Wednesday morning, time to check the news and see if the other shoe dropped:
[Pinellas County Commissioners] voted 5-2 to approve spending about $312.5 million for its share of the ballpark costs from revenue generated by a tax on rented hotel or motel rooms and homes, which can only be spent on tourist-related and economic development expenses. The St. Petersburg City Council approved spending $417.5 million for the stadium earlier this month.
And that’s the ballgame: After 15 years, Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg has pocketed more than $1 billion in public subsidies — on top of those cited above, there are additional county tax kickbacks plus a sweetheart deal on land — toward a new stadium complex right where his old one was. This is a surprising outcome in many ways, not least that just two and a half years after the collapse of the Tampontreal Ex-Rays gambit, Sternberg has managed to turn his low point in leverage into a ten-figure payday. On top of that, one longstanding theory for why the Rays’ attendance numbers have been historically bad is that everyone in the Tampa Bay area hates traveling to the current stadium site, making it a bit … ironic? whackadoodle? … that the endgame involves spending more than a billion dollars to move from a fixed-dome stadium in an unloved site to a different fixed-dome stadium in an unloved site.
But then, like most sports team owners, Sternberg was never primarily after a new stadium — he was after the public money that would come with one. And as we’ve seen in other cities — the Minnesota Twins and Miami Marlins come to mind — even a decade-long losing streak is no obstacle to an eventual victory once you get the right combination of political leaders in place. In St. Petersburg, this turned out to be the election of Mayor Ken Welch, who was able to conceptualize a new stadium development as honoring the “sacred ground” of the African American neighborhood that was bulldozed to make way for the old stadium, and in so doing provided Sternberg with more taxpayer cash than even he had ever dreamt of.
And so the Tampa Bay Rays move-threat saga draws to a close, with Sternberg committing the team to its current home for another 30 years, or at least until its current home sinks below the waves. That’s less surprising — even if attendance sucks, it’s the nation’s 13th-largest TV market, not something a team owner would jump to trade in for a Charlotte or a Nashville — but is a win for Rays fans, even if an incredibly expensive one. The new stadium is set to open in 2028, meaning within a few years after that we should have a good sense as the whether it can do anything to change the team’s popularity, or will just change Sternberg’s bank balance. In the meantime, the fire sales will continue until morale improves.
All that taxpayer money will be recouped when the Rays host the 2029 All Star Game.
That’ll be nice for the fans… they get to see all the great/good/decent players the team has traded away to lower payroll over the last ten years all at once.
They won’t be getting a reprieve from that in the new stadium with their own team, that’s for sure.
And Slimy Stu can continue to earn $40-70m in net profit every year and now has the future tax breaks to allow him to take full advantage of that profit. Hey, he may even have to lower payroll to get the full value of the future tax breaks…
Yeah, sure, one All Star Game will surely make the city and county a couple billion dollars, and none of that money will be cannibalized from preexisting tourism and entertainment activity.
So it may be as late as 2030 before we start hearing about how the paviliodome is totally inadequate and…in the wrong location.
Sneaky Stu almost had the team sold but it fell apart in a report out by the New York Post today.
According to one unnamed “source who was part of the buying group.”
Friends don’t let friends take the New York Post seriously.
Now the fire sales don’t even need to maintain the appearance of trying to remain competitive or pick up prospects. No need to pretend to care about results on the field now that Stu has his money. This current fire sale is the perfect example, dump a ton of the team’s already tiny payroll in return for at best questionable “prospects” despite being in the thick of a wild card fight. This isn’t a Moneyball play, it’s just being cheap. The Rays are going to go back to being a glorified AAA club.
Which trades are you thinking of? All the ones I’ve seen look to fit the Rays mold of “trade a guy way before he becomes expensive for players who can replace him in a year or two.”
With Caminero, Mead, etc., all on the way and all their injured pitchers set to come back, I expect the Rays to be contenders next year. It’s got to be super annoying for fans who never get more than a couple of years to get attached to players, but at least it’s more successful than the A’s approach, for example.
Oh what’s that? Attendance sucks because you’re not in Tampa, but St. Pete? Womn’t it still suck?
(crickets from Rays’ ownership)
Oh well, I *guess* it beats that shared with Montreal silliness
That should be “won’t” please get me an edit button