If you were going to place a bet on which elected official would be most likely to play hardball with the local sports team owner, you almost certainly would not have chosen St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch. This is a guy who on his election in 2022 promptly offered Tampa Bay Rays owner Stu Sternberg $600 million despite Sternberg being out of stadium alternatives, then worked that up to a cool billion. If anything, Welch fit the mold of the get-things-done-no-matter-the-cost mayor, which is a great way to get things done at tremendous cost.
And yet, there Welch was yesterday, in his state of the city address, telling Sternberg that while he’d like to go ahead with the stadium deal they negotiated last summer, if the Rays owner can’t live up to his end of things, there’s a door with his butt’s name on it:
“We will not pursue the deal at any cost,” Welch told those assembled at the Palladium theater. “The greatness and future of St. Pete does not depend solely on this deal, and I am confident that we have given this endeavor our very best effort. It’s an effort and a process we can all be proud of.”…
Asked if Welch would consider new terms with the Rays, he said it was a “painstaking process” to get to the agreements in hand. For the Rays to now say the deal doesn’t make sense, “I think it would undermine any efforts moving forward,” Welch said.
Before anyone gets too excited, Welch is still committed to his billion-dollar stadium subsidy plan, if Sternberg chooses to accept it. (And he didn’t entirely rule out giving the Rays some kind of sweetener on top of the existing deal.) But Sternberg has been hemming and hawing on that — mostly recently mumbling, “We have to make a decision,” yeah, no duh — seemingly in hopes of extracting even more money from taxpayers. And Welch’s response yesterday was, at least: Cool, cool, walk away and then we get back full development rights to the stadium land, that works for us.
Is it possible that Welch is just reading the room, realizing that his city council is never going to approve more stadium cash for a team owner who’s being a dick about it, and deciding to get out in front of things by drawing a hard line at “one billion dollars, and not a penny more”? Absolutely. But that’s still more backbone than he’s shown before, and if nothing else is an indication that political pressure can get politicians to move, at least a little.
What happens next is entirely in Sternberg’s hands. Sports economist and Simpsons meme master J.C. Bradbury declared yesterday that “This deal is cooked, unless Sternberg is willing to crawl back through the supplicants door”; I’m less sure of that, unless Sternberg hates eating crow so much that he’d pass up a billion-dollar check in order to save face. It does mean he’ll have to back down and agree to swallow the “significantly higher costs” he says he now faces thanks to delays in stadium construction — delays initially caused by a hurricane, and now being extended entirely because Sternberg himself hasn’t been willing to sign the paperwork. I know a lot of people believe that the Rays owner secretly wants to walk away from the deal he himself spent the better part of a decade extracting from local officials, but that doesn’t make a lot of sense — or at least, would be incredibly short-sighted, but I suppose we’ve gotten plenty of reminders recently that sports team owners aren’t immune to that.
There is no metropolitan area larger than Tampa/St. Pete that doesn’t have a baseball team. The next biggest markets that don’t have a baseball team are Orlando and Charlotte, and both of those are 500,000 people smaller than Tampa/St Pete. I know RSN money isn’t what it used to be, but it seems like the Rays have little leverage in these negotiations.
Tampa metro pop – 3.2 million
Montreal metro pop – 4.3 million
Despite what some people have posted, downtown St. Pete, and the area around the Trop in particular, is not “dangerous” or “depressing” or a “wasteland’. It’s much different than it was when the franchise was awarded 30 years ago. It may not have developed in the way some of us would have liked…too many high priced condos and apartments…but downtown is a very pleasant place. No thanks to the Rays, who have had the ability for THIRTY YEARS to develop the one true wasteland, the Trop parking lot, and have done NOTHING.
Is it the best location for a new ballpark? No. But unless Stu has some Secret Santa we don’t know about, nobody else is offering the kind of deal he seems to be turning down now.
Really wish we had a local New York Daily News to publish the headline: WELCH TO RAYS: DROP DEAD. But glad that there is still one real reporter, Colleen Wright, at the TBTimes.
Yeah I always found the negative commentary on downtown St Pete to be pretty weird — it’s walkable, it’s relaxing, it’s got a lot of good places to eat (enjoyed Lonni’s Sandwiches on my last trip there), and the waterfront is as good as they come for a city of its size and profile.
Americans are so used to viewing Florida solely through the lens of South Beach that they think anything that doesn’t match up to that must be second or third rate.
All of this is true. While I’m a Hillsborough guy, I think most of the criticism of downtown St. Pete (and much of the criticism of the Trop itself) is misguided, misinformed, or unnecessary.
No one builds ballparks like this anymore, with good reason, but IT WAS OPENED IN 1990, FFS. They’ve done a lot with it (a lot more than they’ve done with the surrounding area, as Barry points out).
Is it optimal? No. Is it comfortable? Yes. Is it clean? Yes. Do you know there will be a game that day for sure? Yes. Is the food really good? Yes. Is it in my top 20 ballpark experiences of all time? No.
