North Carolina and Sacramento Deploy Stadium Plans, Executive Hires to Force MLB's 32-Team Expansion Timeline
Both campaigns aim to compress Commissioner Manfred's post-2028 timetable by presenting shovel-ready sites and ownership syndicates before the current CBA expires.
Published June 25, 2026Source MSN SportsFrom the chopped neck
North Carolina and Sacramento Deploy Stadium Plans, Executive Hires to Force MLB's 32-Team Expansion Timeline
Both campaigns aim to compress Commissioner Manfred's post-2028 timetable by presenting shovel-ready sites and ownership syndicates before the current CBA expires.
North Carolina and Sacramento are presenting Major League Baseball with finished stadium financing packages and partial ownership rosters, attempting to accelerate a 32-team expansion that Commissioner Rob Manfred has repeatedly positioned as a post-2028 project. Both bids believe that arriving with solved real-estate and capital problems forces the league's hand earlier than the collective bargaining agreement negotiation window that opens in late 2026.
The North Carolina effort, centered on either Charlotte or Raleigh, has commissioned architectural renderings for two separate stadium sites and assembled what one person familiar with the bid calls "three separate groups of regional money, each claiming they can write the $2.5 billion check." Sacramento's campaign hired a former MLB senior vice president of stadium operations in December and has held 14 meetings with city council members, county supervisors, and California state assembly representatives since October. The Sacramento group is positioning itself as the Oakland replacement narrative—same television market, same corporate sponsor base, none of the political dysfunction that drove the Athletics to Las Vegas.
The league's stated position remains that expansion will not be formally considered until the Athletics complete their relocation and the Tampa Bay Rays resolve their stadium situation, which places any announcement in 2027 or later. But the North Carolina and Sacramento campaigns are designed to erode that timeline by eliminating the usual infrastructure uncertainties that delay expansion votes. Both groups have identified stadium land, begun environmental reviews, and are negotiating public infrastructure contributions that would not require voter referendums—the mechanism that has killed multiple stadium proposals in the past decade. One MLB club president, speaking in January, noted that the league office is "aware of the pressure" and that the expansion committee has been briefed on both bids more than once in the past six months.
The financial logic for MLB is straightforward: $2.5 billion per franchise in expansion fees, with 30 existing clubs splitting $5 billion (the new franchises pay into the pool but do not receive expansion fee distributions). That produces $166 million per existing club, distributed over several years but still sufficient to meaningfully offset revenue-sharing and luxury-tax obligations. The North Carolina bid is arguing that the Charlotte metro area—2.8 million people, $200 billion in metro GDP—is larger than 11 current MLB markets, and that the region has demonstrated sustained corporate demand through the NBA Hornets' $1.9 billion team valuation and the Carolina Panthers' $4.1 billion sale in 2018. Sacramento's argument is simpler: it is already the 20th-largest U.S. television market, it is building a $1.5 billion downtown riverfront development that includes a proposed baseball stadium site, and it has Kings ownership (Vivek Ranadivé) who has publicly stated he would participate in an MLB ownership group.
The competitive dynamic between the bids is also a signal. North Carolina has hired a Washington lobbying firm that previously worked on the Nationals' stadium deal, and Sacramento retained a sports consultancy that worked on the Golden State Warriors' Chase Center project. Both are spending money to reach 30 owners, not just the commissioner's office. The implication is that both groups believe a floor vote can be accelerated if enough owners are presented with solved problems and large checks. The Players Association has not publicly commented on expansion timing, but the union's calculus is clear: 60 additional major-league roster spots, 80 if you include expanded September rosters, and a younger player base that weakens veteran free-agent leverage. That tension will surface in the next CBA negotiation, which opens formally in 2026.
MLB's next owner meetings are scheduled for May in New York. Expansion will not be on the formal agenda, but the Athletics' Las Vegas timeline and the Rays' stadium progress will be, and both North Carolina and Sacramento are planning to have representatives in the city that week. The May meeting is when club presidents typically hold informal hallway conversations about projects that might reach a vote in the following 12-18 months.
The fact to watch is whether any ownership group in either market publicly announces a lead investor with a verifiable net worth above $3 billion before June. That would indicate the bid has moved from campaign to transaction.
The takeaway
North Carolina and Sacramento are compressing MLB's expansion timeline by presenting finished stadium and ownership packages designed to force a vote before **2028**.
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