The Pinellas County commission was all set to approve the terms of bonds for the Tampa Bay Rays‘ new stadium — normally a formality, since back in July the commission approved using $312.5 million in hotel tax money to pay off the bonds — and then … didn’t. Instead, commissioners voted 6-1 to put off the bond measure until November 19.
And the reason, it appears, has to do with commissioners’ concerns about where the Rays will play now that their roof blew off in a hurricane. Per the St. Pete Catalyst:
“One could make the argument that they’re (the Rays) kind of violating the spirit of the agreement that we approved two months ago if they go across the bridge or go to Disney World to play for the next three years,” [Commissioner Chris] Latvala said. “If the hurricanes hit three years from now, they would have to play their games in Pinellas County.”…
[Commissioner Brian] Scott said, “This is when we need the Rays the most.” He expressed concern over the team’s lack of a public statement pledging to prioritize playing in Pinellas.
[Commissioners Dave] Eggers and Latvala, who voted against the stadium deal, shared that sentiment. As the latter commissioner noted, agreements state the team must make every effort to remain in the county after an act of God.
Yes, the same county commission that thought it was a great idea to give Rays owner Stuart Sternberg $1 billion in public money — counting city cash and county tax kickbacks — for a new domed stadium right next to his old domed stadium is having second thoughts because Sternberg might have his team play some games outside the county for a year or three. (To be fair, Eggers did say he might vote against the bond measure anyway because he thinks the county should save its money to repair storm damage, but then Eggers was against the stadium subsidies to begin with.) Or at the very least, some commissioners want to hold up the bonds as a leverage play to get Sternberg to agree to a temporary home in Pinellas County, though the options there are limited: Al Lang Stadium in St. Pete, which has been converted to soccer; the Philadelphia Phillies‘ spring stadium in Clearwater; the Toronto Blue Jays‘ spring stadium in Dunedin; and that’s about it.
And that might not be the only leverage play to come. I’ve been spending some time poking around the Rays’ Tropicana Field lease and its subsequent amendments, and a few things have become apparent:
- The city of St. Petersburg is only on the hook for paying off damage that can be covered by its insurance policy. Anything after that has to be covered by the Rays, who have a repairs fund in place for this purpose.
- However, the “force majeure” clause about events such as hurricanes says if the stadium is damaged so badly as to be unplayable, the “city shall begin to repair or rebuild the dome using the proceeds from the property insurance for that purpose and shall diligently pursue such repair or rebuilding until completed.”
- Yes, the Rays have to continue to play home games in St. Pete through 2027. However, the force majeure clause also says that if the stadium in unplayable, “the city will reasonably assist the club in finding a substitute location for playing Home Games.” Any city costs from this are to be paid out of the team’s repairs fund, or if the repairs fund runs dry, repaid from future team payments into the fund.
This raises a lot of questions. If the city has to pay for stadium repairs out of insurance proceeds, but insurance proceeds aren’t enough to cover the tab, what happens then? Could Sternberg sue the city for reducing its insurance coverage earlier this year to save on premiums, if that was supposed to cover the city’s obligated repair costs? Could Sternberg demand that the city cover his relocation costs, even if there aren’t enough future repairs fund payments remaining under the current lease to repay the city? Did anybody bother to beta-test this lease by role playing various scenarios, or did they just scribble down a bunch of stuff and go, “We’re sure nothing will come up that isn’t covered here, no worries”?
We are deep into “I am not a lawyer” territory, but plenty of people on both the team and city sides are lawyers, and are no doubt looking into who is on the hook for what in that terribly written lease. So it’s fair to expect even more leverage plays: If you’re trying to stay out of a courtroom, one way to do it is to threaten the people across the table into settling first. But either way it could get ugly, and the county kerfuffle over where the Rays play temporarily could be only the warning shot.
It’s almost like the Rays owner is a greedy, arrogant, opportunist piece of scum who’s going to do nothing but siphon money away from people whose lives and homes have just been destroyed.
Exhibit A for why he should’ve never gotten the ripoff deal he’s trying to push through with no public vote.
Is he going to threaten to move to North Carolina now?
