The sale of the Tampa Bay Rays to Patrick Zalupski and friends for $1.7 billion is now official, and the Tampa Bay Times is on it! Here’s what their three staff writers on the story are reporting:
With no official plan for a new stadium and Tropicana Field still under repair, the new owners have big questions to answer.
Well, yes, though Tropicana Field is set to no longer be under repair by next spring, so that’s less a big question than “Can they find someone willing to build them a stadium, and would whatever subsidy it came with be enough to make it worth spending a pile of their own money moving from one part of Tampa Bay to another?”
“This is exciting for the Tampa Bay area,” Pinellas County Commission chairperson Brian Scott said Monday. “It opens up exciting new possibilities for the future of baseball.”
No idea what that is supposed to mean, other than “We sure are glad to see the back of that guy.”
“There’s an awful lot of opportunity for them if we can find the right home and the right deal for the team and the city,” said Tampa City Council chairperson and Tampa Sports Authority board member Alan Clendenin.
Likewise, though Clendenin being from the Tampa side of the bay means this could have the added subtext of “Sure would love to have the Rays in Hillsborough County, not that there’s much public money available to make that happen.”
The sale of the team also includes the Tampa Bay Rowdies, a United Soccer League franchise. The professional soccer team plays at Al Lang Stadium in St. Petersburg. It’s unclear whether the Rowdies would stay at their waterfront home or move wherever the team goes.
“Rowdies May or May Not Join Rays in Stadium That Isn’t Planned Yet” would have been a hilarious headline, and I am sad to see the Times chose not to run with that one.
Zalupski and his group of buyers are purchasing a team without a permanent home.
Can anyone truly be said to have a permanent home? Yes, the Rays’ lease expires after 2028 (moved back a year after the hurricane damage made Tropicana Field unplayable for 2025), but every team’s lease expires eventually, at which point the options are always the same: extend it or move somewhere else. Zalupski is in the same boat that Stu Sternberg was the last decade or so, really: He has a stadium to play in, but no one loves it much, but also a new stadium would come with most of the same problems as the old one unless someone can figure out how to build a stadium that doesn’t get overly hot or rained on all the time and is in the exact middle of the bay. And for a price that would earn Zalupski more profits, so no fair proposing this.
Depending on the timeline for a new stadium, the owners may seek a short-term lease extension at Tropicana Field.
Given that it’s September 2025, and it takes close to three years to get a stadium built after it’s planned, and nothing is being planned right now, that “may” seems to be an understatement if anything. Surely Zalupski is going to want to leave the lease expiration hanging to push local governments to offer new stadium deals, but it’s hanging over his head too, perhaps even more so since he’d be the one with nowhere to play if it runs out too soon. A set of year-to-year extension options would be nice for him, but if St. Pete officials are smart they would drive a hard bargain before offering those, since it would reduce their leverage and get them absolutely nothing in exchange.
“They’re going to have to build and make relationships and contacts with people throughout the region to decide what’s the best place for the ballpark in order to make the Rays successful over the long haul,” [MLB Commissioner Rob] Manfred said at a Front Office Sports summit in New York.
As usual, Manfred wins the prize for using the most words to say the least, which comes down to “They need to figure stuff out soon.” Though he does manage to do the standard commissioner thing of making the decision seem like “The team owner needs to decide where to put a new stadium” rather than “The team owner needs to figure out how much a new stadium would cost him and if it would be worth it,” which is the actual calculus at work, but which is less useful for creating a bidding war among different governmental bodies.
The article then helps out making site selection seem like the main hurdle by launching into a list of possible sites, including Tampa’s Ybor Harbor (currently targeted for a women’s soccer stadium but that could change), the Dale Mabry Campus of Hillsborough College, WestShore Plaza, the Florida State Fairgrounds, the former Tampa Greyhound track in Sulphur Springs, or somewhere in Orlando, according to Hillsborough County Commissioner Ken Hagan, though he may have just been using it to try to light a fire under his fellow Hillsborough elected officials:
“If for any reason we’re unable to get over the finish line, then the team may ultimately be in Orlando,” he said this month. “It’s Tampa’s to lose.”
Sure must be nice to be a billionaire and to have local elected officials levying move threats against their own cities and counties on your behalf! You don’t even have to pay them except maybe for some free tickets, it’s the best.
Nitpick: Hillsborough Community College.
Also, some may be glad to see Sternberg gone, but I think believing the new guy is some sort of Jeff Vinick-like savior is folly.
The college rebranded in July:
https://news.hccfl.edu/press-releases/press-release-details/2025/Hillsborough-Community-College-Becoming-Hillsborough-College-2025-soa6doPhuC/default.aspx
Wow. Google them and it literally still says “Hillsborough Community College.”
My bad. Life comes at you fast.
