FORT LAUDERDALE, Fla. (AP) — For many of the nearly 28 years since the Tampa Bay Rays held their inaugural game in St. Petersburg’s domed stadium, they have been looking for a bigger, better deal.
Tropicana Field’s location, across Tampa Bay from the much-larger population base in Tampa, attributed to low attendance through most of those years.
The Tampa Bay Devil Rays began as the most recent of Major League Baseball’s expansion teams, along with the Arizona Diamondbacks. They eventually dropped Devil from the team’s name and have carved a fairly successful path as a small-market team despite a low payroll and poor attendance.
Every few years, talks of a new stadium to replace the aging Trop evolved and dissolved, including a failed proposal to move to Tampa’s Ybor City district and an effort to remain in St. Petersburg that seemed on track until Hurricane Milton in 2024 shifted local priorities. Last March the Rays withdrew from a $1.3 billion stadium deal with St. Petersburg.
Now stadium talks are back on, though few details have been released by the team, which has a new ownership group with new plans for the future.
The Rays signed a nonbinding memorandum of agreement last week with Tampa’s Hillsborough College to build a multiuse facility on a 113-acre site along Dale Mabry Boulevard. The site is across the street from Raymond James Stadium, where the Tampa Bay Buccaneers play, and in the shadows of George M. Steinbrenner Field, which is the spring training home to the New York Yankees.
When would the stadium be built?
Few details about the stadium, including whether it will have a roof, have been released by the team. It has said it wants a roof, which is almost essential to avoid long delays during Florida’s rainy season and spare fans the sticky summer humidity.
The team is continuing talks with officials in Tampa to get the deal completed. The agreement with Hillsborough College includes a six-month window for negotiations.
The Rays had been negotiating with St. Petersburg and Pinellas County for a new ballpark to be built adjacent to Tropicana Field. But the team in March withdrew from a $1.3 billion project to construct the new stadium, citing the hurricane and delays that likely drove up the proposal’s cost.
What happened to Tropicana Field?
Hurricane Milton struck Florida’s Gulf Coast in October 2024, ripping Tropicana Field’s roof to shreds.
The significant damage forced the team to play the entire 2025 season at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, which underwent a 120-hour makeover following the Yankees’ final spring training game to prepare for the Rays’ opening day.
Meantime, repairs got underway at the Trop, and the team is expected to be back in St. Petersburg for the 2026 season. The Rays are under lease at the Trop through at least the 2028 baseball season.
The destruction caused by the hurricane and rising costs of repairs and new construction in part led Stuart Sternberg to pull out of a proposed stadium deal with St. Petersburg last year and sell the team.
The stadium opened in 1990 at an initial cost of $138 million and featured what the team said was the world’s largest cable-supported domed roof, with the panels made of “translucent, Teflon-coated fiberglass” supported by 180 miles of cables connected by struts.
Playing at Steinbrenner Field, which has a capacity of 10,046, the Rays had 61 sellouts and drew 786,750, down from 1,337,739 in 2024, when they were 28th among the 30 MLB teams and ahead of only Miami and Oakland. In 2025, the Rays were 29th in attendance, edging out the Athletics, who are playing home games at a minor league ballpark in West Sacramento, California, while a new stadium expected to open in 2028 is built in Las Vegas. The As drew 768,464 fans in 2025.
What do we know about the proposed stadium?
So far, not a lot. Nothing has been made public about how much money the team’s ownership plans to contribute, or how much or even what they are asking from the city, county and state.
The new Rays ownership wants to create an atmosphere similar to Truist Park, where the Atlanta Braves play, which features a mix of shops, dining, living and work space outside the stadium. Again, few details have been publicly shared.
The memorandum-of-understanding with Hillsborough College also calls for creation of new campus facilities for the college.
Rays CEO Ken Babby said there is still a lot of work to be done.
“What I can say with certainty is that we believe with conviction that we’re going to be able to create a world-class work-live-learn-play development here in Tampa Bay, and we’re very, very encouraged and pleased by today’s outcome,” Babby said.
The team said in a statement that there are parking and access challenges at the location, but they will work through a comprehensive and collaborative process with Tampa, Hillsborough County, local law enforcement and planning experts to prioritize parking and overall mobility.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis has said the state will not help finance the stadium. But he agreed to help facilitate the relocation of a juvenile justice facility on the property and added that the state could likely help pay for sewers and roads around the area.
Who are the new owners of the Rays?
Last September, a group led by Florida-based real estate developer Patrick Zalupski finalized a deal to purchase the team from former owner Stuart Sternberg. Forbes estimates his net worth at $1.4 billion.
Zalupski, the CEO of Jacksonville-based Dream Finders Homes Inc., is the team’s control person and a co-chair along with Bill Cosgrove, who is CEO of Union Home Mortgage in Ohio.
The team’s new CEO is Ken Babby. Babby is CEO of Fast Forward Sports Group, which owns the Triple-A Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, a Miami Marlins affiliate, and the Double-A Akron RubberDucks, a Cleveland Guardians farm team.
Sternberg took control of the team from founding owner Vince Naimoli in November 2005. He oversaw the rebranding of the team from the Devil Rays after the 2007 season.
The Rays won AL East titles in 2008, 2010, 2020 and 2021 and twice reached the World Series, losing to Philadelphia in 2008 and to the Los Angeles Dodgers in 2020.
