Commissioner Rob Manfred has previously stated that Major League Baseball expansion will be possible once the Oakland Athletics and Tampa
Commissioner Rob Manfred has previously stated that Major League Baseball expansion will be possible once the Oakland Athletics and Tampa Bay Rays resolve their stadium situations. With progress being made on both fronts, the league is reportedly targeting two cities for expansion.
USA Today‘s MLB reporter Bob Nightengale writes that the league has identified Salt Lake City, Utah, and Nashville, Tennessee, as “the two strongest expansion markets” right now. As for Oakland, California, MLB reportedly has “no plans” to give it an expansion franchise.
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The Athletics broke ground on their new Las Vegas stadium in June. While there is still significant work to be done and hurdles to overcome, the team is targeting an expected opening for the 2028 MLB season. With that stadium issue settled for now, the Rays are the only other team with a ballpark matter that needs to be addressed before MLB expansion becomes a greater focus for the league.
Fortunately, there has been some progress on that front. Rays owner Stu Sternberg recently agreed in principle to a $1.7 billion deal to sell the team to a Florida-based group led by Patrick Zalupski. Once the deal is approved by MLB, Zalupski plans to move forward with building a stadium in Tampa. While major progress on the stadium is still several years away, it does provide MLB with the tangible momentum it wants.
Nashville has long been considered one of the favorites to land a team as part of MLB expansion. The Music City Baseball ownership group, with the planned team name of the Nashville Stars, includes several prominent former athletes, such as Eddie George, Barry Zito, and R.A. Dickey, along with legendary MLB managers Don Mattingly, Tony LaRussa, and Bruce Bochy.
The city boasts a population of nearly 700,000, and Nashville is one of the 30 largest media markets in the United States. Music City Baseball began assembling plans for an MLB expansion team in 2019, and this year it announced that the club would be named after the city’s former Negro League team that played in the 1940s and 1950s.
As for Salt Lake City, another top-30 media market, the group Big League Utah is among those pushing to bring an MLB team to Utah. Heavily backed by the Larry H. Miller Company and the Miller Family, Nightengale’s reporting suggests that Salt Lake City has more support from the league office than Portland, Oregon.
The Miller Sports + Entertainment Company (MSE), backed by the Miller Family, acquired controlling interests in Real Salt Lake (Major League Soccer) and the Utah Royals FC (National Women’s Soccer League) earlier this year. Adding an MLB franchise would give Utah a pro sports franchise in three of the four major leagues.
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