If every town/city said NO, we’d still have major league sports, the owners just wouldn’t be worth as much, and they would probably worry a lot less about virtue-signalling and wokeness
Every city that has a “—- Rising” theme is ultra liberal.
Couch cushion money for local gubbmints. The Rays are actually a good investment, as opposed to section 8 housing, etc.
The level of payoffs and kickbacks to council members must be astounding.
Does anyone go to the games? What a waste of money, let the owners pay for it.
I imagine a small place that seats about 25,000 will be just right.
Being in St. Petersburg is part of their problem. They’d draw better in Tampa.
Of course, an ideal ballpark site in Tampa is already occupied. By the Yankees — and the Tampa Tarpons, their farm club. It’s called Steinbrenner Field.
Bread and Circuses....
Too bad that the Taxpayers are forced to provide the ‘bread’ for the circus venues to keep themselves mind numbed.
Making the seating capacity smaller is a stupid way to do MLB’s business. You don’t encourage people to become fans by limiting the seating and pricing them out of it.
If having a new stadium is so important, then let the fans who go to the games pay for it.
Was just in Tampa for the Cubs series.
The upper deck was shut down for the games as there weren’t enough attendees to get close to filling it.
The current stadium while having the aesthetics of fancy high school gym is perfectly serviceable.
Waste of money to build a new stadium.
I recall the stinkfest surrounding the construction of the original stadium when I lived in Florida. I’ve been gone a long time, but I assume this is the first new replacement.
For some reason construction workers took issue with snipers taking pot shots at them. There was also IIRC an issue with the land having EPA level contamination.
What’s going to happen to the old stadium? When it sat for eight years without a team, I called it the third largest thing ever built for the wrong reason, after the Pyramids and the Great Wall of China.
The cost of this stadium is roughly the same as the civil judgement against Alex Jones... just to put it all in perspective.
Except for land acquisition (land can be sold in the future to essentially recover its cost), governments should stay out of the stadium business.
Dumb to put it in St. Petersburg.
Should be in downtown Tampa, near where the Lightning and Bucs play.