The Ben Mulroney Show - MLB team for Vancouver?

Episode Date: September 16, 2026

On this episode of 'The Ben Mulroney Show,' Ben welcomes Jeff Appelbe, a Greater Vancouver Realtor. They discuss whether Vancouver may welcome a Major League Baseball Team. If you enjoyed the podcast, tell a friend! For more of the Ben Mulroney Show, subscribe to the podcast! ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://link.chtbl.com/bms⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Also, on youtube --⁠ ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.youtube.com/@BenMulroneyShow⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠ Follow Ben on Twitter/X at ⁠https://x.com/BenMulroney⁠ Insta:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠⁠ Twitter:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠⁠ TikTok:⁠ ⁠⁠⁠@benmulroneyshow⁠⁠⁠⁠   Executive Producer:  Mike Drolet Reach out to Mike with story ideas or tips at ⁠[e-mail]⁠ Enjoy   Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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your family, and your dreams. Get financial advice that puts you at the center. Find your advisor at IGPrivatewealth.com. Every now and then I learned something from social media. I didn't read in the newspaper. And we're going to talk about it today. Because I heard this. Do we have the audio of this, Joy?

No, we don't need it. All I know is a guy by the name of Jeff Appleby, Greater Vancouver Realtor, walked out of a meeting and let the world know that on the table was the possibility of an MLB expansion team in Vancouver. So to give us all the things, details and whatever details he's got we're joined by Jeff right now. Jeff, thanks for being here. Thank you for having me. So talk to me. You walk in a room thinking, well, you're there for what?

Yeah, one of my good friends invited me to this. He's a diehard Jay's fan, baseball fan. I grew up playing and watching, but I don't follow as close as I used to. And he said, you know, there's a group that's putting together a bid for an MLV team in Vancouver. Come check it out. I went and I was super surprised to hear just how far along it was, how organized they were, and just that it was more of a realistic possibility than just a news headline. So what were you surprised by?

What did you hear that made you think, oh my God, they're not at the beginning beginning, but they're not there. Yeah. Well, I guess I didn't know that the city had already done a, basically a competition to select one of the groups. So they've been down that road. They're quite far along in discussion.

with, again, I'm not involved in this personally. This was just a presentation. They've been talking to MLB. MLB seems to like the idea of Vancouver. Vancouver's a good-sized city and has a lot of the metrics, I think that they would like. And, you know, really, they're in close talks with the city on trying to make this happen.

Now, you're in real estate, so where exactly would they put a stadium? Well, that's a good question. And I think that they're, you know, they're working on that with the city. there's a, I would be speculating if I mentioned a couple of the sites. Let me, let me rephrase. Knowing what you know about real estate in Vancouver, where would be an ideal place to put a stadium? I mean, ideally you'd want it close to transportation, right? Yeah.

So there's, there's two lines that kind of come in from the east. And then there's one that comes in from the airport. So you'd probably want to have it next to one of those train lines or somewhere, somewhere pretty close and easy to that. Are they talking, are they talking Dome? Are they talking 50,000 in person stadium or more intimate? Anything like that? Did you see any renderings? You know, one of the, there's a few things popping around on the internet.

He didn't show anything. He didn't have a slideshow at the presentation, but one of the things he did say is that they brought in a pretty big, what do I think of like a design and build sort of consultant, architects and whatnot. And he said before they even got downtown, the guys were saying this is an open air stadium. Open air, yeah. Yeah, it's just too beautiful. The city's nice. The views are nice.

If you can keep it open, you know, and the baseball season is, you know, it's spring to, you know, October, really. So it's manageable. And there's the Vancouver Canadians, which is a high, you know, minor league team of Vancouver. Yeah. And I split season tickets with some friends to that. less games, a bit of a shorter season, but I don't think we had many rainouts this year. You know, it works.

Yeah. Well, season works pretty well. But there are those who immediately go to the Vancouver Grizzlies experiment that started out well. And then next thing you know, you wake up and they're not there anymore. They're in Memphis. Is anybody worried about that? Do you think the city and, you know, those who would be putting up the money,

the owners, the potential owners, have learned from, what went wrong there. And do you think the city, if we ever got close, do you think they would be able to pull it off, get a team and keep a team? Good question. You know, it's funny. I posted that thing without really thinking about it.

