Getty MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred seeks to add two MLB teams, with Salt Lake City vying for a spot.
Could Salt Lake City be home to an MLB expansion team?
Big League Utah, a group aiming to make Salt Lake City’s MLB dream a reality, announced December 20 that it had gained the support of several politicians to build a major league ballpark in Utah’s capital city. The group’s newly formed advisory board includes Utah Gov. Spencer Cox, Salt Lake City Mayor Erin Mendenhall, Republican state Senate President J. Stuart Adams and Republican state House Speaker Mike Schultz among other elected officials at the federal, state and local levels.
Big League Utah was formed by the Larry H. Miller Company, which owned the NBA’s Utah Jazz from 1985 until 2020 and maintains ownership of the Salt Lake Bees Triple-A baseball team. Larry Miller died in 2009, and his widow, Gail, formed Big League Utah in April 2023.
“Utah has the ingredients for an MLB team, including a ready market, a proven and focused ownership group, a shovel-ready site at the Power District, and a bipartisan coalition. Third-party data proves Salt Lake City and the Beehive State can absolutely support a new professional sports team,” Cox said in a statement.
Electric utility Rocky Mountain Power, whose president and CEO, Gary Hoogeveen, also joined Big League Utah’s advisory board, plans to redevelop a 100-acre site to host the planned ballpark on the west side of Salt Lake City. Former MLB players backing Big League Utah include Mark Teixeira, Dale Murphy, Jeremy Guthrie and John Buck. NFL legend and Hall of Fame quarterback Steve Young, who was born in Salt Lake City and played collegiately at BYU, is also listed on Big League Utah’s website as a supporting member.
A poll released in May 2023 from Utah’s Deseret News newspaper found that 81% of surveyed residents supported an MLB team in Salt Lake City. However, a follow-up Deseret News poll released in June 2023 found that 50% of Utah residents were opposed to using public funds to build an MLB stadium.
Commissioner Rob Manfred Has Openly Supported MLB Expansion
MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said multiple times that he’d like to see the league grow from its current 30 teams to 32 teams, but expansion will not happen until the Oakland A’s and Tampa Bay Rays figure out solutions to their ballpark situations.
“We need to get Oakland and Tampa resolved. Once they’re resolved, I am an advocate of getting the industry to 32,” Manfred said at a Sports Business Journal conference in October 2022.
In November 2023, MLB owners approved the A’s planned move from Oakland to Las Vegas. The Tampa Bay Rays announced an agreement in September 2023 with the city of St. Petersburg to redevelop Tropicana Field into a new ballpark, so both situations appear headed in the right direction for Manfred to prioritize adding two expansion teams to MLB.
Utah Faces Competition for MLB Expansion
Salt Lake City is one of several cities that could be home to an MLB expansion club. Other contenders include Montreal, Nashville, Raleigh, North Carolina, Orlando, Charlotte and Portland, Oregon.
In a poll conducted by The Athletic with more than 100 active MLB players, 69% of players voted for Nashville as their top choice for MLB expansion followed by Montreal at 10%. Salt Lake City gained just 2% of the vote. Adding two MLB expansion teams could potentially impact league revenue distribution and division formatting.
“Obviously, there are economic issues, you’re talking about diminishing the central revenue available to each and the 30 clubs making it 32,” Manfred said in July 2023, per Forbes. “If you’re going to vote [to approve] 32 clubs, are you going to make more divisional changes? So there’s some internal work that’s going to take some time to get done and then I think ultimately, you go to the markets.”