The “This is when we need the Rays the most” line is weird to me, considering that parts of Pinellas County are still in tatters from the two major storms (don’t forget Helene did a number on the area just a week or so prior to Milton). There are any number of other issues that are more important than where the MLB franchise might play. Losing the Rays for up to three years would hardly represent a death knell for St Pete or Pinellas County. The Rays are not a panacea… they’re not saving any lives, putting out any fires, rebuilding any power lines or pipelines. And that would remain the case even after this new ballpark gets built.
I read that statement differently, as in ‘this is when we need the Rays to be good corporate citizens of the city/county, and show their support to the local community by not leaving’; I hadn’t considered your take, the ‘this is when we really need entertainment options like the Rays’. You’re right it’s an odd phrase without the fuller context.
They want the Rays to stay in Pinellas County because tourists that visit and stay in hotels pay a “bed tax” TDT and this tax is where 1) the county derives economic benefit for its tourism/hospitality industry like restaurants and 2) the TDT is the same tax that helps fund $20M a year to the Rays for the stadium. A healthy tourism industry is vital to the county’s economic recovery. That’s where the statement ‘this is when we need them most’ comes from.
The number of tourists who come to St. Pete and stay overnight in hotels just to see Rays games is vanishingly small.
That’s correct Neil. ‘Baseball tourism’ isn’t a thing in St. Pete (unless Boston or the Yankees are playing). As a rule, people don’t get on planes and come stay in hotels in St. Pete to see a baseball game. The tourism board knows that too, when they do their surveys every quarter – baseball often doesn’t even rank. They’d like that to change… and have a vision that they can create a ‘travel destination’ w/ the new ‘ballpark village’ concept (like The Battery) with the goal to achieve incremental progress on TDT for sports related visits. But historically, baseball tourism ad TDT revenues to see the Rays is a hope, not a reality. Also, we have hot summers, when baseball is played. In summers, tourists by and large stay at the beach and rarely go to games. The reason I responded earlier was a commenter didn’t understand why the County is prioritizing the Rays play locally for the next few seasons. Our beaches have been badly eroded by the storms. The County Commission thinks that they can shift their tourism marketing to baseball and the museums … since they know the beaches won’t be the same draw until they are renourished.
I think we’re in agreement: the city wants the Rays to be good civic participants, staying in the county so any tax revenues flow to the county for its rebuilding.
Great opportunity here! Pull the funding and save the $1.6 Billion in public cost going to enrich a Billionaire for a stadium in a failed
Location. Then Watch the Rays play to full houses in Steinbrenner Field and finally realize where the stadium should be built.
Bonus opportunity! Use that public money to actually help the beaches recover from the hurricanes, fix the storm water issues, build a convention center that would drive way more tourism and get back the $500 Million in prime real estate you sold to the Billionaire for $50 million! Win win baby! Go Rays! #Tampa Bay Tampa Bay Rays #JpPetersonShow LIVE 10-Noon
Absent the ‘revenge/schaudenfreude’ angle, I agree this is the perfect time to vote down the funding (don’t have to pull funding that hasn’t been given final approval yet).
They have more pressing needs, and basically nobody goes to Rays games anyway. The money they are going to hand over to slimy Stu could be better spent in hundreds, if not thousands, of ways.
Except for the fact that nobody in Tampa wants to play ball for the team. They tried to get Tampa to work. But in the end, no one wanted to pay the sweetheart deal to make that happen.
If Stu could get his 1.6 billion dollars from Hillsbourgh, then he would have took it. Instead, what this means is that if the Rays abandon St. Pete, and Tampa won’t pay, that the Rays leave the area entirely.
More likely this opens the bidding for Stu. “Hey I have 1.6 billion here in St. Pete, if you want a team, that is the opening bid.”
In short, if the county does not vote to fund the bonds, then the deal is off and the rays are gone immediately and permanently. The whole point of the leverage of the lease was that they Rays were bound to St. Pete until 2028. Now, they aren’t.
If Pinellas County wants a commitment from the rays, the best they are going to do is get them to say, we will be there on opening day of the new stadium at this point. And that commitment costs 1.6 billion dollars.
