It’s a matter of when, not if, Major League Baseball decides to expand.
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has indicated as much, saying that he’d like to have two new expansion cities picked by the time he retires in 2029.
A number of cities have been discussed so far, with Nashville and Salt Lake City seen as frontrunners by some. Portland, San Jose, Austin, Orlando, Raleigh, Charlotte, and Montreal have all been mentioned, to varying levels, as well.
But there hasn’t been much chatter about Vancouver.
“The cities that are out there, almost exclusively, have been cities that have self-reported,” Manfred said in an interview with CNBC in July 2025. “In other words, they’re coming to us saying we’d like to have a team.”
The idea of Vancouver getting an MLB franchise has been floated before. It was realistic enough at one time that BC Place was built in 1983 with baseball in mind, complete with a secondary baseball press box behind home plate.
The days of multipurpose stadiums like BC Place being viable for MLB are now gone, so a new baseball-specific ballpark would need to be built for an MLB team to consider Vancouver. But that’s the case for every other potential expansion franchise as well.
Now a city with a metro area population of over three million people, Vancouver is as big or bigger than the above-mentioned candidate cities, except Montreal (4.6 million).
But Vancouver wouldn’t likely be competing with the likes of Montreal, Nashville, Orlando, or anywhere else in the east. That’s because Manfred has said he wants one of the two new expansion teams to be in the west.
“It would have to be two [new teams for expansion]. With the way our schedule would work, you have to do two,” Manfred said. “The only other restriction, ideally, you would need an eastern time zone team and one in… the west.”
That narrows the competition significantly, putting Vancouver potentially in competition with Salt Lake City, Portland, and San Jose.
Manfred has hinted that expansion could precede divisional realignment.
“The toughest thing for us in the playoffs is always Anaheim against Boston (in a hypothetical matchup) on those four-game days in the Division Series. You’re either playing too early for the people in Anaheim or too late for the people in Boston,” Manfred told The Athletic in 2018.
It’s still unclear how MLB would realign, but there has been a suggestion that it might do away with the American League/National League divide to instead focus on geography.
Wouldn’t Vancouver fit in well with a new, eight-team West Division, along with Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, Los Angeles, Anaheim, San Diego, and Arizona?
Vancouver has been on MLB’s radar before
We have some proof that Vancouver was on MLB’s radar in the last decade, with Manfred mentioning the city by name in 2018.
“We have a real list of cities that I think are not only interested in having baseball, but viable in terms of baseball. Places like Portland, Las Vegas, Charlotte, and Nashville in the United States. Certainly Montreal, maybe Vancouver in Canada,” Manfred said at the time.
Arizona Diamondbacks management made two trips to Vancouver, in 2018 and 2019, looking at BC Place as a contingency due to concerns with Chase Field’s wonky retractable roof.
As recently as last year, Vancouver was mentioned as a potential expansion city by ESPN’s Jeff Passan. Vancouver was on the long list of potential expansion candidates, with Passan citing sources in a Feb. 20, 2024, article, along with Nashville, Salt Lake City, Charlotte, Portland, San Jose, Austin, and Mexico City.
Time will tell how serious Vancouver can be as a candidate for MLB, but there is a well-established baseball culture in the city. The Vancouver Canadians have proven to be a wildly successful minor league franchise, and local baseball fans regularly invade Seattle for the Toronto Blue Jays’ annual visit.
It would take a lot of money from a billionaire with an interest in baseball, given that the expansion fee is expected to be at least $2 billion. State-of-the-art ballparks aren’t cheap to build, either.
But if that happens, why not Vancouver?
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