{"id":477107,"date":"2026-02-15T20:02:12","date_gmt":"2026-02-15T20:02:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/477107\/"},"modified":"2026-02-15T20:02:12","modified_gmt":"2026-02-15T20:02:12","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-hopeful-of-good-fan-turnout-with-return-to-tropicana-field","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/477107\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays hopeful of good fan turnout with return to Tropicana Field"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-franchises \">Rays officials \u201cwere thrilled with the turnout\u201d for the team\u2019s Fan Fest Block Party on Saturday and \u201cspoke confidently of that being a sign of things to come as the Rays, starting April 6, move back\u201d to Tropicana Field, which \u201csustained significant damage in Hurricane Milton in 2024, but <a href=\"https:\/\/nam10.safelinks.protection.outlook.com\/?url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.tampabay.com%2Fsports%2Frays%2F2026%2F02%2F13%2Ftropicana-field-refurbished-st-petersburg-dallas-ice-storm-russia-earthquake%2F&amp;data=05%7C02%7Cmboylan%40sportsbusinessjournal.com%7Cef4e7f2081c24d56d70e08de6ca415d6%7C1fe6294574e64203848fb9b82929f9d4%7C0%7C0%7C639067649153996246%7CUnknown%7CTWFpbGZsb3d8eyJFbXB0eU1hcGkiOnRydWUsIlYiOiIwLjAuMDAwMCIsIlAiOiJXaW4zMiIsIkFOIjoiTWFpbCIsIldUIjoyfQ%3D%3D%7C0%7C%7C%7C&amp;sdata=nUj%2BZD993t7cpUaoYrFS4%2F6rL6YkbsjkkBTySu%2F5JAI%3D&amp;reserved=0\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"Original URL: https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/sports\/rays\/2026\/02\/13\/tropicana-field-refurbished-st-petersburg-dallas-ice-storm-russia-earthquake\/. Click or tap if you trust this link.\">has since been repaired<\/a>.\u201d While 50,000 tickets were claimed, actual attendance was not released, but Rays CEO Ken Babby addressed the crowd by saying, \u201cIt\u2019s hard to believe we\u2019re not even playing a baseball game today, and to have 50,000 people with tickets, it\u2019s incredible.\u201d Babby spent 30 minutes at \u201cone of the gates, meeting and greeting fans,\u201d and later told the crowd that Tropicana Field \u201cis going to look better than you guys have ever seen it\u201d after off-season repairs from the hurricane damage. In addition to the new roof and turf, Babby said fans can expect a new sound system, larger video boards and new seating areas and all will be done by the April 6 opener (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/sports\/rays\/2026\/02\/14\/rays-officials-see-big-fan-fest-crowd-near-trop-sign-good-things\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/sports\/rays\/2026\/02\/14\/rays-officials-see-big-fan-fest-crowd-near-trop-sign-good-things\/\">TAMPA BAY TIMES, 2\/14<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rays officials \u201cwere thrilled with the turnout\u201d for the team\u2019s Fan Fest Block Party on Saturday and \u201cspoke&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":477108,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[435],"tags":[3307,49,48,462,82],"class_list":["post-477107","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-baseball","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-mlb","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477107","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=477107"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/477107\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/477108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=477107"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=477107"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=477107"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}