While everyone was watching the Tampa Bay Rays‘ early-season surge to the best record in baseball and subsequent overtaking by the Baltimore Orioles for the A.L. East lead, something else was happening in Tampa Bay: People actually started showing up for games. Not a ton of people, admittedly — 18,255 per game at this writing, enough to rank 27th out of 30 teams — but the most since the team’s last popular stretch in 2008-2013.
Given that one of the main arguments for the Rays needing a new stadium has been that fans on the east side of the bay don’t want to drive all the way to the west side to see games, maybe this is a sign that that’s not such an insurmountable obstacle? Which would lead to the conclusion, in turn, that the Rays’ long-running stadium crisis doesn’t need to be a crisis at all?
“We’ve said for the past couple of years that what happens on the ground in St. Pete is going to have a significant effect on our outlook for the franchise,” Rays president Matt Silverman said. “We’re looking at some real positives in terms of the year-over-year growth, the overall interest and the general direction attendance is pointing in.
“We’re coming off a low base and we’re still 27th in baseball but we can see momentum building on the attendance side and it gives us more confidence in St. Pete as a location for the team for the next several generations.”
That’s from an article by Tampa Bay Times columnist John Romano headed “Will a spike in attendance help Rays get a stadium built in St. Pete?”, which pretty much tells you the tone of this one. If fans don’t turn out to Rays games, it seems, that’s a sign that team owner Stuart Sternberg needs a new stadium in Tampa; if they do turn out to Rays games, it’s a sign he needs a new stadium in St. Petersburg.
As we laid out way back in Chapter 4 of the first edition of Field of Schemes (the book), team owners’ cases for needing a new stadium (and needing public funding to build one) tend to cycle through the same few arguments: the old one is obsolete, the team might move without one, a new one would be a boon to the local economy, etc. This comes in especially handy when one argument isn’t working — if critics point out there there continues to be zero evidence that stadium spending creates a net positive economic impact, say, you can pivot to “But the crumbling railings!”
The multiple tactics in the stadium playbook have another side benefit, though: If the financial winds start blowing a different direction and an owner determines that they want to shift gears on their stadium plans, they can always pick a different argument to support it. In the Rays’ case, Sternberg’s ardor for a new stadium in Tampa appears to have cooled some now that it’s clear Tampa doesn’t have tons of money to give him for one, while St. Petersburg does and now has a mayor inclined to give it to him. So it’s convenient to be able to use the fog of stadium war to simultaneously argue that the St. Petersburg side of the bay is too a good place for a stadium now, even while holding on to the notion that the team needs a new one, in part, because of the old one’s bad location.
This is a dynamic we’ve seen before: In baseball alone, the New York Yankees and Philadelphia Phillies got the ball rolling on new stadiums in part by arguing that they needed to move to a better neighborhood, and ended up building right across the street from their old sites. None of which is to say whether the Rays or their fans would do better with a new stadium — I still haven’t been to the Trop myself, but reviews tend to range from “ugggh” to “meh” — but Rays execs certainly shouldn’t be allowed to get away with speaking fondly of St. Pete when they want to build there, but dumping on it when they’re trying to extract public money. Which, speaking of that:
The Rays are currently negotiating with St. Pete and Pinellas County officials regarding costs for the redevelopment of the Tropicana Field land with a new stadium as a centerpiece. Scuttlebutt suggests an offer is on the table but the Rays and development partner Hines are seeking more help with infrastructure costs.
Oh, infrastructure, where would stadium subsidies be without you? When last this was spoken of in public, the guesstimates were that Sternberg and his partners wanted $150 million in infrastructure money on top of roughly $500 million in stadium construction funds, which would mean $650 million in taxpayer dollars to move the team from one domed stadium to another domed stadium next door. Sounds like it’s time for a new item for the playbook — quick, Stu, send somebody up into the stadium rafters with a crowbar, that should do the trick.
