As expected, MLB owners unanimously approved a $1.7 billion Tampa Bay Rays sale to Florida investors, who face some immediate challenges on the ballpark and front-office fronts.
The approval of the Tampa Bay Rays sale was not a surprise: an MLB committee had already vetted the purchase. The Tampa Bay Rays sale is expected to formally close by the end of the weekend following the last game of the 2025 MLB regular season, and we’re expecting at that time for the group to make some public announcements on strategies to address ballpark and front-office issues. The Rays sale to a Jacksonville group is led by developer Patrick Zalupski and also includes Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (Triple-A; International League) owner Ken Babby, Union Home Mortgage CEO Bill Cosgrove and former Orlando Dreamers investor Rick Workman. Current owner Stu Sternberg and his investors will retain a 10 percent share of the team as well.
For Sternberg, it’s certainly a bittersweet time. On one hand, he and his investors certainly did well on the financial front: he spent $200 million to purchase the Rays in 2004 and didn’t run up huge losses on annual operations. He turned around the fortunes of what had been a perpetual loser, mostly though a focus on player development and the stocking of a front office filled with imaginative and young thinkers. On the other hand, he never managed to parlay that on-field success to a solution to the team’s biggest business problem: a new ballpark. Tropicana Field is arguably the worst MLB facility now that the Athletics are out of Oakland, but as he sells the team Sternberg walks away from a team playing in the same circumstances as they were when they bought the team. Plans to stay in St. Pete at various sites and a long-shot blueprint to split the season with Montreal never really took off.
So it will be up to the new owners to address the ballpark and business issues. The aforementioned Babby will be heavily involved in the ballpark planning, we are told; as owner of the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, Babby has led efforts to create a ballpark of the future in Jacksonville. It’s one thing to renovate a Double-A ballpark, though, and quite another to build and plan a new MLB ballpark basically from scratch. One issue for Sternberg when seeking a replacement for Tropicana Field was the generally weird nature of Florida politics, certainly distilled on the local level with Tampa, St. Petersburg, Pinellas County and Hillsborough County officials split on the location of a new ballpark as well as how to fund it. Those issues may be mitigated somewhat how with Pinellas County seemingly backing off on a Rays ballpark and looking instead into putting hotel/motel taxes into an expanded Philadelphia Phillies spring-training complex in Clearwater.
And Tampa is reemerging as a leader in landing a new Rays ballpark. With the approval of a Tampa Bay Rays sale to a Florida group (and no apparent thought to wooing investors who would move the team), the thought is that a more inviting climate-controlled ballpark in a better-situated location (i.e., Tampa and Hillsborough County instead of St. Pete and Pinellas County, with better access to the I-4 corridor and Orlando) will give the team a needed financial boost. Though real-estate pros are already talking about plenty of potential sites for a new ballpark in Hillsborough County (WestShore Plaza, the Florida State Fairgrounds, the former Tampa Greyhound track), we continue to hear the two leading contenders as of now are the Dale Mabry Campus of Hillsborough Community College–basically located south of Steinbrenner Field and west of Raymond James Stadium–and an Ybor City harborside location previously considered by Sternberg.
The economic model for a new ballpark will be familiar to anyone tracking new MLB facilities over the last 25 years: build a new ballpark as well as associated development, with MLB teams increasingly becoming core parts of real-estate efforts. This would seem to be a strong argument for a Hillsborough Community College location: create an entertainment district that can also cater to fans attending games and concerts at Raymond James Stadium.
The new owners will need to map these changes while also making changes to the front office. Brian Auld and Matt Silverman are leaving their positions as Rays presidents, but Auld will remain as vice chairman of the USL’s Tampa Bay Rowdies and serve as an advisor to the team during the transition.
(Yes, the Tampa Bay Rays sale includes USL Championship’s Tampa Bay Rowdies, who currently play out of Al Lang Stadium in downtown St. Petersburg. With St. Petersburg officials convinced the waterfront Al Lang Stadium site is underutilized as a soccer facility and with no future foreseen as a spring-training site, a park anchored by an amphitheater is in the works–which could mean a new home for the Rowdies as well.)
One thing to remember: It takes a long time to plan and build a new MLB ballpark, especially when associated development is involved. The Rays’ current lease at Tropicana Field runs through 2028, but don’t be surprised if that lease is extended if there is progress being made on a new Hillsborough County ballpark. If no progress seems to be in the offing, watch for Orlando interests to reenter the scene. An Orlando move is now Plan B, we’re told, though at this time highly unlikely. This is why investors outside of Florida were not really part of Tampa Bay Rays sale discussion: It keeps potential expansion markets like Nashville, Salt Lake City and Nashville open–and more importantly keeps those expansion investor groups interested ad unable to pick up an existing MLB team at a discount.
Rendering of proposed Ybor City ballpark courtesy Tampa Bay Rays.
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