Jeffrey Loria - Montreal Expos

Montreal Expos

In 1989, Loria purchased the Oklahoma City 89ers, then a Triple-A affiliate of the Texas Rangers. The team won the American Association championship in 1992. Loria sold the team in 1993 and began looking to buy a Major League team. Loria lost out to Peter Angelos in his bid to purchase the Baltimore Orioles in 1994. On December 9, 1999, he bought a 24 percent stake in the Montreal Expos for $18 million CAD (approximately $12 million USD) and became the managing general partner. When a series of cash calls went unanswered, Loria ended up with 94 percent of the team. He headed an ownership group that included the city of Montreal and Stephen Bronfman, son of founding owner Charles Bronfman.

One of Loria's first acts was to reiterate demands for a new park for the Expos to replace Olympic Stadium, of which he bluntly said, "We cannot stay here." He lost a considerable amount of goodwill with Expos fans when the team was not able to reach an agreement for television and English-speaking radio coverage during the 2000 season, as the Expos tried to increase their revenue from broadcast rights. He also sought more public funding for a planned downtown ballpark, Labatt Park. However, the provincial and municipal governments balked at committing more money to the project. Premier Lucien Bouchard said that he couldn't support using taxpayer dollars to build ballparks when the province was being forced to shut down hospitals. Additionally, Bouchard didn't like that Olympic Stadium still hadn't been paid for 25 years after being built (and wouldn't be paid for, as it turned out, until 2006).