If I may cape up for the Trop for a moment, I’ve always asked the same question: What else is it supposed to be?
There’s a baseball field, there’s air conditioning, the seats are regulation size, and you can both buy and drink beer!
I know why Stu wants a new building (to build luxury suites you can’t afford), but I’ve long been baffled by average ticket-buyers who complain. If you’re walking up and buying a ticket to watch a baseball game, what is this building supposed to have that it doesn’t? And which of these apparently insurmountable problems can’t be overcome in the existing structure?
You don’t need a billion dollars to reno some bathrooms and add a local taco stand.
The average ticket buyers in Tampa want a stadium that’s easier to get to.
The ones in StP just want whatever will help keep the team in the area and give it more revenue that it might spend on players.
I’ve been there once. I thought it was fine.
Completely in agreement on the impracticality of getting to St. Pete – which a new stadium in St. Pete also doesn’t solve! That’s part of the reason I get hung up on the criticism of the Trop itself.
There a potential new twist to the public funding for a new stadium. Apparently Pinellas county and St Pete would use “tourist bed taxes” to pay for some portion of the Trop (and surrounding Gas Plant District, where the mayor grew up) redevelopment. But the Corps of Engineers have refused to proceed with beach “nourishment” projects for the county due to easement requirements.
The county is considering all options to keep the beaches intact, including raiding the bed tax fund to self-pay the replenishment work. I go to the beaches, and can attest to the county’s need to move quickly. Meanwhile, the term sheet between St Pete and the Rays is allegedly close to finalization.
Could we see a fight between local businesses that rely on beach tourism and the mayor-Sternberg alliance?
Based on the number of out-of-state plates clogging the parking lots, beach tourism FAR exceeds Rays attendance. But as we all know, fiscal common sense is probably the least considered factor in these decisions.
More to come!
https://www.tampabay.com/news/pinellas/2023/07/13/beaches-rays-stadium-tampa-bay-funding/
Nothing wrong with Tropicana Field it’s actually a good stadium It would be nice if Rays lowered ticket prices. Seems expensive compared to other MLB teams in similar markets
Their prices are in the middle of the pack for MLB.
If you don’t understand why the Rays need a new stadium, you must be blind, what they have is a toilet they keep throwing new coats of paint on thinking it will make a new building that has all the technology built into it that a modern stadium should have. We all know people show up to see teams that win. What you really need is for fans, and more importantly corporations to support the team when they’re not having one of their best seasons ever. But even that’s not why they need a new stadium that’s just an add-on. Plain and simple it’s too old and it’s designed will not support the type of income the team needs to draw now and more importantly in the future as the area continues to grow.
Your arguments about infrastructure and everything else are the same arguments every city would have about every stadium ever built, it’s just a tired argument made by people that don’t really care about sports franchises and they don’t see how lucky it is for a city to have one. It’s all about economics and you really don’t have a good grasp on it. Costs are always easy to estimate and add up, rarely are the estimates accurate…
They’re either too high and come from people like you who don’t care about having a team or they’re too low from people that care too much and want a team at all costs… The biggest issue that St Pete has… Is trying to figure out a way to make money with that stadium when there aren’t baseball games there, sadly they shouldn’t have to worry about attendance at a baseball game but they do because we have one of the most beautiful beaches in the country something that people in New York, in Boston Chicago, St. Louis and so many other cities just don’t have, so people go to the game because they don’t have anything better to do, we have a beautiful beach with half naked women on it, baseball has stiff competition here and few real residents to fill the supply of seats, and those cities all have close to 10 times as many people as we have… This means we must draw people from farther away and our demographics in this area are thrown way out of whack simply because people claim they live here but they only live here part of the year for the tax benefit and that part is certainly not the summertime when baseball is played. Low attendance is something most teams in the league suffer from though and it’s not the reason to build a new stadium. The stadium you have is too big has too many cheap seats and not enough good seats that you can charge higher prices for and certainly not enough sky boxes that people pay millions for and then never attend.
