Leave it to the CFL to not schedule a re-match of the last year's Grey Cup for their first game of the season. Nope, gotta go with a nothing matchup between the Lions and the Stamps. Not only that, the Argos don't even play in week one.:koko:

Personally, at least with the NFL, I would prefer the rematch of the previous SB teams to NOT be a Week 1 game. The teams/players haven't gotten into a groove yet - so the odds of both teams playing to their full potential are a lot lower at this point. I'd rather save a rematch for W3 or W4... even W2 would be better than the first game of the season.

W1 has the the built-in interest of it being the first game/week of the season - so it's probably best to dangle that carrot for a little later.

Tsn reports Canada Soccer may go bankrupt and both men's and women's teams might not be able to play in international tournaments this fall.

Good Lord. Can we not at least prop it up until the guests leave after the World Cup is done?

What does this mean for the CPL? I thought Canada Soccer Business was keeping the whole thing afloat? What happens if it goes under? I'm not sure that any of the teams are self sustaining beyond Halifax, and maybe Victoria and Hamilton but I wouldn't bet on either.

Having the MLS in Van, Toronto and Montreal doesn't help our domestic leagues at all.

It's hard to see how it does. Our three biggest cities are helping to prop up the American domestic league instead of our own. Great if you own one of those three teams, but it sucks for the rest of Canadian soccer.

The TSN article with details is here:

https://www.tsn.ca/soccer/westhead-i...nces-1.1977583

Some of this stuff is kind of whatever, like the fact that some CMNT players had to fly home in economy from Las Vegas... boo hoo.

But some of this stuff is a head scratcher, i.e.

I guess that means the CPL's future is guaranteed through at least 2037? The way this deal is described it sounds like a CPL team would probably be profitable even if no one was at the matches... Which makes me wonder why FC Edmonton went under in those conditions.

I hate to say I told you so, but...

RDS reporting Montreal might be a candidate to land an NBA team likely through expansion. I wouldn't mind seeing that as with bell centre already built saves a lot on cost and instant rivalry with Toronto and Boston.

https://twitter.com/PeteYannopoulos/...20275929513985

Je confirme il y a un deuxième groupe qui veut acheter et amener une franchise de la #NBA à Montréal. Ils sont déjà en contact avec la ligue. L’investissement et l’argent ne sont pas un problème.
@RDSca

The NBA would never work in Montreal. The American players (which is the vast majority of the league) hated Vancouver, so they will dislike Montreal even more. The team would be perpetually bad because if an NBA player does not like the situation they are in, they will sabotage the team til they are traded. Support for the team will drop when the fans realize the team will never be competitive, and the team will be moved.

I dunno the beautiful women and attractions in Montreal are world renowned and I know I would rather play there than boring ol Toronto and their bata shoe museum. Plus would be # 1 attraction for French and Senegalese players.

I think Vegas and Seattle are front of the line with maybe Montreal 4th or 5th (Louisville, Vancouver possibly Mexico City ahead). Not sure who the 2 groups are mentioned in that tweet for Montreal but I don't know how appealing being a tenant in an NHL team-owned building will be. Maybe a certain large telecom company that's in a 3 way partnership down the 401 with rumours of an ownership shuffle coming might be interested in gathering some teams under their umbrella in Montreal.

I remember Tommy Lasorda pulling a practical joke on 2 of his players, telling them they were being traded to Montreal. The joke being Montreal is the last place an American pro athlete wants to play. The city is great, but the culture is something pro athletes will have a hard time with.

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It will always be a struggle in CAnada to keep or attract American players - this even happens in Toronto to a degree. However, that isn't the case for all us players and we have seen an increasing number of Euro and CAnadian players in the league over the past 2 decades. IT's far easier to have a competitive, if not legit championship contender, in today's nba versus 20 years ago, provided you have competent management.

With that all said, Montreal would be a more desirable market than Vancouver. It's twice as big, more cosmopolitan and have some of the best nightlife of any NOrth American city. They are also arguably the festival capital of North America as well.

