There is no stadium funding plan.
The mayor of Vancouver, British Columbia, Ken Sim, has baseball fever but he has a cure. Get a Major League Baseball franchise in Canada’s third largest city. Sim plans to go to Vancouver’s city council and ask them to come up with a plan that would make Vancouver very attractive to a potential investor which means get a stadium plan up and going. That stadium plan would have to include city and probably provincial funding. Kim is of the opinion that the 2025 Toronto Blue Jays run to the World Series can be a catalyst in Vancouver’s road to an MLB franchise.
“You look at what happened last year with the magical run that the Jays had, you could tell there’s a huge appetite right across this country, and specifically in Vancouver,” Sim said. “Vancouver’s right, and we want to make that when this opportunity comes up, we’re not flat-footed. We’re being proactive as a city council to make sure that we have our ducks in a row. That we’re not the bottleneck that stops a team from coming to Vancouver. We’re the gateway to Asia, and so we could actually be quite strategic for Major League Baseball as they’re looking at expanding in other markets digitally. We’re unique in Vancouver, a lot of (things) the other cities that are looking for expansion teams just don’t have.” Sim does not have a stadium plan. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred for years has been talking about adding two teams but expansion has been put on hold because of stadium issues in Oakland and in St. Petersburg. John Fisher is taking his A’s franchise to Las Vegas while there is a stadium negotiation taking place in Tampa that may or may not solve the Tampa Bay market issue. Meanwhile Sim is readying his first pitch.
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