DeSantis has said he wants baseball to remain in the Tampa area, where he grew up in Dunedin.<\/p>\n
But what the state role in that endeavor would be is ultimately unclear.<\/p>\n
Last May, DeSantis seemed to rule out a state contribution<\/a> to the stadium effort.<\/p>\n He said Tallahassee would \u201cbe helpful within the confines of what\u2019s appropriate for taxpayers to be doing,\u201d that assistance \u201cwill not involve at our level giving money for the construction of a stadium.\u201d He did not rule out \u201croads and exits\u201d though.<\/p>\n However, he did suggest the latest potential stadium plan for the\u00a0Tampa Bay Rays<\/a>, at the Hillsborough College Dale Mabry campus, will bolster the franchise\u2019s prospects. The Hillsborough College Board of Trustees approved a memorandum of understanding<\/a> to develop the 113-acre parcel for a mixed-use development.<\/p>\n \u201cObviously, they\u2019ve got to iron out details. But basically, we\u2019re supportive of them pursuing that partnership because I think it could be good for them. I think it could be good for the state. But I definitely think it could be really good for this region, but particularly that part of the region,\u201d he said earlier this month.<\/p>\n New owners\u00a0Ken\u00a0Babby,\u00a0Patrick\u00a0Zalupski\u00a0and\u00a0Bill\u00a0Cosgrove\u00a0say they would like to keep the franchise in the Tampa area, opening the park in time for the 2029 season, with suggestions that a public subsidy would be needed to make the numbers work.<\/p>\n Babby said after the vote that the owners \u201cbelieve with conviction that we\u2019re going to be able to create a world-class work-live-learn-play development here in Tampa Bay, and we\u2019re very, very encouraged and pleased by (the vote\u2019s) outcome.\u201d<\/p>\n DeSantis, a former Yale baseball player who previously also played in the Little League World Series, is a student of the game and its financial realities. He understands more needs to be done than has previously to solidify baseball in the region.<\/p>\n \u201cYou have Goliath, the Los Angeles Dodgers, who can just spend and spend. You\u2019ve got a handful of other teams who can also spend way above and beyond \u2026 and then you get down to kind of the lower rung, the markets that haven\u2019t generated as much. If you\u2019re drawing 15,000 fans a game, it\u2019s going to be tough to be where you need to be,\u201d DeSantis said, referencing the Rays\u2019\u00a0struggle with attendance<\/a>.<\/p>\n \u201cYou could draw 25,000 in this area with the right circumstances, right? You know, it\u2019s got to be a good location. It\u2019s got to be a good venue. It\u2019s got to have some stuff to draw. But if you\u2019re starting to do that, well then all of a sudden, you know, the viability of everything really goes up.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Could the state of Florida take a role in solidifying baseball in the Tampa Bay area? That seems…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":138789,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[43458,412,135,3815,137,136],"class_list":["post-138788","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-rob-manfred","tag-ron-desantis","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138788","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=138788"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/138788\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/138789"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=138788"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=138788"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=138788"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/01\/1768481712_621_unnamed-1.png\")
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