There are certain things that Montréal sports fans have become rather accustomed to over the years … Well, I have, right?
Disappointment, ya know. Questionable management decisions, naturally. The occasional glimpse of greatness, just enough to make me believe that perhaps this time things will be different. Every year … I’m ready to get hurt again, baby!
But there’s another feeling, one that I would argue is uniquely familiar to those of us who have followed pro sports in this city long enough.
The fear that one day, our team might simply disappear.
Poof!
And earlier this week, when Joey Saputo announced that CF Montréal was officially going up for sale, I couldn’t help but feel that old sensation creeping back.
Not everyone reacted the same way, obviously. Some fans probably welcomed the announcement having begrduged the Saputo family for the better part of the last five years, hoping that new ownership might finally bring the kind of ambition and investment that has been missing in recent seasons.
Others, well … shrugged.
But for those of us who remember what happened to the Expos, and particularly those who remember the rather uncertain days surrounding the sale of the Montréal Canadiens to George Gillett in 2001, there was something strangely familiar about it all.
Because when Joey Saputo says that he would love to see the team remain in Montréal but cannot guarantee it, those are words that carry a little more weight in this city than they might elsewhere.
And let’s be clear about something.
We’re not talking about just any soccer club.
We’re talking about the Montréal Impact, ya know … CF Montreal (Yuck …).
That little team that began playing in modest surroundings in the early 1990s, long before Major League Soccer became a serious international business, long before Lionel Messi arrived in Miami, and certainly long before anyone imagined that a professional soccer franchise in Montréal could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
The Impact was pretty, pretty, pretty special.
It grew alongside the city, eventually welcoming players like Marco Di Vaio and Didier Drogba, I can still hear the fans chanting Di Vaio’s name at the airport and bringing tens of thousands of supporters into the Olympic Stadium.
But what always fascinated me was not simply the quality of the players who arrived here.
It was what they represented.
Montréal is a city that has always celebrated its multicultural character. It’s practically part of our civic religion and diet. We speak about our diversity, our neighbourhoods, our languages, our food, and our ability to bring people from every corner of the world together.
But the Impact actually managed to put much of that on a soccer field.
When Di Vaio arrived, the Italian community had something to celebrate. When Drogba came to Montréal, you could feel the pride of the Ivorian community and countless other supporters who had followed his career from afar.
More recently, with Chilean Alexis Sanchez finding his way into the organization, we saw another example of how professional soccer can create connections between a team and communities that might otherwise have little attachment to traditional North American sports.
And that, to me, was always the beauty of the Impact or again … CF Montreal.
The Canadiens have certainly had their moments of cultural representation. P.K. Subban comes to mind immediately.
But soccer speaks a different language.
Or rather, it speaks all of them.
For Montréalers whose families came from Italy, Côte d’Ivoire, Chile, Algeria, Morocco (Like I do), and dozens of other countries, there was something rather remarkable about seeing the international sport they had grown up loving being played professionally in their adopted city.
The Impact, in many ways, was Montréal at its multicultural best.
And after the Expos left, that was particularly meaningful.
Unfortunately, while the rest of Major League Soccer was busy growing into an increasingly ambitious international competition, Montréal seemed to spend much of its time wondering exactly what kind of organization it wanted to become.
We had the supporters.
We had the occasional superstar.
We even had some memorable playoff runs. Who could forget that 2015 run …
But as the league became richer, more competitive, and increasingly attractive to international players, the club struggled to keep pace.
Meanwhile, Toronto FC, because apparently no Montréal sports story can ever be written without Toronto finding a way to piss us off, managed to win an MLS Cup and build a reputation as a serious well, team.
Montréal, on the other hand, seemed to lose some of the identity that had made the Impact so special.
And now, here we are.
Which brings me back to George Gillett.
I remember the circumstances surrounding the sale of the Canadiens in 2001 rather vividly.
For younger Habs fans, it might be difficult to understand just how strange that period was.
Today, the Canadiens are one of the most valuable organizations in professional hockey. The idea that the team could ever leave Montréal seems almost absurd.
But the NHL of the late 1990s and early 2000s was a very different place.
The Nordiques had already left Quebec City for Colorado in 1995. The Winnipeg Jets followed them south a year later.
The Canadian dollar was struggling, the economics of operating an NHL franchise in Canada were increasingly complicated, and there was a genuine concern that Canadian teams simply couldn’t compete financially with their American counterparts.
