CapCityAg89 said:
MisterFurious said:
Sex Panther said:
MisterFurious said:
W said:
they're going to stay on the peninsula?
that is a terrible
need to move east of Tampa along I-4
100%. Location has absolutely killed their attendance. It's the absolute worst.
I've heard this claim but I don't get it. I have a good friend in Tampa and have been there 3-4 times and we always go to St Pete and it doesn't seem that bad to me at all. And while I've never been to a game at the Trop, St Pete is pretty awesome.
I'm sure a Tampa native could explain why it's not ideal, but seems a lot better than driving from Dallas to Arlington personally
So, yes, St. Pete, Clearwater….etc. is a great area. Tropicana is located on the southeast edge of the peninsula. It's not the fun beach community area. It's awful traffic getting too and from the bridge. It's essentially an extension of craptastic I-4. It's just not an area where people go.
I'm trying to think of a back home (Houston or Dallas) analogy, but it's hard to compare because A). They're bigger cities and B) There are enough fans in the area to support a team even if they built in let's say….Frisco, or Sugarland, or Roundrock…etc.
Too many transplants in Central Florida to not have the stadium close to the better locations. Not to mention, that particular stadium is absolute garbage.
Put it in Brandon and it would sell out every single game. This has got to be a payola decision. Just dumb.
Ok I live in Tampa and know a few politically connected people, and they told me what would happen 12 months ago and ended up being 100% right. Here's the full background:
-Rays had no intention of ever leaving St Pete/Pinellas county for one main reason: taxpayer funds. Per Florida laws, there's a limit each county can raise with the hotel/tourist taxes to go towards stadiums, etc. Hillsborough county has already maxed it out on Raymond James, Amalie arena, Florida aquarium, etc. Pinellas had lots of available unspent taxpayer money to use.
-All ideas floated about moving to Ybor, Montreal, etc were just leverage to extract more money out of St Pete.
-The new stadium deal is also a huge real estate play. Rays ownership + Hines takes over a huge piece of land on a sweetheart deal, and the county is helping fund the mixed use residential/office/retail space for them.
-Downtown St Pete is actually a very cool area, lots of development going on. No idea if this helps attendance in the end, but the Rays are going to make a bunch of money on the real estate play. They could give a damn about baseball revenue.
In my opinion, it's all a scam that the county got hosed and are giving in to their demands. But it happens all the time, and it's not unique to the area. I don't think the bad attendance is due to remote location (it's really not that far of a commute, 30-45 minutes from downtown Tampa with traffic). I just think the team does a bad job marketing the local community. They use the Turgeon tactic of guilting people to come, rather than make a better game day experience. Maybe the new stadium will be a fresh chance at engaging the local market, who knows.
