The revised Tampa Bay Rays stadium plan paperwork was released on Friday afternoon, in a classic Friday news dump. The idea behind these is to dominate the discourse just as everyone goes home for the weekend, so that by the time Monday rolls around — in this case, with a city council vote looming on Thursday — it will be too late for anyone to muster significant analysis of 173 pages of extremely convoluted legal language.
With that said, let’s dive in to the documents — a stadium development and funding agreement, a nonrelocation agreement, and a guaranty — and see where things stand.
- As expected, the main update is councilmember Bill Carlson’s replace-one-city-tax-pool-with-another switcheroo, with $180 million in spending coming entirely from property taxes instead of a mix of property taxes and sales taxes. Though it’s not spelled out in the documents, $100 million of this is being described as a “private placement” of bonds by the Rays — which is true in that the Rays would be selling the bonds, but not in that they would get to pay it off with their own city property tax payments on the surrounding development. So as discussed last week, it still amounts to the same $180 million total city cost, the Casino Night Fallacy notwithstanding.
- Or maybe more: The funding agreement doesn’t actually specify the exact amount of redirected city property taxes, instead kicking that can down the road to an Increment Interlocal Agreement to be decided by a future City TIF Ordinance, to be passed by December. And it does spell out a “waterfall” account to use excess TIF moneys to pay for future bond costs and “capital repairs, renewals, and replacements of Overall Public Infrastructure Improvements and/or Capital Maintenance and Repairs of Public Project Improvements within the District” — in other words, if there’s additional property tax proceeds after paying off the first $180 million, it can be used for additional future expenses. Total city public cost, then, is TBD, but setting aside future tax receipts for upgrade costs can add up quickly; in the Atlanta Falcons deal, a similar waterfall fund meant that an official $200 million public cost has ballooned to about $700 million.
- Reporter Shadow of the Stadium notes on X that “🚨Public subsidies go way past $1B,” which is accurate but nothing new: The original plan included $976 million in city and county cash, $839 million in forgone property taxes and parcel fees on the stadium, and at least $250 million worth of free state land, so this was always a $2 billion–plus subsidy. (The total stadium construction cost, meanwhile, now stands at $2.36 billion, according to the latest documents, meaning public cash and tax breaks will cover at least 85% of Rays owner Patrick Zalupski’s stadium costs.) The waterfall fund could make it even more spendy, though — Shadow calls it a “bottomless” subsidy, and as written at present, that appears to be correct.
- There is a “first-class stadium facility” clause, but this appears to only require the city and county to build a first-class stadium, not to maintain it as first class. If so, it couldn’t serve as a state-of-the-art out clause that Zalupski could use to demand more money before his lease is up, so that’s a positive, or at least not an additional negative.
- On the subject of that lease, the team is reporting that it would agree to pay $4 million a year in rent as part of the new plan, which would trim about $60 million off the public’s expense. However, this figure appears nowhere in the new set of documents, so it’s tough to say if it would come with any hidden catches.
- Nothing to do with funding, but Zalupski has the option to make this the lowest-capacity MLB stadium in existence: Only a minimum of “28,000 fixed spectator seats” is required, with another 2,000 standing room tickets. This would be even fewer seats than the Athletics‘ 33,000-seat stadium under construction in Las Vegas, and the smallest purpose-built MLB stadium since Sportsman’s Park in St. Louis in 1920, looks like. This may be fine for a team that hasn’t averaged 30,000 in attendance since their inaugural season, but it’s also in line with modern strategies for boosting ticket prices via artificial scarcity.
Would this be worse for taxpayers than the Kansas City Royals stadium plan announced last week? It’s tough to say, as there are so many unknowns remaining in both cases. But either would be the most expensive MLB stadium subsidy in history; if they both pass, all that’s left to determine is who’s #1 and who’s #1a.
Tampa stands to be undeniably #1 in one particular form of self-own, though:
At a news conference Friday afternoon, Tampa City Council member Alan Clendenin unbuttoned his dress shirt to reveal a Rays jersey customized with his name.
“I just can’t understate how big this is,” said Clendenin, appearing alongside Tampa Mayor Jane Castor. “We are a major-league city with major-league sports.”
With Carlson on board as a swing vote, it certainly looks like this enormous bigness will pass the Tampa council on Thursday, leaving its fate in the hands of the county commission, which already voted 5-2 to approve a similar deal in May. We could be looking at the first $2 billion MLB stadium subsidy, and somehow it’s going to be for the Tampa Bay Rays — guess Stu Sternberg wasn’t so dumb to turn down a $1 billion offer from St. Petersburg after all, even if it took selling the team to a more politically connected owner to get the extra billion.
