Pressuring the Rays owners to sell

[Marshmallowmilkshake]

The Athletic says MLB is leaning on the Rays owners to sell to a group that will keep the team in the region if the latest stadium plan falls through.



https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6189456/2025/03/09/commissioner-owners-pressure-rays-sale-mlb/https://www.nytimes.com/athletic/6189456/2025/03/09/commissioner-owners-pressure-rays-sale-mlb/

“If Stu walks away from this deal, I think the owners and Major League Baseball will see that he either has an unwillingness to do a new stadium in Tampa Bay, or he has a financial issue that prevents him from doing a new stadium in Tampa Bay and there needs to be an ownership change,” Latvala said. “I do believe that we'll have new ownership with the Rays at some point in the near future.”

Edited March 10, 2025 by Guest

[metirish]

Even with new ownership the stadium issue remains

[metirish]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/44236578/tampa-bay-rays-not-moving-forward-new-stadium-planshttps://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/44236578/tampa-bay-rays-not-moving-forward-new-stadium-plans





The Tampa Bay Rays, citing hurricanes and costly delays, will not proceed with the development of a $1.3 billion baseball stadium in St. Petersburg, Florida, principal owner Stuart Sternberg said Thursday.

[Edgy MD]

I dinna understand the "pressure to sell."



Either they are meeting their obligations or they are not.

[Johnny Lunchbucket]

The way I understand it is nobody happy with their failure to get a stadium deal done -- taxpayers (thank in part to Manfred's cheerleading) are footing a part of the bill but the Sternbergs couldn't come up with their end by the deadline. So MLB might kick em out and find someone wealthier, maybe in a different city

[Benjamin Grimm]

Tampa St. Pete is the nation's 17th largest media market, so I can understand why Manfred is reluctant to abandon the area. But for whatever reason (I haven't been paying close enough attention to speculate why) it's not working. I really suspect they'll be playing somewhere else by the end of the decade.

[bmfc1]

Benjamin Grimm wrote: Tampa St. Pete is the nation's 17th largest media market, so I can understand why Manfred is reluctant to abandon the area. But for whatever reason (I haven't been paying close enough attention to speculate why) it's not working. I really suspect they'll be playing somewhere else by the end of the decade.

MLB doesn't have to abandon the area: Nashville is hot for a team (they even unveiled caps yesterday: https://www.mlbmusiccity.com/https://www.mlbmusiccity.com/). TB sells to the Nashville ownership group, which avoids the expansion fees and gets a team next year (which has to play at the minor league ballpark in Nashville until a new stadium is built--this isn't good but that's Manfred's problem). Manfred tells Tampa (I'm paraphrasing): "We haven't abandoned you. If you get your shit together you will get an expansion team (when we expand)."

[Frayed Knot]

The irony to this whole thing is that the reason MLB expanded to TB/StP in the first place was that they had a ready-made stadium, one that had been built in anticipation of luring either SFG or CHW away from their home cities. Problem was that it was a really bad ready-made stadium, both in terms of construction and location, and that has been at the center of that team's problems for their entire history.

MLB seemed to feel sorry for the TB area, first for getting passed over by an existing team and then for being beaten to the first Florida ML team by Miami, so they made it up to them in the next expansion just a few years later. But undoing so they put a team into a stadium ill-designed for baseball which was located a lengthy bridge crossing away from the center of baseball fandom on the opposite side of the bay.