As the Major League Baseball season returns on Thursday, so too comes the return of all the great baseball traditions. The ceremonial first pitch, the seventh-inning stretch, and a Florida franchise that has sold off its best players asking taxpayers for millions of dollars for a new stadium.
The Tampa Bay Rays are looking to build a new stadium in Hillsborough County that could cost as much as $800 million. The only “problem,” according to the Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg, is that the team might be able to kick in only $150 million, leaving $650 million for a new stadium to be picked up by taxpayers.
Like the new proposed stadium, the Rays’ current home, Tropicana Field was built with taxpayer dollars in an attempt to lure a team to Tampa. Also like “the Trop,” it will be a poor investment for taxpayers.
Tropicana Field was built in an attempt to lure the Chicago White Sox to the Tampa area. That effort failed after Chicago caved and built the White Sox a new stadium. Completed in 1990, it wasn’t until 1998 that the Rays began play, and then the stadium needed $85 million in renovations.
Since the stadium has been in operation, the team has seen a huge drop in attendance, from more than 30,000 fans per game in 1998 to 15,670 in 2017. Even during the Rays’ magical 2008 World Series run, they averaged just more than 22,000 a game. The Rays have been dead last in MLB attendance every season since 2012.
As a result, the Rays maintain one of the lowest payrolls in baseball, which led to the team trading two of their most popular players this offseason, Evan Longoria and Steven Souza Jr.
Unfortunately for Florida taxpayers and baseball fans, this behavior is what they have come to expect.
The Miami Marlins are notorious for bilking taxpayers and putting a poor product on the field. Their recently-built ballpark will cost taxpayer $2.4 billion due to ballooning interest payments, which have not come fully due. And while taxpayers have supported the team, the owners have not. Former Marlins owner Jeffrey Loria, known as baseball’s “most hated man,” had a 6 percent approval rating among Marlins fans in South Florida, and recently sold the Marlins to a group led by Derek Jeter for $1.2 billion.
The new owners’ first move was to trade National League MVP Giancarlo Stanton to the Yankees, as well as the rest of the outfield that ranked as one of the best in baseball, all in the name of slashing salaries. FiveThirtyEight currently projects the Marlins to have the worst record in baseball this season.
Sadly, this kind of treatment of taxpayers and fans is not unique to Florida. Since 2000, MLB franchises have received $1.4 billion in federal subsidies to go along with the billions that states and localities have dished out.
Some of the most egregious examples include the Braves convincing Cobb County to kick in almost $400 million for a new $672 million stadium to replace less-than-20-year-old Turner Field in Atlanta.
The Texas Rangers made the Atlanta deal look absolutely bush league by comparison, as they convinced the city of Arlington to pick up “half” the tab for a new billion-dollar stadium. In reality, the Rangers will be putting up only $200 million of their own money to cover the costs.
Study after study has shown that taxpayer-funded sports stadiums do little to boost the local economy, as teams claim, and instead just move entertainment spending from other activities to sports.
But this trend may be coming to an end. The deal for the public to fund a new stadium for the Rays is far from done and faces increasing opposition on the local level. Additionally, states have become tired of bidding against each other to see who can dole out the most money for a new sports stadium.
Some are trying alternative solutions. States such as Arizona and Virginia have proposed an interstate compact to ban subsides for professional sports stadiums — if 25 other states agree to sign on.
Perhaps, one day, fans can focus on who is playing on the field instead of how much they paid for it.
Eric Peterson (@IllinoisEric89) is a contributor to the Washington Examiner’s Beltway Confidential blog. He is a senior policy analyst at Americans for Prosperity.