Even the Canadiens, with their 24 Stanley Cups and their almost mythical place in Quebec society, weren’t entirely immune to those anxieties.
And then, in January 2001, the Molson family announced that it was selling its controlling interest in the Canadiens and the Molson Centre to an American meatpacking businessman named George Gillett.
The transaction was valued at approximately C$275 million. Can you imagine?
Gillett acquired an 80.1% stake in the hockey club and the arena, while Molson retained the remaining 19.9% of the team.
He also relied on a substantial financing arrangement, including C$140 million in loans involving Quebec financial institutions and the Caisse de dépôt et placement du Québec.
Think about that for a moment.
One of the most important cultural institutions in Quebec was being purchased by a businessman from Colorado, with a background in meatpacking, ski resorts, and a financial history that had already included some rather spectacular difficulties.
And the man was going to own the Canadiens.
I still remember watching Gillett arrive at the Molson Centre, listening to him speak about the importance of the organization and promising that he understood what it meant to the people of Montréal.
He certainly wasn’t the sort of owner that most Habs fans had imagined.
But he understood one thing.
He had to reassure us.
And so, as part of the sale process, there was a formal commitment that the Canadiens would remain in Montréal for at least ten years.
Ten years.
It sounds almost comical today that a team with more than a century of history would need that kind of reassurance.
But at the time, it mattered enormously.
We had already seen Quebec City lose the Nordiques. We knew the Expos were in trouble. And now we were being asked to put our faith in an American businessman whose attachment to Montréal had begun, for all practical purposes, when he decided to purchase its most famous sports franchise.
To his credit, Gillett kept the Canadiens in Montréal.
And over the following years, the organization became considerably more valuable.
But Gillett, as businessmen occasionally do, had other ambitions.
Which leads us to one of the more extraordinary coincidences in this entire story.
In February 2007, George Gillett and fellow American businessman Tom Hicks agreed to purchase Liverpool Football Club.
Yes, Liverpool.
One of the great institutions of European soccer, a club with a global following, a history stretching back to the nineteenth century, and supporters for whom their team’s identity was every bit as sacred as the Canadiens’ identity is to Montréalers.
The deal valued Liverpool at approximately £218.9 million, including its existing debt.
In American dollars, at the exchange rate of the time, that was roughly US$431 million.
Now keep that number in mind.
Because nearly twenty years later, Forbes estimates the value of CF Montréal at approximately US$440 million.
Four hundred and forty million American dollars.
Obviously, we’re comparing a valuation with an actual acquisition, in different economic eras, without adjusting for inflation. And nobody knows what CF Montréal will ultimately sell for.
But still.
Let that sink in for a moment.
The Montréal Impact, the little soccer club that once played on modest local fields, has reached an estimated valuation remarkably close, in nominal American dollars, to what George Gillett and Tom Hicks paid for Liverpool in 2007.
Liverpool!
The club of Anfield, European Cups, generations of supporters, and one of the most recognizable names in world soccer.
And here we are, almost twenty years later, discussing the possibility that our very own Montréal soccer franchise could change hands for a figure in the same general neighbourhood.
I find that absolutely fascinating.
Not because CF Montréal has somehow become Liverpool. It hasn’t, and nobody would seriously suggest otherwise.
But because it tells us just how dramatically the economics of professional sports have changed.
And perhaps, more importantly, just how valuable something that began as a modest local sporting project can become.
Of course, the Liverpool adventure didn’t exactly end with everyone holding hands and singing You’ll Never Walk Alone.
The relationship between Hicks, Gillett, and Liverpool’s supporters deteriorated badly as debt, ownership disputes, and questions about the club’s financial future began to dominate the conversation.
In 2009, Gillett sold the Canadiens back to an ownership group led by the Molson family, in a transaction involving the team, the Bell Centre, and his entertainment interests, reportedly worth more than half a billion dollars.
A year later, Liverpool itself was sold to New England Sports Ventures, the ownership group behind the Boston Red Sox, after a bitter legal and financial battle.
So there you have it.
A businessman who arrived in Montréal in 2001 promising stability for our hockey team eventually moved into the world of European soccer, sold the Canadiens back to local owners, and watched his Liverpool adventure end rather unceremoniously.
And then, this past September 22, George Gillett passed away at the age of 87.