Montreal is not even close to being twice as big as Vancouver. And when you look at television market size, which is super important in pro sports, the Vancouver market includes Abbotsford CMA and the Victoria Nanaimo corridor, because they would be part of our Metro if there wasn't a body of water separating them. That puts Vancouver fairly close to Montreal as far as TV markets go.

There are TV market sizes from this on line publication on page 20. The numbers are from 2018. TV market size - Montreal 4,059,000 Vancouver 3,711,000.

https://thinktv.ca/wp-content/upload...asics_2019.pdf

I had forgotten the bata shoe museum even existed but if there's any group of athletes that would be interested in that, it would be basketball players.

Vancouver would likely never happen as Seattle is # 1 in line to get a team back as nba has constantly regretted moving the Sonics out of Seattle and for expansion purposes need to balance the conferences with Western and Eastern expansion teams.

Plus Montreal is 2 markets French and English on 2 different networks. Vancouver is larger than either of them.

Not really a joke as John Wetteland was traded to the Reds (not playing for them) and then flipped to the Expos for three seasons.

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I didn't know NBA players were so cultured. I thought some good grub and quality rub and tugs were top of list.

A pretty French Canadian girl wants to be pampered. Six hours of wining and dining and entertainment, two packs of cigarettes plus your best rub and tug and she may give you a half assed attempt in return.

Mmm no? The source from 2018 says 4,059,000 franco and 905,000 anglo. Almost 5,000,000 for Montreal vs 3,700,000 for Vancouver +Victora. Note that the data for Mtl do not include another CMA as well. All major CMAs in Quebec have their own TV market.

The combined tv market for Montreal is 1,300,000 bigger than Vancouver+Victoria according to your source.

Victoria is only 95 km's away from Vancouver, while QC is 220 km's away from Montreal. Edmonton's TV market size is at 1.9 million (actually a bit bigger than Calgary), which is quite a bit larger than the CMA population, so obviously the TV market area takes in areas a bit further out than the CMA boundaries. That TV market area looks standard across the board for all cities.

The Canadian TV market potential for the NBA is a rounding error compared to the addition of another US market.

Vancouver/Montreal pissing match about who has the larger potential market is sad compared to high-pressure firehouse of additional US franchise potential.

Also curious who is coming up with the $billion fees the NBA asks these days for moving/expansion franchise.

I was only correcting a few posters. No pissing match on my side at all. The pissing match is coming only from people in BC.

Montreal is a big market but other than hockey and special events like tennis tournaments, Formula 1, it’s not a good sports market.

^ Pretty much. Montreal probably has the economic heft to support a NBA team. But I just don't think they care all that much to do it. Which is certainly fair.

what does that line mean?

And we weren't in a pissing match. Just a discussion and some clarification on some numbers. Thought it was civil.

It means that for every additional US market the NBA brings in, the value of the US TV rights nationwide (currently $2.66b/year) increases much more than any Canadian market possibly could ever hope to match.

The number of bodies in Montreal and Vancouver markets are near irrelevant, because the additional Canadians don’t mean much in the context of the real NBA money maker - US TV rights.

Sure, they’ll get some more Canadian interest for rights here, but it’s not going to be anywhere in the same league.

I don't know the numbers. How do Raptor tv rights compare to a similar sized market like Dallas or Houston?

It is more what it does for national rights as a whole.

The NBA is aiming to double the national TV rights contract to near NFL-level.

Does an additional Canadian team help that? Ehhh, not really, because few Americans would likely care about Montreal/Vancouver teams. Canadians might, but you can’t ‘sell’ the deal on anywhere the same scale here.

Does somewhere like Las Vegas help that cause? You better believe it.

Because nba is the most popular and growing of the big 4 internationally Montreal to me makes more sense than Vegas which is half the size and quickly becoming an oversaturated sports market with the A's relocation. I think with more and more European players joining the league they would enjoy a market like Montreal.

The NBA still makes money from broadcast rights that TSN and Sportsnet pay. I couldn't find exact numbers, but the TSN Sportsnet rights are proBly much more valuable than what Las Vegas would add to tv rights value. Or a current team like the Denver Nuggets. Las Vegas is a relatively small market.

