This town is big enough for the two of us!

Why Montreal is ready for another team to share the spotlight with the Montreal Canadiens

SportsOpinionTrent Deschamps-Coinner — Published November 4, 2025 4 minutes

It was Canada’s first championship in one of the Big Four sports leagues (NHL, NBA, NFL, MLB) since 1993, when both the Montreal Canadiens and the Blue Jays won their respective titles. 

With the Raptors, I was thrilled to see a Canadian team achieve the pinnacle of its sport within a league dominated by American franchises. While I would have felt the same if the Jays had gone on to win the World Series—especially with U.S. President Donald Trump's incessant remarks towards Canada being a future 51st state—there is a bittersweetness that comes with Toronto’s success.

Most obviously, it hurts to see the success reversed for Montreal’s rival city. But more than that, when we see Toronto thriving across multiple leagues, many Montrealers are reminded that we once had multiple Big Four sports franchises in our city as well. I’m referring, of course, to the Montreal Expos, who recently returned to the spotlight with the release of Jean-François Poisson’s documentary Who Killed the Montreal Expos?

Despite the name of the film, the answers surrounding the demise of the Expos solve a question of what happened rather than who was responsible. 

While figures like “de facto president” David Samson and executives like Claude Brochu receive their fair share of blame, plenty of Big Four teams have had long periods of poor ownership and management without relocating. 

Another suspect in the “killing” of the Expos was former premier Lucien Bouchard, whose provincial government refused to use public funds to build a desperately needed new stadium. 

The stadium itself was another huge factor in the team’s decline. To put it mildly, it was not built to withstand the trials and tribulations of a busy MLB season. 

Furthermore, the documentary mentioned the all-too-common challenge of being a Canadian sports franchise in an American league fatally manifest in the Expos’ exchange rate. As with the Quebec Nordiques, the financial strain of earning revenue in CAD while paying players in USD placed an immense strain on the team. 

Another final blow came in the aftermath of the 1994 MLB players’ strike. The Expos were performing well that season before the strike began, but after it ended, Brochu sold the team's talent for pennies on the dollar. Interest in the team declined sharply, and the Expos eventually relocated to Washington, D.C. 

That being said, I argue that Montreal is ready for another Big Four sports team, despite the unlikely return of the Expos. 

One reason is the immense historical success of the Montreal Canadiens, which has fostered a deeply passionate sports fanbase in Montreal. Fans from other cities begrudgingly admit that the Bell Centre hosts some of the loudest fans of the Big Four franchises, and I’m sure nobody needs a reminder of the scenes that downtown Montreal saw during our unlikely Stanley Cup Finals run in 2021. 

Furthermore, we already have longstanding rivalries with cities like Boston and Toronto that would naturally carry over from the NHL. While we fans love a good rivalry, sports executives love them even more as a sure-fire way to generate interest and revenue.

While I would love to see the Expos return, an NBA franchise would be the most likely option, as the league is currently the most eager to expand. 

Typically, the cities that get thrown around are Seattle, Las Vegas or Mexico City. But it is worth noting that while Mexico City has over 12 million residents, Montreal boasts a larger population than both Seattle and Las Vegas, suggesting a potentially stronger TV market for prospective owners.

Montreal has also seen a growing NBA presence recently, along with Canada as a whole. Two players from Montreal featured in last year's NBA Finals between the Oklahoma City Thunder, who had Luguentz Dort, and my beloved Indiana Pacers with Bennedict Mathurin. 

Additionally, the NBA is the most internationally popular of the Big Four sports leagues. In fact, an American hasn’t even won MVP since the 2017-18 season. As a diverse cosmopolitan city, Montreal would slot in perfectly to the modern international NBA landscape.

Overall, the death of the Montreal Expos left wounds in this city that have yet to heal, and their return, however unlikely, would be immensely appreciated by countless superfans. However, if the city were to receive a long-overdue second Big Four sports franchise, an NBA expansion team would be the most likely possibility and one that prospective owners should see a clear upside in.
 

This article originally appeared in Volume 46, Issue 5, published November 4, 2025.