As of a month ago, Tampa Bay Rays owner Stuart Sternberg was said to be in “advanced talks” to sell the team to a group led by Florida developer Patrick Zalupski, who would then presumably restart talks to build a new stadium in the Tampa Bay area. Today — well, let’s let the Athletic headline tell the story:
Sale of Rays expected to be final by September, team likely to stay in Tampa area: Source
That’s impressively vague, in that even when citing the report to an unnamed source (“a person briefed on the process,” according to the Athletic story), they still find it necessary to hedge with “expected to” and “likely.” Evan Drellich and Ken Rosenthal go on to say that Zalupski has agreed to a $1.7 billion purchase “in principle” it’s “expected to be completed as soon as September,” but still this is more moving from “advanced” to “very advanced” talks than actual solid news.
And as for where the team will play, that’s an even more impressive cavalcade of maybes:
Zalupski is expected to keep the team in the Tampa Bay area, with a strong preference to be in Tampa rather than St. Petersburg….
The sale could hasten a conclusion to the Rays’ long-running search for a new stadium.
You know who else had a strong preference to play in Tampa rather than St. Pete? Stu Sternberg, until it turned out Hillsborough County didn’t have enough money to pay for most of a stadium there and he didn’t want to himself, at which point he pivoted to the $1 billion St. Petersburg subsidy deal that he later backed out of because reasons. So basically we’re back to square one on where the Rays will play, only with a new owner who St. Petersburg officials don’t hate so much — which could easily make an important difference, as anyone can say who remembers how the Detroit Tigers being sold from one pizza baron to a different one with more real estate connections helped jumpstart that team’s stadium demands.
As for Zalupski, aside from him paying (sorry, being expected to pay) a remarkably high sale price for a distressed property — $1.7 billion would be just under what the Baltimore Orioles sold for last year — aside from his own real estate background in building single-family homes that only sometimes explode, he doesn’t have much of a track record to go by. The Tampa Bay Times’ Marc Topkin, always eager to find something nice to say about the local sports team owner, enthuses that Zalupski “has been involved in pro sports,” by which he means that his company Dream Finders Homes once owned naming rights to the Jacksonville Jaguars‘ practice facility and he “has earned an invitation to Jaguars owner Shad Khan’s superyacht.” Zalupski and Dream Finders are also major donors to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, though DeSantis has already vowed not to spend any money on a Rays stadium except for “roads and exits.” We’ll have to wait and see, which is really the case with all of this story from the sale on down, at least until some sources are actually willing to go on the record with something.
Rays fan here.
To quote Henry Jones, Sr.: “Our situation has not improved.”
This crony of the governor will probably suddenly get state money, because vowing you won’t spend state money is suddenly not so iron-clad once it’s one of your major donors doing the asking.
If they end up in Tampa, great, fine, whatever. But this guy is going to be problematic, it says here.
The skepticism is warranted. It doesn’t make sense that someone would pay $1.7 billion for this team when (a) any new owner would almost immediately have to fork over hundreds of millions more toward the construction of a new ballpark, (b) there’s no plan for a new ballpark so it’s not even known how much more a new owner would have to pay, and (c) there’s no set location for a new ballpark. nor is there the public funding lined up for the majority of the ballpark cost, something that any new owner would want.
So it is very likely that either Mr. Z and friends are not buying the Rays, or they are paying a lot less than $1.7 billion.
There. Now that the Rays and Athletics stadium situations are fully resolved, we can preceed toward the process of having expansion related talks commencing. This is an important day for Major League Baseball in Tampa and across the nation.
To those who said this day might never come, well, we have made that happen.
“Nailed it!”
“DeSantis has already vowed not to spend any money on a Rays stadium except for ‘roads and exits.\'”
KT’s already alluded to this, but as anyone who lives in Florida would tell you, RDS is one of the premier pay-for-play statemen in the US. Juice up the bribes (sorry, contributions) enough, and play up your connections enough, and he’ll do whatever famous you want him to do. Not to mention he’s a lame duck governor with an uncertain future in politics, so it stands to reason that he would be even more cavalier about inconveniences like basic ethics.
whatever favors* lol
Huh! Who knew there were Clinton Republicans as well as Clinton Democrates…
It seems to me his future in politics IS pretty certain given how his catastrophic presidential run ended (and the local response to it), but hey, I’ve been surprised before…
The St. Petersburg taxpayers are not . paying for a stadium with no lease payment or revenue sharing. The Mason Dixon poll says it all; the more taxpayers leaned about the Ray’s deal, the more they hated it. And the land give away is not going to happen. They can play at Trop Field or leave.