Eh, I don’t think there’s anything shocking about the Rays are on the precipice of receiving the first $2 billion handout in MLB history. Cities that people have been conditioned to think of as “lesser-than” sports markets (or even American cities) tend to internalize the same beliefs themselves, and therefore tend to be overly eager to prove that they’re every bit as “major league” as the bigger, older, and/or richer cities elsewhere.
Yes, you see it in that councilman’s comments and antics. But really, you could see it in the sheer amount of money and the sheer number of perks and benefits that’s about to be forked over to the Rays at the city and county levels. And again, there’s nothing surprising about any of this… and if anything, the only party that might be even more thrilled about the Rays’ (and the Royals’) deals is MLB itself, because the other owners can now point to them and say, “If the Rays and the Royals can get billions of dollars, imagine what WE can get from our cities.”
It’s worth remembering that Patrick Zalupski himself made his billions by starting a development company in Jacksonville (then as now, a rapidly-expanding city) before opening up additional shops across Florida (then as now, a rapidly-expanding state) and then onto portions of the Southeast (then as now, a region with rapidly-expanding cities). This deal amounts to one big real estate play for a guy who’s made his entire name and fortune around the industry — and as we all know, billionaires usually don’t spend a lot of their own money to maintain or build on that status.
I live in Vegas and have gone to their sales center to see about getting season tickets. Albeit without a PSL.
They stated that the official seating capacity it 31,000 with 2,000 SRO.
So both stadiums would be within a very close range of seating and total capacity.
Which technically would be well above the official capacities at their current venues (the Rays have blocked off much or all of the upper deck for years, and Sacramento situation is… the Sacramento situation), but maybe speaks to the type of crowds they believe their respective markets are capable of producing on a really good day.
I think a good number of MLB teams would also opt for a capacity south of 35k if every ballclub were to brainstorm their own “ballpark of the future” today. When they can make as much money selling four front-row seats directly behind home plate as they can by selling out an entire section in the upper deck, they’re bound to change their sales strategies, and even the entire ballpark design, to fit that strategy — knowing that there’s a finite number of people who can afford the former, especially when there are other teams in town competing for the same money and audience.
Right, and if they can dispense with building the last 10,000 seats at all, that’s money they can save on construction — or spend on building a roof and wine bars.
I hadn’t noticed until researching this just now that the Guardians owners have reduced capacity there from 45,000 to 36,000. Everybody seems to have learned from the Red Sox that you make more money by selling fewer tickets at higher prices than lots of tickets at affordable ones.
(In a K-shaped socioeconomic universe, anyway.)
With the loss of local cable TV revenue, I wonder if any teams will regret reducing capacity. Might need a few 40,000+ weekend games against rivals to help the bottom line.
Teams are still going to get a tremendous amount of money from streaming revenue, even if it’s via MLB.tv or something similar instead of local cable deals. How the split will be determined among teams is very much up in the air, but I don’t think there’s a foreseeable future where fans don’t pay a lot of money to be able to watch games on screens.
The Padres – one of the early adopters of MLB itself as their RSN – have said they earned around $30m from streaming via MLB in year one. That was roughly half of what their deal with Bally’s/Diamond Sports/whatever was expected to pay them.
And that’s year one. I have a feeling the RSN debacle will turn out to be a hiccup. Yes, RSNs were and are overpaying. But across the entire league perhaps not by as much as we would like to think.
No doubt teams in regions that don’t care about and shouldn’t have MLB will see lower numbers than the Padres. Doesn’t that actually help MLB in the long run? Knowing where teams honestly shouldn’t be?
When Belmont Park Arena was built in 2021 they could of had 18,000-19,000 for hockey but opted for a bar in the upper end zone instead, bringing the capacity down to 17, 200. They boast about their 24 bars so you know where the emphasis is.
Which is fine when you build it yourself but when the public is paying for it there shouldn’t be a first class facility clause.
If they purposely release the proposal late so you don’t know what’s it when it’s time to vote, vote no. You need schools, police, fire protection, etc. First class stadium facilities are way down the list, and you don’t have to rush the process. Besides, didn’t the Rays get a brand-new roof :>)
I’m sure the 8,800 people who show up to Rays games will be thrilled with the new facility.
For 81 home games over 35 years of “non relocation”, this amounts to a subsidy of over $100 per ticket buyer PER GAME.
I believe all attendees at Rays games over the course of this agreement should be assessed a federal taxable benefit of $101 per game attended.
Alan Clendenin and Bill Carlson make you wonder who the voters were rejecting. Were the losing candidates that much worse than these two?
Bars at stadiums and arenas cater to people who want to get out of the house but don’t really care about sports. I watch a few innings of a then-Indians game from a bar. I have saved my money and gone to minor league parks.
They had Alan Clendenin bust open his shirt because Hulk Hogan wasn’t available.