Hooligans Sportsbook

Why did they take away the Expos

  • Start date •
  • Replies
    21 Replies •
  • Views 482 Views
Follow
montreal expos attendance per year

:dunno:

 
I used to watch the Expos on TV as a kid, even after the Jays arrived in Toronto the CBC still televised alot of Expos games and I had started watching them as a kid before Toronto got a franchise.



 
Last edited:
They were last in attendance 1998-2003. Last by a wide margin. I'm sure merch sales were also slumping. Maybe mismanagement contributed to this, and maybe that's in interesting story (though probably not). Maybe they were bad, but the fact of the matter is they just weren't popular and they had a very small and shrinking fan base.
 
The 1994 strike was the beginning of the end. Team was at the top of the world at that point, then womp womp, no playoffs. They started getting rid of a bunch of top players after that and it felt like there was no real plan to be competitive in the short term.

Montreal will support a losing team if there is a clear rebuild plan in place - but Jeffrey Loria and David Samson were clearly hired to alienate what was left of the fanbase and move the team to the US unless a new stadium was built. A location for the new stadium is still being debated to this day. It's hard because Montreal is a rather small island and building outside of it is probably not viable.

Also, the CAD was crazy low in the early 2000s. I remember buying a fancy PRS guitar in 2002 and the exchange rate was about 1.68 CAD per USD. I had to pay 5K CAD for a 3K guitar.

I remember that the ownership group back then was bleeding money and desperate to get out. Enter foreigners Loria and Sampson and the move was a foregone conclusion to anyone with half a brain. That drove attendance down even more.

I'd like to know if the ownership group (Charles Bronfman and Claude Brochu were part of it) were truly losing money or whether they were just being impatient investors.
 
Boner_18
They were last in attendance 1998-2003. Last by a wide margin. I'm sure merch sales were also slumping. Maybe mismanagement contributed to this, and maybe that's in interesting story (though probably not). Maybe they were bad, but the fact of the matter is they just weren't popular and they had a very small and shrinking fan base.
Click to expand...
Poor attendance was the end result of a bunch of things.

The things (I think) are what @roguejuror is asking about.
 
Tron
Poor attendance was the end result of a bunch of things.

The things (I think) are what @roguejuror is asking about.
Click to expand...
Maybe. But they were a bottom 1/3 attendance team 1984 - 2003 and aside from 3 years in the 80s a bottom half attendance team throughout the 70s and including their first year in the league (1969). They were never popular. There was poor attendance from day one. Documentary evidence of fair weather fans packing the stadium for playoff runs/games and anecdotal evidence from one native aside, the fans didn't spend the money required to support the team.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.