The financing of the Rays baseball stadium closes a difficult chapter for the Major Leagues
The plight of the A’s in Oakland and the Rays in Tampa Bay has been a major league dilemma for decades, spanning the careers of the last two commissioners, Rob Manfred and Bud Selig.
With the closely contested vote by government bodies last week in Tampa and Hillsborough County supporting public dollars in part for a $2.3 billion stadium project for the Rays, those problems have finally been put to rest.
“It’s great news,” Rays manager Kevin Cash, a Tampa native, told local reporters last week. “Congratulations to the organization and our staff. A lot of hard work. There’s a lot to be excited about.”
Both teams have been forced to relocate. The A’s are on their way to Las Vegas via West Sacramento in 2028, when a new $2 billion ballpark opens on the Strip.
The Rays will leave Tropicana Field in St. Petersburg for a complex across the bay near the airport, the football stadium and Steinbrenner Field, the Yankees’ spring home. The ballpark and surrounding entertainment complex will be on the grounds of a relocated Hillsborough Community College on the Dale Mabry campus and is expected to open in 2029. The state of Florida provided that land.
Both projects were complicated and left hard feelings between Oakland’s fervent fan base and those who have been accustomed to seeing the Rays at the Trop since they expanded to the American League in 1998.
But there’s no doubt, unlike the A’s, dual local government decisions saved the Rays for the Tampa Bay Area.
“This is a great day for Rays fans, the entire Tampa Bay region and Major League Baseball,” Manfred said Friday in a statement. “This agreement…provides a tremendous foundation for the Rays and MLB to continue to thrive in this community for generations to come.”
Manfred deserves credit for carrying out both situations in the stadium
Manfred receives his share of criticism for his decisions, as did Selig and all the commissioners before them, but for this he deserves immense praise. It was a long and hard road that often suffered serious setbacks. And when his tenure ends with his retirement on January 25, 2029, this will be a big part of his legacy.
That and the countless changes to the rules of the course, which have increased the pace and texture of the game. Considering how the current labor negotiations end, he will leave MLB in a much better place than when he took over from Selig on January 25, 2015.
Selig did a host of positive things: abolishing league offices and putting MLB and umpires under one umbrella. Establish division and wild card playoff formats. He created Jackie Robinson Day, the inner-city RBI program and baseball academies. Under his leadership, the World Baseball Classic was born and flourished.
But the one thing he couldn’t accomplish was solving the problems at the A’s and Rays stadiums. If anything, the A’s in particular became a running joke at owners’ meetings. In March 2009, Selig established a Blue Ribbon Committee to help find a place in the San Francisco Bay Area for the A’s to build.
After each meeting, a colleague would ask if there had been any progress citing the days, months, and finally years since the committee’s creation.
Selig had nothing to report and said it in sometimes colorful language.
“Thank you for asking,” he added sarcastically.
The committee would eventually disband without a response, even though Selig had helped engineer the team’s 2005 sale to Lew Wolff, a former University of Wisconsin fraternity buddy, and John Fisher. Wolff was eventually ousted and the A’s fled Oakland.
Manfred took charge with all that on his plate.
We’ve discussed the A’s situation ad infinitum since MLB approved their move to Las Vegas, which became a fait accompli when they left Oakland for good at the end of the 2024 season. The move to Las Vegas lasted 18 years and involved two owners and five different locations: two in Santa Clara County and two in Oakland proper.
The move to Las Vegas was contingent on the state of Nevada approving $380 million in public funds for the Las Vegas ballpark project, which occurred on June 15, 2023. Fisher is responsible for the remaining funds.
There have been many stops and starts in Tampa Bay
At the same time, on Florida’s Gulf Coast, then-Rays owner Stew Sternberg reached an agreement with the city of St. Pete and Pinellas County to build a new $1.2 billion domed stadium on land adjacent to the Trop as part of an urban renewal project.
Life and a couple of devastating hurricanes intervened. Hurricane Milton, the second of which, ripped all the Teflon panels off the Trop’s roof and flooded the interior of the facility. The Rays were forced to play the entire 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field while the city of St. Pete remodeled the stadium. Before that could happen, Sternberg scuttled the new stadium deal.
Sternberg conveyed the team’s decision to St. Petersburg Mayor Ken Welch in a phone call on March 13, 2025.
“After careful deliberation, we have concluded that we cannot move forward with the new stadium and development project at this time,” the owner said. “A series of events beginning in October that no one could have foreseen led to this decision.”
It was the second time Sternberg canceled a local stadium deal, having backed out of another across the bay in Ybor City in 2018.
St. Pete’s decision effectively ended Sternberg’s ownership of the Rays. Manfred and MLB owners told Sternberg to sell the team. On October 1, 2025, the owners approved the $1.7 billion sale to a group led by Jacksonville, Florida developer Patrick Zalupski.
That’s when serious plans to cross the bay began. It seemed unlikely that government officials would come together and reach an agreement. But all that became reality last week. Now you can start purchasing bonds and shovels to dig in the ground.
It also seemed unlikely that the Rays, playing at the Trop this season, would have the best record in the American League after missing the playoffs the last two seasons.
It’s a new day that will cost the Rays more than $1 billion in out-of-pocket expenses and borrowed funds on the stadium alone. They have a lease to play at the Trop for two more seasons.
“Above all, we now look forward to celebrating before breaking ground with Hillsborough County and the city of Tampa, something that has long been doubted but will in fact happen,” Rays CEO Ken Babby said in a statement Friday. “By making forever home a reality, the Rays are now your forever home in Tampa Bay.”
