Things have been kind of quiet on the Tampa Bay Rays stadium-subsidy-search front of late, even as MLB commissioner Rob Manfred has said he hopes to move ahead with expansion that he’s previously said can’t happen until the Rays (and Oakland/maybe-Las Vegas A’s) get new stadiums. St. Petersburg has a $1 billion stadium plan, roughly half of it from public money, that’s been sitting around since February; Tampa was last seen launching a website and some lawn signs in 2021; and of course there’s Orlando’s fever dream. But nothing substantial for a while.
Until now! Or last Thursday, rather, when Hillsborough County commissioner and pal-of-a- prospective-stadium-developer Ken Hagan announced, well, something:
Every time a purchase is made in the area built for the Tampa Bay Rays in Port Ybor, a portion will go towards funding the ballpark.
At least, that’s the plan.
“Taxpayers would not be responsible for interest or debt cost or operational costs,” said chief Hillsborough County negotiator Ken Hagan.
Sorry, what? Paying for a stadium via a tax surcharge in a stadium district is about the clearest possible example of taxpayers paying for a stadium, one would think, but I guess if you say “no taxpayer money” loud enough, you can pretend it’s true even when it’s patently not. I suppose it’s possible that Hagan is clinging to the Casino Night Fallacy here, figuring that it’s not really taxpayer money if all of it was touched by stadium-area consumers somewhere along the li—
Tourist taxes would also be on the table.
I give up.
Anyhoo, it’s not really clear that Hagan’s tax-money-that’s-not-really-tax-money-because-reasons plan exists anywhere outside his mind, as he told Fox 13 that “we’ve got a few T’s that need to be crossed, and I’s need to be dotted” and “we are perilously close to being in a position where we will be able to present something formally and begin negotiations,” which seems to indicate that nothing is actually written down yet. Let’s try another Tampa Bay-area news station and see if it has any more incisive reporting:
One guy we talked with said his brother goes to Rays’ games often. Him? Not so much.
If you need me, I’ll be back in bed.
At least they aren’t talking about Tampontreal.
I have no problem if private investors put up all the money to build their own Stadium we have paid for the existing stadium via our taxes .. why is it that people who want to build stadiums never want to pay for them.
Any elected official that supports us paying for a stadium should be voted out period
“why is it that people who want to build stadiums never want to pay for them”
Because getting other people to pay for them is so much more profitable?
It’s not a tax Neil.
It’s a user fee!
FIFY LOL
Labels are so overrated…..
3 NY base baseball players together make over $100 million this year. $40 million each or so. I find it disturbing this wealth gap and not only asking fans who want to pay higher taxes for sports pbut also ask people who do not benefit from sports to also pay. So many problems in this world and we focus on paying for athletes work sites. Our focus is way off betterment of society
Why are we so worried about paying with public or people money? If we are paying for more than 100 years for wars and invasions all over the world with the tax payers money and nobody said anything about it..get the stadium done…we need the team in the Tampa Bay area..
I think you’ll find that *lots* of people have had a lot to say about all of that.
I don’t think the word “need” means what you think it means.
get eeem!!! BURN
Do we really need the team? What do they actually provide to the area, and is it worth what it would cost to keep them around? And even if it is worth the cost, is it right to put those costs on taxpayers while the owner gets all the profits and acts without accountability?
And will the team actually leave if they don’t get a stadium? Sure, maybe, teams do sometimes move (though more often they don’t). But there aren’t really any better markets open in North America. There’s Montreal, where MLB already failed once, and a bunch of towns with smaller media markets, none of which have the same population of New York and New England transplants to buy tickets when the Yankees and Red Sox come to town. So why give them everything they want, when really they’re the ones who need us?
Ultimately, there’s no reason for us to want the team to stay if the only way they’ll agree to it is for taxpayers to foot an enormous bill that will crowd out funding of public services for decades to come.
I agree 100%!
Ken Hagan has been running his mouth for over a decade now and this latest plan he’s dreaming up will never fly like the other plans he’s come up with. Without a doubt, the stadium should be in Tampa but the funds will never be there. The stadium will end up about a thousand feet east of where it is now, a failed 30 year location. Stu stands to make a lot of money as a co-developer of the 85 acres surrounding it.
Everyone should be in thrillsville over the “17,000” jobs that will be created!
https://www.tampabay.com/news/st-petersburg/2023/06/29/rays-stadium-economic-impact-pinellas-jobs-tropicana-gas-plant/
Yes, building a new SMALLER stadium on the other side of the drainage ditch from the existing one will certainly create 17,000+ jobs! Or maybe it’s the new 2,000 seat performing arts venue that will be 10 blocks away from the existing 2,000 seat performing arts venue. (Not to mention the 3 other 2,000 seat performing arts venues that are within a 45 minute drive). Or maybe the 70 acres not occupied by the new stadium will be the home of the world’s largest Hooters restaurant. Anything’s possible, even magical funding suddenly appearing for an Ybor City site!
That’s the spirit!
We got our priorities all backwards. The greedy players and owners should pay for their own Stadiums not the working people. Teaches and schools are the first thing that needs our tax dollars not supporting wealthy greedy people. Wake up Tampa Bay!
How are the players greedy and why would the players pay for the stadium? They’re employees of the team. They’re not paying for the stadium. The owners? Yeah, they should. The Players? No.
If we assume (always dangerous) that owners paying for their own factories or commercial spaces (in this case, a baseball stadium) would be spending money on mortgage payments that would otherwise go to player payroll, then it logical to assume that player salaries would go down on average (probably not at the top end as we all know how these things go… the top pitchers and hitters still make the same money, but the middle and bottom of the roster players are the ones who make up the difference).
That said, I agree that it isn’t really a matter of greed. If three teams offered me in excess of $15m to swing at and miss a baseball 70-75% of the time, I wouldn’t hesitate to accept the best offer. No-one has a gun to the owners’ heads. They can choose not to enter bidding wars (subject to the insane ‘alone or in combination’ collusion clause in the MLPBA agreement…)
If the owners’ costs went up because they had to actually pay for stadiums, they would try to make the players share some of that cost, but how much they could shift would depend on CBA negotiations and those don’t necessarily follow any straightforward economic math.
Because there’s a lot more in the CBA than who gets what cut of the revenue. And of course, accounting magic makes it hard to see clearly how much money they’re actually making.
Also, if an owner had to move money around to pay for facilities, I suspect they’d first try to take it out of all the other nonunion people that work for the team and the ballpark.
What goes “into” stadia now has little to nothing to do with the CBA beyond some minimum specifications for player facilities (and even that can be subjective/variable).
The players have (and should have) no say in what owners choose to spend on facilities… those who have nicer facilities will find it easier to attract top end free agents (all other things being equal).
I have no doubt they would try to make funding stadia partly the player’s obligation, but it’s difficult to see how the union would ever agree to that. MLB has neither a hard cap nor a floor, just a luxury tax and a general understanding that MLBwelfare will be used to top up payrolls (*except when it’s not).
The one true benefit of teams having to fund their own facilities is that they would only build the things that truly generate a net return on that investment… unlike now, where taxpayers – most of whom are not baseball fans and do not buy tickets or watch on tv – fund all kinds of folly that is unnecessary and does nothing except continue to cost (taxpayers, generally) money.
Personally as a Saint Pete resident who enjoys baseball, the existing Trop is just fine.
It is air conditioned, comfortable and easy to get too for me.
I have no need to pay to build anything else.