NBA | The franchise project in Montreal is stagnating

The project to set up an NBA franchise in Montreal has stalled, confirm two people at the heart of the case.

With the recent ratification of a new collective bargaining agreement that will bind players to the league until 2030, many observers expect the circuit to expand into new markets. However, the outcome of this is quite predictable. And metropolitan basketball fans better not hold their breath.

“Over the past 18 months, it’s become pretty clear to us where the league is headed,” said Michael Fortier, vice-chairman of RBC Capital Markets, on the phone. This former federal minister, face of the group working on a Montreal NBA team project for several years, knows very well which cities are benefiting from a current “tailwind” that is virtually impossible to counter: Seattle and Vegas.

“A well-known market and another that works on cotton,” he summarizes.

If, by chance, the league decided to launch an open call for candidates, “we would have a group that would make a request for Montreal,” insists Mr. Fortier. “But I don’t think that’s going to happen. »

He does not see why Commissioner Adam Silver, with whom he has a good relationship moreover, would deploy a complex process whose outcome is known in advance.

“For the players, for the financiers, for the owners, for the broadcasters, for everyone who follows basketball, there would be plenty of common sense” in the creation of new teams in Seattle and Vegas.

For 40 years Seattle has had a franchise. This “should never have left” in 2008, according to Michael Fortier. A group of owners “very anchored, close to the league” enjoys, according to him, a favorable prejudice.

As for Vegas, it is carried by an undeniable error. The NHL and NFL have successfully established themselves here in recent years. Major League Baseball will likely follow, as the A’s move from Oakland to the Nevada desert seems assured. In this context, the arrival of the NBA would be completely obvious.

Moreover, on more than one occasion in the past, star player LeBron James has not only expressed a desire to see professional basketball land in Vegas, but has also shown an open interest in being part of the owners of a potential franchise that would set up there. Coincidence or not, the new collective agreement now allows players to own shares in a team.

” Off ”

Michel Leblanc, president and CEO of the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal (CCMM), does not try to embellish reality either.

“The project is completely at a standstill,” he drops. A “new mobilization” would be necessary if the NBA launched, one day, a call for tenders.

For him, the pandemic has “broken a momentum” on the Montreal side.

For a long time, Mr. Leblanc was at the very heart of the matter. He himself, in the company of Michael Fortier and Kevin Gilmore, a well-known manager who was notably president of CF Montreal, met potential investors, from Quebec and abroad.

His opinion does not change, despite the lack of traction for a project at the moment: in his eyes, “the big cities of the world are characterized by professional sports teams of the major leagues”. This is why he refuses to say “that the window is closed forever”.

However, we can wonder when this “window” will reopen. After a potential NBA expansion to Seattle and Vegas, would the next be “two years, eight years later?” asks Michael Fortier. ” We do not know. »

He is more expecting an international breakthrough, possibly in Europe or Mexico. It would not be explained, however, why Montreal would access a new “world” division if the Toronto Raptors remained linked to American clubs.