Building a stadium for a team that barely draws 15,000 a game in an 81 game stadium is a folly. As much as every city wants to have an NFHL MLB, NBA franchise there are some like Miami and Tampa Bay that simply shouldn’t have teams because their population bases simply don’t support their franchises. Years ago I remember watching an important Miami Heat game from one of their 2 incarnations of arenas since 1988. Well into the 1st quarter half the seats on courtside and even into the stand were empty. Hardly sports fans to begin with.
The same can be said of the Miami Marlins getting a 500 million dollar 37,000 seat baseball park in 2012 when they’ve never been one of the better teams nor a real contender in most seasons. Of course that 500 million will become probably over a billion when its factor into principal, yearly interest payments and paying off principal and maintenance for a team that can’t draw more than 10k to 13k in every year from 2017 to present minus the COVID year.
There are plenty of morbid MLB franchises at this point with less than exemplary attendance being Marlins, Rays, White Sox, Athletics, Pirates and a few others that always in the bottom 10. At the same time city budgets are busted or hurting as jobs flee for offshoring or because of economic conditions. So in essence city and county politicians in all these places are putting a grindstone around their necks to drown in the sea but leaving the mess for the taxpayers for generations.
If the Rays want a stadium guess Tampa and St. Pete should tell them to find one elsewhere in Orlando, Charlotte, Nashville, Portland or Montreal. Then again I think the leagues and team owners should own their own stadiums and then market them properly instead of the taxpayers paying for this boondoogle.
Apparently the new roof is still being made… no idea what timeline on delivery is.
And the trop’s dugouts and clubhouses (?) have several feet of water in them.
The facility still ‘could’ be ready for opening day next spring, but remediation work and improvements will need to start happening a LOT faster than they have been so far to make that work.
As a frequent attendee of Rays games at the Trop, I must say it never really felt spotless there. I can only imagine what might be lurking over there with no roof for a year.
Hopefully some relief pitchers.
Maybe the local governments saw how Miami fleeced their taxpayers for a stadium that’s still empty and realized it may not be worth it. Seems like renovating the Trop may be the most realistic path forward.
If there’s one thing we’ve learned, it’s that local elected officials never ever ever ever seem to learn from prior failures.
Blah blah blah jobs blah blah blah economic development blah blah blah big-league city. Ignore every study ever done.
Plus by the time any of this comes up for renewal, or has clearly become an economic debacle, every elected that was involved in approval has either climbed the ladder to a higher office (while touting the project as a roaring success the whole way), or has retired.
For yet another depressing example of this mentality, see the Ward 7 councilmember in DC who voted for the new Commanders stadium deal and stated on public radio (WAMU) that those studies didn’t apply here because this was a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity.
If anything, the local officials might even see the Marlins ballpark as a *success*, regardless of the ultimate cost of that project, simply by the virtue of the team not relocating elsewhere.
Minus their initial few years 1993 to about 1997 the Marlins have never been one of the higher drawing teams. So they have been in the league for 32 years now and had 3 times of getting 2 million in attendance for 81 games or about 25,000 a game. Usually and especially since Marlins Park was opened it was low 20,000 attendance from 2012 to 2017 but since 2017 and minus 2020 the average has been between 10,000 to 13,000 a game. A huge mistake when the 1 billion plus cost could have been used for better jobs and better economics and education. Instead Jeffrey Loria and Bruce Sherman got the benefit while the taxpayers got screwed over.
The Marlins Park location was the big fumble. It’s not really connected to the freeway system or public transportation. There’s been practically no development around the ballpark. I was there for a game with maybe 1000 other people and there was still a mini traffic jam as you exited the parking garage.
Had they got something built on the bay, surrounded by other development- it might have worked. The bigger problem with South Florida is just how spread out things are- you could really never build a facility at the “right” location if the goal is to draw 30,000+ for 81 dates in the summer, when the wealthiest residents skip town.
$1.7 billion is obviously a bit short of the floor price they wanted to set for MLB franchises. Oh, to be a fly on the wall at the winter meetings this year… between this guy and John Fisher, there’ll be enough hot air that they won’t have to touch the thermostat.
Indeed. How you gonna fleece some numbskull expansion candidates when the prices for existing franchises with ready made markets and an actual baseball operation keep falling???
If you successfully deploy the (deeply corrupt) General Partnership/Managing General Partner structure, you could become an MLB owner with total control of a franchise for significantly under $1bn… and in a smallish market farm the subsidy to the tune of $50-75m each and every year for as long as you live.
I don’t know. Tampa/St Pete isn’t a huge market, they don’t have a high value stadium, and the residents don’t seem to really care about the team. I am guessing many people in the area are transplants from the northeast and are fans of the Mets, Phillies, Red Sox, or Yankees. I don’t think the owners of the Pirates or Reds are upset about the deal, and it certainly doesn’t matter to teams like the Cubs or Dodgers.
Charlotte and Nashville are even smaller markets where the percentage of transplants within the population is just as large, if not even larger, than it is in Tampa Bay.
