OT: Bucs, Rays & Other Florida Sports Teams Thread

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AllAbout813

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Oct 8, 2007
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Tampa, FL
Retractable roof is pointless. When is it ever going to be nice enough to open up?

That said stadium is hella expensive for something so small, wtf. It also doesn't fit in with Ybor at all imo.
Yea it really needs more of that run down 90s hip hop club vibe to blend in with the surroundings.
 

Hoek

Legendary Poster A
May 12, 2003
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Lol. I just mean they were talking about all this Italian/Spanish facade influence and it's completely nonexistent. Ah well.
 

Master P

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Mar 31, 2016
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lol 30,000 seats what a ****ing joke it's gonna cost something that much that barely holds anyone. Up it to 40,000 you twits.
The real joke is that Sternberg only wants to pay an 1/8 of the full price. No way in hell is the city paying over 700 million for a new ballpark, nor should it. Ridiculous.
 

Eat The Rich

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Jun 17, 2017
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So I've never been to Tampa, but from looking at maps and images of the area..

This seems really out of place. Again, I don't know anything about what the location is actually like, but from the renders, it sticks out like a sore thumb.
 

These Are The Days

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May 17, 2014
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The real joke is that Sternberg only wants to pay an 1/8 of the full price. No way in hell is the city paying over 700 million for a new ballpark, nor should it. Ridiculous.

I doubt it's going to come to that. If Hillsborough and corporate support are game I'm willing to bet Sternberg is going to pitch in probably $150 million or more. That is both a very fair and generous contribution from ownership. It's far easier if the 3 million+ people in the Bay Area pitch in over 30 years or so than for a single person to chip in the whole thing. Honest to God it averages something like $100-200 per taxpayer over a 30 year period. I think Tampa can manage. People want nice things and yet the sickly, retired populous won't see it paid for until the money is pried out of their cold dead hands. I'm not even 30 and will gladly endorse the stadium project and the Rays in Ybor. Baseball is a lucrative business and the Tampa Bay has been a baseball haven for like 75 years if not more. It only makes sense to have a team here. And plus Ybor has been dead for decades. A baseball team will bring more business, more people living there and by God if we're lucky we'll see some kind of culture associated with it again.
 

Master P

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Mar 31, 2016
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I doubt it's going to come to that. If Hillsborough and corporate support are game I'm willing to bet Sternberg is going to pitch in probably $150 million or more. That is both a very fair and generous contribution from ownership. It's far easier if the 3 million+ people in the Bay Area pitch in over 30 years or so than for a single person to chip in the whole thing. Honest to God it averages something like $100-200 per taxpayer over a 30 year period. I think Tampa can manage. People want nice things and yet the sickly, retired populous won't see it paid for until the money is pried out of their cold dead hands. I'm not even 30 and will gladly endorse the stadium project and the Rays in Ybor. Baseball is a lucrative business and the Tampa Bay has been a baseball haven for like 75 years if not more. It only makes sense to have a team here. And plus Ybor has been dead for decades. A baseball team will bring more business, more people living there and by God if we're lucky we'll see some kind of culture associated with it again.
Personally I find the idea of the Tampa area having to pay over 700 million for a team that the city clearly cares very little about absurd. That money could be used for so many other things. The only way It even becomes a conversation is if he is willing to pay for half.
 

These Are The Days

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May 17, 2014
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Personally I find the idea of the Tampa area having to pay over 700 million for a team that the city clearly cares very little about absurd. That money could be used for so many other things. The only way It even becomes a conversation is if he is willing to pay for half.

Why? I truly do not understand people's mentalities when it comes to sports facilities. Do ordinary people 250,000 laying around to buy yourself a new house? Do you even have 10% of that? We're talking numbers thousands of times greater than that and we are asking a single entity to cover half cost of the project. Stu Sternberg is a billionaire because he has his monetary capital tied into other businesses and investments to keep his finances alfoat. If the guy goes and chucks $450 million into the new ballpark we'll be looking for new ownership in a year's time and Stu will be that much poorer. Owners NEED fanbases to facilitate the expenses of a new ballpark. Otherwise we do not deserve a team and the Rays will be rightfully relocated. I'm sorry but fans don't get to cry for a new park and then demand someone else to fork over more money than a hundred lifetimes out of his own pocket when the rest of Tampa is either indifferent or will rebel and stop supporting the team at the first sign of hardship.
 

