Why Montana Will Never Get a Professional Sports Team

So many people want a professional sports team to move to Montana but they don't' realize all the steps or money that is involved.

A question that comes up between people who might have just moved to Montana or big sports fans is, "Why doesn't Montana have a professional sports team?" This is a constant debate between my friends and I all the time and as much as I would love to have a pro sports team in Montana, we need to realize that right now it's not realistic.

Let's start with what kind of professional sports team could potentially be in Montana? NFL, not happening, they aren't expanding and they are bigger cities that will get first dibs. MLB? Nope, winter here can last long unless they build a dome. The only reasonable professional sports team that could come to Montana would be an NHL team, then comes some real issues.

First off, where would you put the arena? Billings, Bozeman, Helena? Then who is paying for the arena to be built? The cost of building an arena has only gone up in the past ten years and even Seattle is realizing that with their new arena for the Seattle Kraken is going to cost close to $850 million dollars. A lot of that is public funded and Montanans aren't big fans of wasting money.

Let's say we clear all of those hurdles, the next thing is ticket prices. NHL games happen multiple times during the week and tickets can be costly. Montanans like a good deal but also, they have lives and can't go to games multiple times a week. So filling a 20,000 person arena could be very difficult.

Would I love to see a professional sports team come to Montana? Will it happen? Probably not in my lifetime. The only way it's feasible for Montana to even be considered for a professional sports team is if one of the cities in Montana grows enormously but that's not happening anytime soon.

Could we see maybe some Winter Classic games here? That's a possibility and would be pretty special.

(If you are wondering why I even bring this up, I was watching the Pat McAfee show and they were discussing what city should get an expansion team and one of the guys recommended Helena, Montana. He did say though they might have a hard time filling up the stadium, go to the 4:40 mark to see his comment.)