Pinellas County & St Pete FL Just Went All In On A Bad Bet💸

[Wagerallsports]

I have grown up in Florida & love my local sports teams

But the fact is the Tampa Bay Rays will never get enough fan support no matter the location of a new stadium

What makes it worse is all they are they are talking about is a museum & new housing to go up around it, instead of the team & new stadium itself

This will be $7 Billion down the tubes

 

[jjgold]

I can’t believe Tampa Bay is still in the race. It’s unbelievable organization.

 

[djefferis]

Never understood why cities feel new facilities will bring fans. It just never works - name a city who had a bad stadium and struggled to draw fans and built a new one to see a resurgence in attendance…

Cleveland was perfect example - Municipal Stadium was a giant dump….but when teams were winning it was filed. Of course teams went on a bad streak and attendance fell - Browns left for greener pastures and they got their stadiums. Initially both teams did well in their new stadiums - but then the shine wore off - Indians stopped winning and Browns - well reality hit and neither team was selling out game after game (and remember - even with a bad stadium, they both filled the monster stadium when winning - without all the luxury suites and other high end facilities).

Today they do alright attendance wise - but to say downtown is anywhere near what it was in the mid 90s is nowhere near correct.

Cincinnati is worse - again a cookie cutter Riverfront replaced by 2 new stadiums. Both struggle to attract fans - and when Bengals were bad - it was comical how empty PBS was. Stadiums don’t attract fans - teams do. You either have a fan base or you don’t - Tampa doesn’t. Maybe they get lucky - but I doubt it - baseball just too many games - that’s the thing with football - the relative limited schedule helps keep some interest up in the games. But even then teams struggle - look at the Carolina Panthers - nice stadium, easy to access and plenty to do around it - but apathetic fans.

 

[Wagerallsports]

Never understood why cities feel new facilities will bring fans. It just never works - name a city who had a bad stadium and struggled to draw fans and built a new one to see a resurgence in attendance…

Exactly DJ

 

[Wagerallsports]

I can’t believe Tampa Bay is still in the race. It’s unbelievable organization.

You are right jj

But the fans in the area suck when it comes to baseball

All of the years the Rays have been contenders the fans didn’t care

A new stadium and the things they are pushing to be built surrounding it will not make any difference

 

[quantumleap]

I remember St. Petersburg building Tropicana Field without a tenant. It finished in 1990 but an arena football team started holding games there in 1991 and in 1993 the Tampa Bay Lightning held their games there. It wasn't until 1995 when the Rays started playing their MLB games there.

I just thought it was odd to build a stadium without a team to move in.

 

[djefferis]

Keep in mind it was the early 90s - baseball was hell bent on expansion - added 4 teams in the era.

Business was booming - fans were engaged and it would peak right then before the strike killed everything in ‘94.

It’s not just baseball either - look at hockey in the era too - same overly optimistic expansion and greed amongst owners for expansion fees. Franchise owner’s literally were using the “free” money gained selling an expansion team to fund their operations.

Probably will happen again now that franchise values are through the roof - especially NBA teams.

Cleveland talking spending 3+ BILLION on a new dome - what becomes of the lake front stadium if they do ?

Sports are just the toy that politicians use to distract the public from the real problems. They look great touting shiny new venues for local sports teams - who cares that the infrastructure around them is crumbling - no one cares about the water treatment facility until your city is the next Flint.

 

[BMR Genie]

Will the team name also change to St. Petersburg Rays?