.

The plan to move the Rays to Montreal for half the season, 2.5 years in the making, would have required a new local stadium, paid for by the Quebec government via Stephen Bronfman. The proposed stadium site, the Peel Basin, is federal property, but the plan also needed the green light from the city of Montreal in order to proceed.

The Rays are now now looking for a permanent venue in the Tampa Bay area.

This article was published at 12:26 p.m. and updated at 2:04 p.m.

For more Montreal sports coverage, please visit the Sports section.

Posted in News, Sports

by Lorraine Carpenter

Editor in chief
Lorraine Carpenter was born in Montreal and studied communications and journalism at Concordia. She co-founded Cult MTL in 2012 following 12 years at the now-defunct Montreal alt weekly the Mirror, where she worked in editorial as copy editor and music editor. She’s dedicated to supporting the cultural scene in Montreal.