St Pete would be stupid to let that team get away and they simply haven’t offered enough to keep it. Ownership should actually be offering less. There are plenty of cities all over the country including in Canada that would love to have our team and they have no problem covering the cost of a stadium…
Additionally you never build a stadium because you’re attendance low and you figure it will just stay low… In that case, if you figure you’re only going to have 8,000 people a night then you just play the game up the street at the college and save everybody a lot of money. I don’t think the plan is to continue to have a thousand people come to the game…
The only reason people will come is for the same reason they have always gone and that is because they want to go watch a baseball game… Winning certainly helps but we’ve seen teams lose for years and still have people come to see the game cuz they like watching baseball and many of them cheer for the other team. You know how hard it is to get tickets in Yankee stadium or at Fenway it’s cheaper to fly to Tampa for the weekend and watch your favorite northeastern team… Stay the weekend catch a couple of games and hit the beach…
Our attendance will grow simply because our demographics are growing in the region, but you do have to give them a nice place to come to and maybe you should take a trip around the league and see some of the newer parks then you might understand the differences…
Finally when they build the new stadium next to the old stadium they will be able to level the old stadium and have a parking lot and not have to move infrastructure very much at all… Now if they built the stadium anywhere else then you’re talking about huge infrastructure costs… Traffic has to get in and out and toilets have to flush while the lights stay on… Another challenge is that since you live in the lightning capital of the world you can’t really have the stadium without a dome and you don’t need to spend the extra to make it open although that would be nice. They would never be able to open a roof like that because you couldn’t cool the building down in time when you close the roof so it would just stay closed all the time you could open it for a month in the end of the season possibly even the first month of the season…
Wow. A few thoughts about the Trop and how “lucky” St Pete should be giving Stu even more money (than what? St Pete hasn’t made a formal proposal and he’s never said what exactly he wants).
I love the idea that the Trop doesn’t have “all the technology built into it that a modern stadium should have”… Nuclear powered seats? Four dimensional video screens??? Air conditioning? (no wait, it has that) Beer? Tacos? Pizza? (nope, has that too) Who exactly is demanding new bells and whistles?
Yes, the “arguments about infrastructure and everything else” are the same as any other city would have because they’re valid arguments. So, “economics”? The Trop has been there for 30 years and generated exactly one spinoff business, the sports bar across the street. There has been a lot of construction in the neighborhood in the past five years but that has had zero to do with the Rays; it’s just a result of redevelopment gradually spreading out from the waterfront. Fun Fact: the Rays have had the agreement that gives them a 50% share of any development on the Trop property since day one and they have done exactly zero with it.
I will grant you that the Trop was the last gasp of the awful Shea/Three Rivers generation of allegedly multi-use stadiums. And I’ll give Stu credit; he has put money into the Trop to try to upgrade it. But instead of trying to spin the limitations as interesting quirks (why are the catwalks bad and the Green Monster good?) they have been bad-mouthing the location for 15 years. And they could have made the building less claustrophobic if they replaced some of the (non-structural) metal exterior panels with glass so it wouldn’t look like the world’s largest water tank.
Two things that are true is that the skyboxes really are awful (terrible sight lines), and the Rays are handicapped by the Yankees spring training sucking all of the energy from the Tampa side of the bay. If Man-Fred really wanted the Rays to succeed he’d talk the Yankees into relocating to Disney World (and maybe have the Rays move to Steinbrenner Field… they’d barely need to expand it :)) .
Do you work for the Rays?
St Pete doesn’t need to offer the Rays a dime. It would be nice id they stayed, but there are so many more important public priorities. And, as Neil has shown exhaustively, stadiums are a poor public investment.
No. There are not a bunch of cities lining up for the team. The Rays would have you believe that, but every city that does not have an MLB team has lots of drawbacks.
Hey Neil – Stu is commenting again.