This Rays fan no longer cares, really. Stu can take the money and build, sell and take the money and run, move to Nashville, do whatever. I don’t care anymore. The team itself is so uninspiring and mid (yes, the whole Little Budget That Could thing is fine, great, but enough already) that if, after 30 years of trying to explain why people won’t cross the bridge for the product, they want to pick up and move, I don’t care anymore.
Move the MLB Rays already! Nashville& Portland are a shovel away.
It’s not about the shovel. It’s the shovel and a checkbook.
MLB has made it clear they are not letting the 11-12th largest market in the USA lose its team, if you can trust the commissioner of baseball (yah, I know!) who swayed two Pinellas County commissioners to change their votes to “Yes” on approving the bond vote.
Stu’s comments at the Owners Meetings were once again all about himself. He does not have the money, and I blame the Mayor of St. Pete for his stupidity for getting into bed with this crook. Just ask Stu’s partners who took him to court.
John Romano of the Tampa Bay Times on Sunday wrote that he thinks Stu may let the agreement expire on March 31st hoping to get a better deal or sell the team for more money. He also thinks a big lawsuit is in the works.
Downtown St. Pete is amazing – a total change from 30 years ago. The above posts are 100% correct. But this team should be in Tampa. Nobody from Hillsborough/Tampa wants to drive over one of the three bridges that must be crossed to get there. 80-85% of the people that attend games do so now. It is growing, younger and more business who end up buying 70% of the season tickets as it is. The Rays have plenty of fans – the TV ratings prove it.
Now, if time expires on this deal, and I think Stu would be a fool to let it happen, he will have wasted 4 years of everyone’s time (and money) and sets the clock back that amount of time as the mayor reported yesterday.
Seems near certain that Sternberg would love to take the redevelopment rights money and alight for a magical and wonderful world where everything is made of chocolate.
FWIW, I think that is highly unlikely too, given that he has nowhere to move to.
So I would imagine he will huff and he will puff and he will utterly fail to withdraw from this deal, possibly even signing the paperwork and making any other prerequ’s he has to meet on the very last day before it expires.
Personally, I hope he doesn’t. I hope he has the courage to withdraw from this terrible, awful, no good deal and take his wondrous organization somewhere else – just not too close to me, thanks.
As for changing his tune or eating crow on the “increased costs” gambit, why would he? He can just sign the original deal and then go tell the press that everyone else stepped up to cover the costs so the Rays could do this and express his appreciation to “everyone at the city and county” for filling the funding gap etc etc. The press will just print it verbatim without even checking, right?
And hey, where have we heard that kind of con-man talk before?
Stu should sell to SLC already. What good is being in the owner’s club if you are powerless, your city hates you, and the other MLB owners are fed up with your clownishness?
> What good is being in the owner’s club if you are
> powerless, your city hates you, and the other MLB
> owners are fed up with your clownishness?
>
You mean aside from the license to print your own cash?
John Fisher, Frank McCourt & the ghost of Marge Schott are holding on Line Two.
I predict the Rays will be looking to move to Nashville. Here’s why: while Tampa Bay has an area population of 3.3 million, the greater Nashville metro area has a respectable 2.2 million with fans who almost match Tampa ‘s NHL attendance and amazingly exceed Tampa’s NFL attendance. According to NFL stats the Bucs with a playoff team were 29th in the league drawing less than 520,000 for their home games. The Titans, a poor team,was 26th in the league with 590,000 fans attending. The Rays are playing dumb because they will have little to no attendance for 2 years w waiting for Nashville’s new stadium if they show their cards. I think they already know where they are going.
Nashville metro area has roughly 2.25 million residents as of the most recent US census, which is also to say that it’s smaller than all but one of the current MLB markets (Milwaukee). And much like Tampa Bay, the growth of the metro area has been fueled almost exclusively by out-of-towners who bring their hometown loyalties with them, and who have largely sneered at the idea of adopting their new local teams as even their second favorites.
If Rob Manfred is really hell-bent on league expansion as the press claims he is — and I myself am skeptical if expansion will ever happen, at least on his timeline — then eliminating one market from the bidding war to-be would be a significant unforced error on his and the owners’ part.
Also Nashville just spent a buttload of money on a new NFL stadium over public opposition, so spending $1B or more to get an MLB team is going to be a tough sell.
Are you sure those NFL numbers are right? Tampa had 9 home games and Tennessee had 8 and Tennessee had only 1.2k more people per game. Tennessee’s stadium also has a max capacity about 4k more than Tampa.
Why does St Pete want to keep the Rays there? The team has been there for 27 years and its not adding to the quality of life there. Lets set aside the hard financial calculations for a minute. In a lot of places having a team that people like and draws people to the stadium and surrounding area is an amenity that for a lot of people makes the area more desirable.