Now, barely seven weeks later, another Montréal sports franchise finds itself up for sale.
And not just any franchise.
A soccer club.
A soccer club whose estimated value sits remarkably close to the amount Gillett and Hicks paid for Liverpool all those years ago.
There is something almost poetic about that.
As though a small chapter of Montréal sports history has somehow come full circle.
But the more things change, the more familiar the underlying anxiety becomes.
Because beneath all these figures, transactions, valuations, and promises lies something that Montréal sports fans have been forced to confront far too often.
The insecurity of being Montréal.
We like to think of ourselves as an international metropolis, a city that belongs in the same conversation as Boston, Toronto, and other major North American markets.
And in so many ways, we do.
But when it comes to professional sports, we seem to have developed this almost instinctive fear that somebody, somewhere, might decide that our city simply isn’t worth the trouble.
That our market isn’t large enough.
That our stadium isn’t modern enough.
That another city might offer better financial opportunities.
And that one day, the team we’ve spent years supporting might simply pack up and leave.
Jeffrey Loria and David Samson certainly taught us that lesson.
The Expos remain one of those wounds in Montréal’s collective memory that never quite heal.
Every so often, the subject comes up, and suddenly everyone remembers exactly how it felt to watch a baseball franchise disappear from a city that had supported it for decades.
It would be a tragedy to see CF Montréal suffer a similar fate.
And to be fair to Joey Saputo, we shouldn’t ignore what his family accomplished.
Without the Saputos, there might not even be a professional soccer organization of this stature in Montréal to argue about today.
They helped build the Impact, brought it into MLS, invested in its infrastructure, and made professional soccer a permanent feature of the city’s sporting landscape.
Or at least, what we thought was permanent.
And that’s where his announcement becomes so unsettling.
Saputo has made it clear that he would prefer the team to remain in Montréal. The organization is even prioritizing potential Quebec-based investors.
But he has also acknowledged that relocation is a possibility if the right local buyer cannot be found.
And having lived through what happened to the Expos, it’s difficult not to hear that last part a little louder than the rest.
Perhaps what this city needs now is another Geoff Molson.
Or another Pierre Karl Péladeau.
Look at the Montréal Alouettes, who are preparing to face the Edmonton Elks in yet another Grey Cup this Sunday.
Only a few years ago, the Alouettes were dealing with uncertainty surrounding their own ownership and future.
Today, under Péladeau, there is a renewed sense of stability, local identity, and ambition.
And while local ownership is certainly no guarantee of sporting success, there is something reassuring about knowing that the people in charge have a personal stake in the community they’re representing.
That they’re not simply looking at a franchise as another asset in a portfolio.
Because owning a professional sports team in Montréal can mean something considerably more important than that.
It can make you part of the city’s history.
Part of its collective consciousness.
Ask George Gillett.
Whatever one might think of his business career, he will always be remembered as the man who owned the Canadiens during a period when their future seemed considerably less secure than it does today.
And if the right person comes forward to purchase CF Montréal, perhaps that individual will have an opportunity to leave an equally meaningful mark on the city.
Not simply by investing hundreds of millions of dollars.
But by ensuring that the club remains part of Montréal’s identity for generations to come.
Because the city deserves soccer.
It deserves to have a professional organization that reflects its extraordinary diversity, that gives its communities something to rally around, and that continues to provide a window into Montréal for the rest of the world.
We have already lost the Expos.
We nearly lost our confidence in the permanence of the Canadiens.
And now, in a strange historical twist, we find ourselves confronting those same feelings again, just weeks after the passing of a man who once stood in front of Montréal sports fans and promised them that their team would stay.
If there is a God of Montréal sports, I would like to think that somewhere out there is someone who understands what this city stands to lose.
Someone who sees beyond the spreadsheets and the financial projections.
Someone who understands that a professional sports franchise belongs, in an emotional sense, to the people who fill its stadium, who introduce it to their children, and who spend far too many weekends questioning why they continue to support it.
Because we’ve certainly done enough of that.
And perhaps that’s what Joey Saputo’s announcement really reminds us of.
That nothing in professional sports is quite as permanent as we would like to believe.
Not the stadiums.
Not the owners.
Not even the teams we grow up loving.
As we all know, object permanence only works if the will is there. Or as babies grow …
But if we were to let the fans have the final say?
I have a feeling this team would be here for centuries.