Despite the skeptics, entrepreneur’s dream of a baseball-centred entertainment complex in Montreal keeps bubbling away
The Expos got a big hit in the 2nd inning on July 24 to push ahead 3-2. The crowd came alive. Horns tooted. Music blasted. Kids jumped up and down. Good times.
Yes, all 510 of us fans at the Sherbrooke Expos game got a big charge from that three-run blast. Now, if only those local Expos didn’t wear a stylized SE logo, black lettering on white, which makes the team look like the Chicago White Sox. Sigh, you can always dream …
It’s midsummer and baseball is back in the spotlight. Hockey playoffs dragged on into June, then the World Cup swamped every pore of media attention for another month. With the baseball All-Star break over, our thoughts can safely turn to … the Expos.
When I last wrote a column about baseball, in late October 2025, the Blue Jays’ run to the World Series was all-absorbing. I tolerated that Toronto mania with gritted teeth, given my longtime Expos fandom. Then somehow, I became That Guy for some Montreal media – the fan who can’t let go, described variously in The Gazette and on CBC as “bitter” and holding a “grudge”.
But no, I just want our baseball team back.
The man with a plan
One person who has expressed this feeling more intensely than anyone over the last six months is Montreal entrepreneur Ashkan Karbasfrooshan
Karbasfrooshan is a dynamic, ambitious guy. He suddenly appeared in late 2025 promoting a new bid to bring an Expos franchise to Montreal. Even with expansion of Major League Baseball on the horizon for 2028, this was a long shot. Lots of skepticism followed his announcement.
But Karbasfrooshan sounded indomitable. It’s hard to keep up with his deluge of online posts on X, LinkedIn, Facebook and elsewhere. A bubbly friend was once described as having “50,000 ideas” — that also seems to describe Ashkan. (We attended a Habs game and together witnessed Cole Caufield’s 50th goal; that gives us an unbreakable sports memory. So I will continue on a first-name basis here.)
Unlike me, it was not the humiliation of seeing the Blue Jays back in the national spotlight that reignited Ashkan’s passion. Rather, it was the shock of witnessing hockey’s Colorado Avalanche roll into the Bell Centre on November 29, 2025, wearing their retro Quebec Nordiques sweaters in celebration of that franchise.
—Let’s get our local heroes back!
Karbasfrooshan wasted no time. Already by December 4, 2025, he had appeared on the popular Tony Marinaro sports podcast in Montreal to explain his dream. Multiple appearances followed on every print and broadcast media platform in Montreal. (TSN 690 sports radio in Montreal has been notably silent regarding Ashkan’s efforts. Veteran host Mitch Melnik has admitted he is too exhausted to relive the Expos’ agonizing ups and downs.)
True, recent attempts to grab a new Expos franchise have failed, notably in summer 2023 when MLB forbid the Tampa Bay Rays franchise from fulfilling a contract to split the season with Montreal. Promoters Stephen Bronfman and Mitch Garber tried their best, but a two-headed MLB franchise held too many imponderables for baseball decision-makers.
This is where older fans and veteran reporters take a deep breath and sigh, “We have seen this all before”. Karbasfrooshan thinks we can correct that well-worn storyline.
Trying a new formula
Why would a new expansion bid work now?
Karbasfrooshan is firm: money is not the issue. The private-equity market is huge, with billions constantly swishing through its funds. Such investors want structured projects that offer solid growth prospects and a clear business plan.
Ashkan Karbasfrooshan and an intrepid reporter (me) discuss Expos’ prospects at Habs game in April.
The entrepreneur and McGill business lecturer has already been through the valley of lost business hopes, notably with his online WatchMojo channel, founded in 2006. According to Wikipedia, WatchMojo, “is a Canadian company and website which produces and distributes internet videos. Based in Montreal, WatchMojo has over 100 employees globally … [and] its programming has been viewed over 100 billion minutes”, largely on YouTube.
Ashkan has compared the challenges he faced there to launching a new stadium/entertainment complex that can persuade MLB execs: “I’ve overcome more complex challenges than this — frivolous lawsuits, platform risk, copyright risk, anxiety, scaling a media company through copyright chaos and shifting algorithms — things the average Montrealer or MLB HQ decision-maker cannot fully appreciate.
”Whither the stadium?
Of course, there is no baseball stadium in Montreal. The Olympic stadium has not been used for baseball games since April 2019 and is now paralysed by renovation work. Big O is not designed for the sport — thousands of baseball fans have attested to that.
Karbasfrooshan argues that the only way to finance and build a new stadium is to include it in a multi-use entertainment centre close to downtown Montreal. He calls this the “4C” project— the Creative, Cultural, Commercial Campus — a mixed-use complex like The Battery Atlanta but built for Montreal’s unique character.
4C would bring together several themes under one roof: technology, education, entertainment, media and sports. “This is a baseball-first initiative, as part of a broader sports and entertainment play”, proposes Karbasfrooshan
Recently on X, he compared the odds of a Montreal expansion bid to that of Eastern cities such as Nashville, which seems primed as a top MLB candidate. Ashkan disagrees.
“If you cut through the noise and understand how board level discussions are held, the role of psychology, importance of geography and demographics, objectively Salt Lake City and Montreal are the most likely cities to be awarded expansion franchises when Major League Baseball (MLB) expands.”
“Expansion requires 23 of 30 owners to approve. That’s where human nature comes in. Owners protect their turf, relationships matter, and voting blocs form. Seattle will not love Portland or Vancouver. Atlanta will not love Charlotte or Nashville.”
Montreal’s advantage is simple, he says: it alienates the fewest stakeholders and is widely viewed as a safe, legacy-franchise play.
The man has confidence. —Play ball!
Originally published in the Sherbrooke Record weekend supplement, August 7, 2026.
Photo credits, A. Karbasfrooshan on X , and David Winch.
