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.