So if Vancouver or Montreal were to come into play, TSN and Sportsnet end up paying more. WTith Vancouver you are looking at what would be the only team in Western Canada. BC and Alberta combine to over 10 million people.

You are talking regional rights, not national rights. Sure, the Raptors might generate more local rights than maybe even 75% of the US NBA teams (I'm only guessing). But the real money is the national rights, and the Raptors don't contribute anything to that. Stick a new team in an American market, the national rights are going up by a much much larger amount than what a TSN or Sportsnet are paying to have the regional rights of another Canadian team.

HIs point still stands. Even if Vancouver does have a better regional deal than say Vegas, the net gain in revenue to the NBA would be greater with a Vegas team given how much it would increase the US national tv deal. Montreal and Vancouver would obviously have no impact.

You guys are hilarious with your market comparisons. Montreal is easily the bigger market for both tv and potential attendees. The Ottawa - Montreal - Quebec City Corridor has nearly 7 million people. The population of Quebec is nearly 9 million, nearly of which live within a few hours drive of Montreal. Which NBA team do you think nearly all of Quebec plus Atlantic Canada (2 million) will follow if Montreal was somehow able to secure an NBA team?

It's probably a moot point as the cost for a team will likely exceed $3 billion US at this point. An MLB team - still a bit of a longshot by the looks of things, but a better possibility - would likely be more attainable for MOntreal as an expansion team would likely run closer to $2 billion given the somewhat stagnant growth in revenues in recent years.

Baseball is not the sport of the future and after a few seasons of novelty of expos 2.0 coming back not sure it would succeed. Nba is sport of the future and easier to get an arena to work then a new ballpark.

How many games do you think a small market like Vegas would get on national television? (Somebody else mentioned Vegas making the TV rights more lucrative). The Pistons, Rockets, Pacers, Thunder, Magic, Spurs and Jazz, all only played 4 games on national TV last year. The Wizards and Kings only played 5. Toronto played 9, and the ratings for those games were middle of the pack. So a small market team isn't adding a lot to national broadcasts when they only play 4 or 5 games a year. The league likely only airs those teams so they don't look like they are treating smaller markets unfairly.

The Raptors play every game nationally in Canada. It's a lucrative TV market.

Kings probably would have played more national games last season if people expected them to be so good.

Memphis is small market but the Grizzlies got 18 national TV games because they were expected to be a contending team.

The NBA needs another team in either Vancouver and Seattle due to the isolation of Portland, which causes extremely long travel times for the Trail Blazers team. A team in Montreal is not as urgent because the teams in the US Midwest and Northeast are already very closely clustered together, and so travel times are not an issue for the teams there.

I am not sure about the entirety of the Ottawa and Atlantic markets going to an Montreal NBA team but you're generally right. The TV market for a potential NBA team in Montreal is about 9 million people, ie all of Quebec plus francophones in neighbouring parts of Ontario and New Brunswick. The broadcast rights would go to TVA Sports or RDS and they would promote the crap out of the product which would become Quebec and francophone Canada's team. Heck given current demographic and cultural trends it might even become the French-speaking world's go-to NBA team. That's actually not that far-fetched a possibility.

At the moment the Raptors have all of Canada to themselves as their home market but generally they can be said to be very healthy in Ontario, reasonably healthy in most of the rest of the ROC, but only register a very faint blip in Quebec.

So I'd argue that for the NBA, Quebec is still a borderline "untapped" market in their own backyard. One that they can't properly invade without a team located in Montreal.

Unless they have a huge superstar player that grabs attention or in a tight race for something against the locals, Canadian teams in US leagues generally aren't very good TV ratings or box office draws in the US.

Americans by and large are for some reason way more interested in seeing their home team play Cleveland or Denver than Toronto.

In terms of players the NBA is the second-most American dominated league after the NFL.

American MLB players generally hated Montreal though with a few notable exceptions that are today (rightfully) venerated as Expos legends, for that and other reasons. (Though Latin American players generally loved playing in Montreal. Not many of those in the NBA.)

Plus the MLB guys were spending the summer in Montreal.

NBA players would have Montreal as their home base in the winter. The number one state for producing NBA players is... California.

