There is a groundswell of additional support behind the Rays’ revised plans to build a ballpark in Hillsborough County, Fla., but as has been the case for much of the past 20 years, there are still plenty of unanswered questions about funding.
Two weeks after the MLB club entered a memorandum of understanding to build a stadium and mixed-use development at Hillsborough County’s John Mabry Campus, league commissioner Rob Manfred and Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis both praised the emerging plan from club owner Patrick Zalupski and his partners.
“Baseball belongs in Tampa Bay. Baseball can succeed in Tampa Bay,” said DeSantis, appearing in a joint press conference with Manfred.
That alone is a noteworthy sentiment, as that’s not been a given for the Rays under prior owner Stu Sternberg, who spent many years in a fruitless pursuit to develop a successor facility to Tropicana Field. When a $1.3 billion deal with St. Petersburg, Fla., and Pinellas County finally happened in 2024, Sternberg walked away from it eight months later and sold the team soon thereafter. This was also the first time that a Florida governor made such an overt sign of support for a new Rays ballpark.
The latest deal with the Zalupski group is situated on the eastern side of Tampa Bay, near Raymond James Stadium and Tampa International Airport. While Manfred hesitated to say “it’s this or never,” he did express both confidence and urgency surrounding the club’s latest plan.
“I do think we’re at a point in the history of the club that something needs to get done,” he said.
Paying the Bill?
A rough plan toward funding a new Rays ballpark began to take shape Wednesday as the Hillsborough County Commission unanimously approved a motion to discuss a “framework” for a stadium deal.
That vote was based on a rather loose structure in which the Rays would pay for half of a $2.3 billion stadium, plus cost overruns and maintenance, with the other half coming from the county and City of Tampa. The surrounding mixed-use development, projected at $8 billion to $10 billion, would be privately funded.
There is still a long way to go toward anything resembling a final deal, though. The document that the county commission approved only details potential funding sources for the public-sector contribution, such as hotel taxes and funds from an existing community investment tax (CIT). Any such mechanism will still need to be finalized, either legislatively or by going directly to taxpayers for a vote.
As that happens, though, both sides are proceeding on a mentality of trust-but-verify as talks continue.
“We are not taking the team’s word on the economic impact of the ballpark and ancillary development,” said Hillsborough County commissioner Ken Hagan. “We are independently verifying their projections.”
The Rays, meanwhile, are one of nine MLB clubs that have severed ties with the embattled Main Street Sports Group. The local broadcasting plans for the 2026 season have not been finalized, but it’s certainly possible that the Rays will fold into the MLB Media in-house plan for game production and distribution, a model now used by 12 other clubs.