There’s no reason why the prospective expansion groups in either city (or in the other candidate cities) shouldn’t haggle down from the stated $2 billion figure for a new team, knowing that an established team in a bigger market just sold for less. And this is before we even get to the ballpark aspect of the expansion process; even if there’s a hefty public contribution to the construction of one, those groups will still be on the hook for a good amount of money of their own.
I’m increasingly unsure that we’re going to see expansion anytime soon. Many MLB owners seem to be banking on creating a mega-TV deal once all the existing rights expire in a couple of years, and the bigger the shared revenue pie, the less existing owners are going to want to share slices with small-market owners in Nashville and Greensboro.
It really doesn’t make any sense- $2 billion for expansion fee, $500+ million toward stadium (could be more depending on the local subsidy), a couple hundred million (at least) in marketing/staffing. This is before you pay a single player.
The Twins could find a buyer at $1.5 billion.
$3+ billion in costs before a single pitch is thrown- for a sport with a major labor stoppage coming up and no significant national television revenue.
For that much you could buy recent Champions league runner up Inter Milan and still have quite a bit left over. You could buy multiple Japanese baseball teams. You could buy a WNBA team and a NWSL team and both leagues would let you base them in a cornfield in Iowa. It’s an astronomical amount of money when it comes to the business of sports
Very true about Tampa St. Pete and the fans don’t generally care outside of a certain level of diehards. Otherwise they would get a lot more than 15,616 in 2024 season.
I remember a playoff game a few years ago and no one essentially showed up for the Rays playoff game and the place and huge sections of empty seats dressed up as people. Its laughable that a metro area of 1 million plus can’t even get 35,000 people to show up for a playoff game.
Very much true and evident with several other teams not based in Florida as well.
Watched the Reds series w Pittsburgh. Pirates have long since scheduled their October tee times, but the Reds are/very recently were very much in the wildcard race… I doubt there were 10,000 fans in the stadium for either of the last two games.
If it wasn’t for the road/home unis, I might have thought the series was in Pittsburgh…
Twins couldn’t find a buyer at $1.5 billion
They also couldn’t successfully contract themselves out of existence. Something I kept in mind while listening to Pohlad Jr. talking up their ‘tremendous pride’ at being Twins owners.
Odd behaviour if you want to show pride, isn’t it?
While many of us agree that MLB expansion is less likely now than at any time since the last expansion (which, you’ll recall, wasn’t exactly a tremendous success…), it has nothing to do with the ‘stadium situation’ for the A’s and Rays’ (despite Mumblefred’s repeated proclamations).
Serious question: IF you were a billionaire or a group of investors with the $3Bn it might take to float an expansion MLB team in a second or third rate market (that earns you a net $40-80m a year at best), would you consider talking to your fellow expansion “candidate” about pooling your $5-6Bn investment and starting a rival 8-12 team league?
$500m per team in stadium, startup and ‘acceptable operating losses’ over ten years. Would you be better off a decade down the road than you would with your moribund 4th quartile MLB team?
I think you might be.
Unlike “legacy” leagues, you wouldn’t be required to locate your clubs wherever they told you to, and you could build low capacity stadia (10-15k… or use existing ones in a few locations) for much more reasonable costs while partnering with TV networks (the stadia would be HD production studios first, places for paying fans to sit very much second) desperate for content. If you are able to keep the tv rights reasonable, you might even find OTA baseball can make a comeback.
As with any other startup league, you would bleed cash for 5-10 years in most markets. But as Lamar Hunt proved (twice), it can be done. The idea wouldn’t be to force a merger (like a double digit IQ Very Famous Person tried and catastrophically failed to do 40 years ago) but to provide an alternative that you control 100% (not to say franchises couldn’t be sold down the road).
There are plenty of players. One of the reasons (besides greed) that MLB has ‘rationalized’ the minor leagues is that the collegiate baseball system is now producing very, very good MLB ready players. And, as with hockey, basketball and football, there isn’t that much difference between the least talented players on the big club’s roster and the four or five best players in the G-League/AHL/unemployment line.
It’s true that you don’t get the guaranteed MLB central revenue payouts, but you also don’t have their restrictions.
It’s not about ‘ruling in hell rather than serving in heaven’ either. There’s a path to profitability – maybe even greater profitability 20 years out than another tiny MLB market might generate.
I would not consider that, because I would expect that MLB would immediately retaliate with “Any TV streamer that so much as talks to the new league is ineligible to bid on our media rights.”
It’s what killed the United Baseball League, and they would absolutely do it again.
I am certain they would. But the new league is not marketing itself to the same networks/RSNs/streamers as MLB.
The media rights for a startup league for it’s first 20 years are not going to be anywhere near as valuable as MLBs… and even the tickets would be marketed to a different audience – namely the people that MLB (and all major sports) have left behind/priced out.
Professional sports became popular as the entertainment for the masses. The masses can no longer afford to watch (sometimes even on TV).
I’m not sure I would bank on any business plan that assumes there will be any TV networks not owned by Skydance by 2029.