Major League Baseball is expected to formally begin its expansion process before commissioner Rob Manfred's retirement in 2029. Two new franchises are likely; the leading candidates include Nashville, Charlotte, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Montreal. This lead the dreamers camped in the Montreal Baseball Project and audiences who watched the 2025 Netflix documentary Who Killed the Montreal Expos? to start imagining the simple question of 'what if...?'

WatchMojo CEO Ashkan Karbasfrooshan has been one of them for a long time. He was in the stands the last time the Montreal Expos played a home game on September 29, 2004. By the end, he'd gone from attending once or twice a year as a kid to showing up for nearly every game.

"I tried to imagine ways to keep the club in Montreal [since then]," he says. Flash forward two decades later, and Karbasfrooshan is leveraging his platform and the investor network it earned him to try to bring the Expos back. He calls it Project Peanut.

Karbasfrooshan believes Montreal comes to the table with stronger fundamentals than most of the municipal competition. With a metro population around 4.5 million, a corporate sponsorship base he describes as "very deep and under-utilized," and no direct MLB rival within striking distance, Montreal looks better on paper than a regional market like Charlotte or Nashville, both of which are also juggling NFL stadiums and compressed sports-entertainment budgets.

Montreal's competition for sports dollars is low to moderate by comparison. But Karbasfrooshan is equally clear-eyed about the land, real estate, zoning, and permits that stand in the way. But there's also something harder to legislate: ambition.

"Do you want to win?" he asks over a video call from his home office. "Do you want to be a global city, or are you fine with what we have?"

Major League Baseball is expected to formally begin its expansion process before commissioner Rob Manfred's retirement in 2029. Two new franchises are likely; the leading candidates include Nashville, Charlotte, Portland, Salt Lake City, and Montreal. This lead the dreamers camped in the Montreal Baseball Project and audiences who watched the 2025 Netflix documentary Who Killed the Montreal Expos? to start imagining the simple question of 'what if...?'

WatchMojo CEO Ashkan Karbasfrooshan has been one of them for a long time. He was in the stands the last time the Montreal Expos played a home game on September 29, 2004. By the end, he'd gone from attending once or twice a year as a kid to showing up for nearly every game.

"I tried to imagine ways to keep the club in Montreal [since then]," he says. Flash forward two decades later, and Karbasfrooshan is leveraging his platform and the investor network it earned him to try to bring the Expos back. He calls it Project Peanut.

Karbasfrooshan believes Montreal comes to the table with stronger fundamentals than most of the municipal competition. With a metro population around 4.5 million, a corporate sponsorship base he describes as "very deep and under-utilized," and no direct MLB rival within striking distance, Montreal looks better on paper than a regional market like Charlotte or Nashville, both of which are also juggling NFL stadiums and compressed sports-entertainment budgets.

Montreal's competition for sports dollars is low to moderate by comparison. But Karbasfrooshan is equally clear-eyed about the land, real estate, zoning, and permits that stand in the way. But there's also something harder to legislate: ambition.

"Do you want to win?" he asks over a video call from his home office. "Do you want to be a global city, or are you fine with what we have?"