These Are The Days

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May 17, 2014
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Literally we don't go and pay for half our houses in one shot. We do it over years and years. This here is a massive project that millions of fans will partake in as spectators and asking a single person for that much money is a poor investment on their part and not something I would ever advise anyone to do. More money more problems. The Rays and Stu Sternberg have had the patience of saints. They gave us a team good enough to compete with the likes of Boston and NYY and what did we do? We responded with 12,700 butts in the seats unless it was a weekend or the NYY/Boston were in town. St. Pete does not have the population/corporate base to sustain a major league franchise and for years Mayor Foster stonewalled the process while the project would've been easily $150 million cheaper in 2011. We can crap on ownership all we want. They have done everything short of giving away tickets for free to placate to us. Actually I think they did that once! The Rays need Tampa Bay to suck it up. This is a market that will go bat shit crazy for baseball again as soon as its given a winner
 

Hoek

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Why is it then that MLS owners have been able to cough up 100% of the costs for their stadiums (some of them more than the $150 million the Rays are rumored to put up) with revenues far lower than MLB? I don't know. This story is gettng old. Stadiums have been proven time and again not to boost local economies, only drive other money out. Well at least if they tax tourists and developers for it, won't be directly on us. I still question the viability of the franchise here even with the stadium and a winning team. That World Series appearance wore off pretty quick. I think the core issue is people here aren't affluent enough to afford going to so many major league sports.
 

These Are The Days

Oh no! We suck again!!
May 17, 2014
34,117
19,679
Tampa Bay
Why is it then that MLS owners have been able to cough up 100% of the costs for their stadiums (some of them more than the $150 million the Rays are rumored to put up) with revenues far lower than MLB? I don't know. This story is gettng old. Stadiums have been proven time and again not to boost local economies, only drive other money out. Well at least if they tax tourists and developers for it, won't be directly on us. I still question the viability of the franchise here even with the stadium and a winning team. That World Series appearance wore off pretty quick. I think the core issue is people here aren't affluent enough to afford going to so many major league sports.

To answer the original question, probably because it's to cover the whole cost of the stadium as opposed to a fraction. That extra discrepancy is a little more affordable because you are finishing the entire project for the cost of say $200 million project as opposed to just putting down $150 million that's a drop in the bucket. You can put more down but it's not gonna help. As for the viability of the Rays product, the fever of 2008 through 2011 was comparable to what the Lightning are experiencing right now. The Rays were the sweetheart of the Tampa Bay market but the problem was that hours before game time, the larger population of Tampa was commuting EAST on the Howard Frankland Bridge in the opposite direction of the ballpark while the rest of the majority of the fanbase was better than half an hour away from a cavernous tuna can ballpark that half the population would openly laugh at. Meanwhile Mr. Mayor was stonewalling a new stadium at every turn to keep it in a community that can barely churn out better than 11,000 people a night and steadfastly refused to build a new one because the Trop was already standing. At that time you put that team in an acceptable ballpark minutes from Amalie and I'd show you attendance figures similar to today's Lightning if not better.God this team was so starved for a winner by 2009 the Bucs were in shambles and the clown show of Lightning ownership was getting relocation whispers going.

In the end I don't think it's so much a matter of Tampa Bay fans being affluent enough to afford so many leagues, I think it has more to do with that fact that we're not going to pay for a losing product when all 3 of our teams have had arguably some of the worst ownership in history at different stages of its life whether it was Nameoli, Culverhouse, OK! Hockey, the Japanese Mafia and Glazer Trust Fund United. Every time we ditch the teams they come back from the dead. Right now the Bucs are kinda TRYING to do it but we'll have to see. The Rays can strike out and be relocated who the hell knows where and MLB will give us another team in the next expansion because they can't afford to not have us as a television market. And whoever that team is will have one hell of a sweet honeymoon
 
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