The tricky thing for proponents of the NBA in Montreal is that it's tough for them to get the NBA's attention when there are so many lucrative untapped markets in the US to choose from. For instance, Kansas City's metro GDP is slightly above Montreal's, and presents far fewer potential hassles.

Winnipeg is a city that by all the usual metrics would never have a NHL team, but the city's outsized passion for hockey made it possible. I don't know that you can say Montreal has a similar level of passion for basketball that would give it a leg up on the various US cities that would love to have a NBA team. If anything, Montreal probably has less basketball passion than the average North American city of that size. And yeah I get that plenty of teenage and twentysomething males in Montreal love basketball, but that's not what the team is going to be built on. Do the 60 year olds populating Montreal's corporate boardrooms care about basketball the way they do in Raleigh-Durham? I highly doubt it.

Oh, I don't disagree with you. There is definitely a "fad" aspect to the NBA right now, and this is evident even in Montreal. Does this mean that the sport has the grassroots, base and history to make it in the city long term? Especially through the tough years? I have my doubts.

It was a similar situation with the Expos even though baseball arguably even had way more established roots in Montreal and Quebec. Look what happened there.

As has been mentioned except for the Habs I don't think Montreal is that good a day-in day-out go to their team's games regularly on a weeknight type of sports city. It does well with "event" sports like F1, tennis and even boxing. Which all happen to be individual sports so maybe there is something to that as well.

Western Canada doesn't even come close to having the media and cultural convergence that Quebec and French Canada have.

TSN and Sportsnet are still the sports channels in Western Canada and they and all other national media and most corporate sponsors are still based in Toronto. You think they'd give first billing to the Vancouver NBA team over the Raptors at this point? Look at how people complain about coverage of the Leafs on TSN (Toronto Sports Network) and HNIC. And there are multiple NHL teams in Canada other than the Leafs.

Totally different from Quebec where the Montreal NBA team would get top billing in all the media (all of which is distinct and based in Montreal for francophones), not just the one with broadcast rights. You'd never hear about the Raptors here if Montreal got an NBA team.

Conceivably, Canada could get some good bona fide regional sports networks like they have in the US but even that comes with caveats. First of all, TSN and Sportsnet have so much of a head start it would be hard for the upstarts to compete with them. Plus, you wouldn't likely get a "Western Canadian" sports network but rather one for BC, one for AB, and maybe one for MB-SK.

Middle of the pack ratings because they were playing the Bucks Lakers Clippers and Heat. That's kind of like when the Jays would stumble into a Sunday night ESPN slot because they were playing the Yankees in a pennant race. The NBA rights holders aren't putting the Raptors-Grizzlies on a national broadcast. Canadian ratings don't register in the US, so a given Canadian market being larger than 3/4 of the US markets means nothing to the US broadcasters considering spending billions of dollars a year for the rights. Put a team in a US market grows the interest level in that market for not only the team but the sport, and makes the rights worth more.

You aren't going to suck enough money out of TVA, Sportsnet or TSN for Canadian rights to a new Vancouver or Montreal team to make up for the rights fees a Seattle or Vegas team will generate on the US national rights deal (let alone what they might be able to do on their own regional rights).

This entire conversation reminds me of this joke from Corner Gas:

https://i.imgur.com/HIDTpbd.jpg
https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/co...20190728200429

Looks like Vegas and Seattle are the front runners for NBA expansion not Montreal. I do have my doubts Vegas can support 4 teams for a market their size and lack of business diversification from hospitality.

https://www.cbssports.com/nba/news/a...uld-get-teams/

It's funny how Vegas went from being forbidden to essential for pro sports in under a decade...

I think Vegas can handle it, it's not a huge city but it's still fairly large and it's bolstered by a huge number of visitors willing to spend big money.

Seattle makes good sense too.

I have no concerns about the NBA being successful in Vegas. MLB on the other hand, after the first few years of novelty wears off, I can see them running into issues. The time of year the season runs and the shear number of games. The bulk of the season is in the so-called low season, I hardly ever hear someone in July or August saying they are heading to Vegas. And I don't think the locals really spend a lot of time on the strip.