It was one take video. And that's been the biggest feedback on the video that I put up. I think it's almost like a part of our identity that the Grizzlies failed so we can't, you know, like get other teams here. Yeah. But I think a lot's changed in how professional sports franchises and the leagues support their teams now. I don't think they were supported in the same way. It was kind of like you got to go through the hard yards and work on your own,

whereas now they want you to be successful quickly. And I also think like Vancouver's just – there's one team in Canada. Canada's 40 million people. There's – you know, I think there's 5.6 million people in BC. There's enough people here. And then it's kind of that gateway to Asia. right yeah like there's right yeah look i mean you you see you see what the los angeles dodgers have been able to do in order to leverage that connection and there's no reason why has to go everything

has to go through l a they've just done it better than anybody else um well seattle did it in the 90s right that's right each year oh hey how um talk to me about the response to your reel did you have it how how big did it get uh i think i had i think i have over two thousand follows it got uh it got pretty big pretty quick i didn't actually think i was going to happen typical story of like waking up in the morning and being like, holy cow, okay, people like this. Yeah. There was a lot of people who were super excited about it. Yeah.

I think especially after the Jays run last year, Canada got really tied up in that. Yeah. So that really brought baseball to the forefront in Canada. There was a lot of people basically just, it'll never happen. So it was sort of split. Like 60% loved it and then there was a lot of the naysayers. Well, yeah, because honestly, I mean, you see how things happen in this country. I could imagine, you know, land claim issues in British courts.

Columbia are a problem. And this would be a big chunk of town, like a prime real estate. My guess is, as you said, like in a recognizable part of town. Yeah. Then there's a question of who would fund it. Would any public money go towards it? The second, if there's even a hint of a pen, even a penny of public money, it's dead in the water. Yeah.

Yeah. I think, you know, these guys seem organized enough and they're, and they push it far enough. but I think they're pretty confident that they can get the money together. And, you know, the Jay's kind of prove that you can make it work in Canada on the Canadian dollar. They've got a top five payroll, I believe, in the MNB right now. Yeah, no, you're absolutely. But here's my question. Let's live in a world where this happens.

Would you want the team to be called the Vancouver Grizzlies? I don't know. That might be bad luck right there. Why? No, no, no. It's about reclaiming it. It's about reclaiming it. You're not going to be saddled with the mistakes of the past.

It's a new era with a new sport and a new team and a new grizzler. Perseverance. Yes, exactly. You know what? It wouldn't, I wouldn't have a problem with it. You know, I think it'd be really fun to have the competition, all the names you'd come up with. The other thing about the Vancouver thing is I think it would be really wise to make this a Western Canadian team, a BC team, a Pacific Northwest team. So I don't know if Vancouver's going to be in there.

So, yeah, it could be, don't call it Vancouver. You call it the British Columbia somethings. West Coast Grizzlies. West, yeah. No, I like that. I like that. Yeah. Before I let you go, you know, we talk real estate a lot here, but in our bubble in Toronto,

we sometimes don't talk about it there. How's your job there? Are you, are you, is it tough slog these days? It's slow for sure. I think, you know, this last month was the slowest August in maybe 14 years or something like that. You hear a lot about the pre-sale market, which is a lot slower. sales have really dried up there. But we were 20% below the 10 year average for August. So

eight out of 10 transactions in the resale market are still happening. So, you know, it's softening, but people are still moving and having babies and retiring and all that stuff. And any good indicators that you're hanging your hat on? It's, it's, you know, I think that we're recalibrating from the madness of COVID. A lot of markets are operating differently, whether it's like condos in the valley, detached in the city. It's a little all over the place, but I think we're starting to see some things level out. Some things have got a long way to go probably. You know, we want wages in the economy to go up.

We'll see what happens at this investment summit. Heck yeah, fingers crossed, buddy. Hey, Jeff Appleby, I really appreciate your time, my friend. All right, thanks very much.