{"id":342311,"date":"2026-07-16T16:04:09","date_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:04:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/342311\/"},"modified":"2026-07-16T16:04:09","modified_gmt":"2026-07-16T16:04:09","slug":"tampa-bay-rays-weighing-ballpark-deal-without-tampa-involvement","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/342311\/","title":{"rendered":"Tampa Bay Rays weighing ballpark deal without Tampa involvement"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"c-paragraph sections-facilities \">Hillsborough County Commission Chair Ken Hagan told a local radio station Wednesday morning that the Rays are weighing <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/07\/09\/rays-show-off-interior-of-planned-tampa-ballpark-in-new-renderings\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/07\/09\/rays-show-off-interior-of-planned-tampa-ballpark-in-new-renderings\/\">a ballpark deal<\/a> \u201cwith no city involvement at all,\u201d according to a front-page piece by Moske &amp; Villamil of the TAMPA BAY TIMES. Hagan said on St. Petersburg-based WDAE-AM, \u201cIt\u2019s just a matter of the Rays determining which is the best and quickest path for them. If it involves the city, if it doesn\u2019t, or to what degree it does.\u201d The Rays\u2019 current draft ballpark agreement, approved in May by both <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/05\/20\/hillsborough-approves-mou-for-rays-stadium\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/05\/20\/hillsborough-approves-mou-for-rays-stadium\/\">the County Commission<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/05\/21\/tampa-city-council-approves-nonbinding-agreement-for-rays-ballpark\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/05\/21\/tampa-city-council-approves-nonbinding-agreement-for-rays-ballpark\/\">the Tampa City Council<\/a>, outlines a $976M public contribution toward the cost of the stadium at the Dale Mabry campus of <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/01\/15\/rays-target-hillsborough-college-for-new-ballpark\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/01\/15\/rays-target-hillsborough-college-for-new-ballpark\/\">Hillsborough College<\/a>. Of that, $180M would come from the city, with $100M from Tampa\u2019s Community Redevelopment Agency and $80M from the Community Investment Tax. How the \u201cterms would be structured in the absence of city money has not yet been determined.\u201d Hagan said that he is \u201cconfident that a deal will move forward with or without the city.\u201d The development comes a month before the city council\u2019s <a href=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/06\/11\/tampas-community-redevelopment-agency-pushes-vote-on-rays-ballpark-to-aug\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.sportsbusinessjournal.com\/Articles\/2026\/06\/11\/tampas-community-redevelopment-agency-pushes-vote-on-rays-ballpark-to-aug\/\">next scheduled vote on the stadium agreement on Aug. 20<\/a> (<a href=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/news\/2026\/07\/15\/tampa-bay-rays-stadium-ken-hagan-tampa-hillsborough\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.tampabay.com\/news\/2026\/07\/15\/tampa-bay-rays-stadium-ken-hagan-tampa-hillsborough\/\">TAMPA BAY TIMES, 7\/16<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Hillsborough County Commission Chair Ken Hagan told a local radio station Wednesday morning that the Rays are weighing&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":334600,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[3469,3817,135,137,136],"class_list":["post-342311","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa","tag-deals","tag-mlb","tag-tampa","tag-tampa-headlines","tag-tampa-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342311","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=342311"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/342311\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/334600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=342311"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=342311"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=342311"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}