However, the team does not draw in its current location. So there is no “amenity” aspect to the team being there. Its the same question I had about the Arizona Coyotes. No one seemed to care they were there so why fight to keep something no one cares about?
If you’re a power broker on the St Pete/Pinellas side of the bay (or just a St Pete/Pinellas lifer), losing the Rays to the Tampa/Hillsborough side of the bay is tantamount to the Rays leaving the Tampa Bay area altogether.
Both of the other two major franchises in the area are over there. All of those teams’ championship parades have been over there. The “city vibes” clips that production crews air during nationally televised games are all from over there. The teams’ names even have “Tampa” on it front and center, which makes people believe the Rays are based in Tampa (and why fans on both sides of the bay hate when journos, podcasters, and other fanbases talk about “Tampa” as an MLB market, albeit for different reasons).
The way Americans have been conditioned to think and feel about Florida in general has them assuming that the state as a whole is this one gigantic monolith, where Pensacola, Tallahassee, Jacksonville, Orlando, Tampa/St Pete, Fort Myers/Naples, West Palm Beach, Fort Lauderdale, and Miami are all one and the same. The reality is that each and every one of these regions feels some sort of inferiority/superiority complexes toward each other; if anything, the complexes *within* those metro areas are even stronger (Broward/Miami is another great example of this).
All of which is to say: St Pete and Pinellas County aren’t going to these lengths just to keep the Rays there. A lot of their motivation is simply to keep them from crossing the bay.
So I could get it if St Pete was making a push to get the Buccaneers to move over. Its a trophy asset. But it doesn’t seem like anyone cares about the Rays. If he had never done the deal with the Rays in the first place and just put the land up for bid and took the cash would anyone have been mad at him?
Most Rays fans are probably at a point where they’re no longer surprised by blatant, in-broad-daylight cash grab attempts at Stu Sternberg. And let’s make one thing clear, the Rays are making plenty of dough in a market that most people assume is lesser-than. They’re not this struggling operation fighting every day to keep the lights on, as they’re portrayed to be… including, at times, by the Rays themselves.
Really, that anyone outside of Florida sides with Stu Sternberg at all on this is a byproduct of the idea that winning should excuse any and all greedy behavior by the ownership — as odious as John Fisher is, people would view him a lot similar to how they view Sternberg if the A’s were still consistent winners — and a natural disdain that much of America has toward the Florida sports fan, and just Florida in general.
I am not “siding” with anyone. I am really trying to understand the municipality’s thinking here. Take any city that was on the verge of losing a team like Sacramento on the verge of losing the Kings. Kevin Johnson put together a funding package to keep them there. No one doubts that people in Sacramento love having an NBA team. They had huge attendance and a passionate following. So while they probably aren’t going to get a financial return on the $250ish million they spent one can argue that he did it because people care about having an NBA team. Not a lot of people in St Pete seem to care about having an MLB team. So why fight so hard?
I can and absolutely will argue that KJ did not give money to the Kings owners primarily because people cared about having an NBA team:
https://www.fieldofschemes.com/2016/03/31/10844/seriously-how-did-kevin-johnson-end-up-running-sacramento-like-his-own-personal-fiefdom/
Ok let me rephrase. Keeping the Kings were an ego/legacy play. Which wouldn’t have been a thing if the Kings were the equivalent of the Rays in terms of fan support.
The G1 arena in Sacramento cost $558 million dollars. It was built after the public voted down public funding for the arena twice – and it wasn’t close. KJ worked a deal that sold parking fees in the city for the next 50 years. How long will the arena last? Certainly not 50 years. Also, parking in the city is a freaking nightmare. Outlying areas that used to be free are metered and monitored by parking enforcement that is very aggressive. The arena did create some excitement with new bars and a few restaurants, but they are only used during event nights, the rest of the time the homeless sleep in the doorways. Add in downtown gang shootings and it really hasn’t planned out.
I can answer about why St. Pete fights so hard.
1. Of all the cities and towns on this entire planet. Only one has been willing to pay for a stadium for the rays. Just one. And we have been willing to do it twice.
2. We have a deal. We expect people to live up to that deal.
3. The redevelopment rights where the Trop is is worth billions. The only way we lose out right now is if we let Stu off the hook. So we won’t. But not one penny more.
4. Tampa had the chance to offer Stu a stadium. They said no.
5. Stu has no place to go. Per the lease he can’t even talk about playing games anywhere other than St. Pete. The upcoming season in Tampa means that his lease here has been extended by a year.
6. If Stu walks away, there is no one anywhere who can trust any agreement he makes.
So does anyone think the proposed Trump tax plan to take away subsidy from sports team owners is real? Could that take away tax free bonds from the Rays and other new stadiums?
It’s impossible to say, since he didn’t give specifics. Speculation has been that he would focus on the amortization of player contracts – the tax dodge that Bill Veeck invented though never himself used – though also it’s not clear Trump actuallt has the power to change that law, like so many things he’s announced.