There are no cities ready to take on an MLB team.
If Major League Baseball’s Tampa Bay Rays’ ownership decided there is no path forward in building a stadium in St. Petersburg, where does that ownership turn in looking for a new ballpark? It is not as easy to find a new site as it might appear as ballparks take time to build. You need government partners who are ready to dole out taxpayers money for the project. You need land. You need corporate support and in this day and age, it might be hard to find a television partner willing to pay big money for the rights to show games on that partner’s video platforms. The facts on the ground are this. St. Petersburg elected officials are not putting up money to fix the St. Petersburg facility that had its roof blown off by Hurricane Milton. Neither St. Petersburg nor Pinellas County officials are ready to issue bonds to pay for the Rays ownership’s planned baseball-village. Rays’ baseball will be played in a minor league stadium in Tampa in 2025.
What are the options for Rays’ ownership? If the ownership wants to stay in the Tampa Bay market, Rays’ ownership can work out a new agreement with St. Petersburg and Pinellas County elected officials or perhaps reengage Tampa and Hillsborough County officials and get a stadium built on that side of the bay. There is a problem with building stadiums in other cities with perhaps the Salt Lake City market as local politicians have set aside hundreds of millions of dollars to build a baseball stadium. Portland, Oregon baseball backers have identified a place to put a stadium but there is no financial plan. The same holds true in Nashville, and there are no plans to build a baseball park in cities that have been mentioned as possible MLB expansion markets. MLB has a major Tampa Bay problem.
Evan Weiner’s books are available at iTunes – https://books.apple.com/us/author/evan-weiner/id595575191
Evan can be reached at evan_weiner@hotmail.com
The St. Petersburg ballpark post Hurricane Milton