If you want to stop the whole field of schemes thing, then we need to do it nationally with a law that outlaws it. But if you think that somehow, we are going to get billionaire owners and force them to do anything, you have not been paying attention.
Except Sternberg spent the better part of a decade looking for other cities interested in him relocating the Rays there — even just to drive up the bidding for St. Pete and Tampa — and got nowhere. Will he threaten to go elsewhere if the bonds aren’t approved? Certainly. Will he have any good options to do so? Very likely not — look what John Fisher is having to settle for in Las Vegas.
I understand. But the rays were allowed to talk to other Tampa Bag area cities only. They were never allowed to talk to out of state cities.
The Rays had a deal for a new park. And in fact, there is a MLB stadium sitting empty right now in Oakland. If Stu goes to his fellow owners and says “hey I had a deal and they backed out” I am certain that MLB will find a suitable place to play. If that is the case, then just about every top 30 market that doesn’t have a MLB team has a place to play right now.
MLB has shown that they will accept minor league facilities at least temporarily. My point being that if the county here wants to try to push around a billionaire,
This is right. There’s no point in giving away hundreds of millions, or more, to a franchise that has no leverage. The Rays don’t have another city or state lined up to build a MLB ballpark for the team, so they don’t have leverage.
“Convention center that would drive way more tourism” um, noooooo…
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/category/misc/convention-center-follies/
Captain Pike: “You’ll….give her back her illusion of beauty?”
Trelosian: “And more”
I think it comes down to many issues:
1) Is Tropicana Field Repairable or not or is it too far gone?
2) Is it worth repairing Tropicana Field if a new stadium is going to be constructed in three years?
3) What is the cost to Repair Tropicana Field if it is fixable and who will pay for it?
4) Assuming that Tropicana Field is Repairable, how long will it take to fix?
5) How long will the Rays need a temporary stadium home for? Half a Season, One Season, Two Seasons, Three Seasons?
6) What Stadiums are available on the days the Rays needs and which stadiums are feasible in terms of seating capacity? Keep in mind for a lot of them, the seating capacity will be smaller. Also, which survived the hurricane enough to be usable?
Many of the Florida stadiums that have been mentioned in the media as possible temporary homes for the Tampa Bay Rays (Al Lang Stadium, Steinbrenner Field, Disney Wide World of Sports Stadium, Bay Care Ballpark, Raymond James Stadium, TD Ballpark, Charlotte Sports Park, Loan Depot Park, Ed Smith Stadium, etc) require sharing the stadium with another team or re configuring the stadium as some are configured for Soccer/Football (Al Lang and Raymond James).
7) If none of these stadiums can accomodate the Rays Scheduling, then they may have to consider temporarily relocating. Originally there was some talk of moving to North Carolina to the Durham Bulls Athletic Park, but this was shot down to by the Bulls. Montreal, another location considered is out of the question as their Olympic Stadium is under renovation right now. Some of the other locations suggested include Omaha’s Charles Schwab Field, Birmingham’s Rickwood Field, First Horizon Park in Nashville, Smith’s Ballpark in Salt Lake City, and the Oakland Coliseum in California.
As noted in another thread, the Tarpons are drawing well below 1,000 fans a game over the last three seasons. They play about 50 home games.
If they charge $40 a ticket (they don’t), it would still cost less than $2m to buy out their entire expected gate for a season and have them play in a sandlot, in Pensacola, as a ‘permanent’ road team in the FSL, or not at all.
There is no financial downside to moving the Tarpons and putting the Rays at Legends. Hillsborough county owns it. Any lost revenue (real or imagined) for Pinellas would be irrelevant next to the cost to repair the Trop (which, as Neil has pointed out, does not fall solely on the county – perhaps not at all dependent on how the inevitable court cases/settlements turn out.
Having the Tarpons groundshare with Clearwater is an interesting idea… that franchise generally leads the FSL in attendance, so you wonder if they might actually draw more in Clearwater than they do at home…
Maybe Move the tarpons to vero beach while the rays take over their stadium