Helping people understand the business part of Tampa-area #SportBiz stuff since 2009. Spotted in the Forbes #SportsMoney50 list a few times.
Tampa Bay, Florida
Joined August 2010
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No idea why you’d trust me.
I’m just a guy who:
- worked in pro sports
- covered the biz of sports
- exposed corporate fraud
- busted bad politicians
- has no financial interest in a new Rays stadium
- will never get free luxury box tickets to a new stadium.
Shadow of Stadium retweeted
St. Pete, Tampa both planning parades if Rays win World Series | Link in bio
I wish pro teams’ practice of choosing exorbitant ticket prices over full stadiums was new…
….but it’s very much not👇
Why Pro Teams Need Your Money to Rip Out Seats (Not Just in Fla!) shadowofthestadium.blogspot.… #SportsBiz
David Samson (@DavidPSamson): empty playoff seats are a team’s fault, not fans.
It means they priced their tickets wrong.
Shadow of Stadium retweeted
We're 30 months away from opening day 2029. Here's the timeline for the last 5 MLB ballparks (months):
Team | Approval | Groundbreaking
MIN | 47 | 31
MIA | 36 | 33
ATL | 41 | 31
TEX | 40 | 30
ATH* | 58 | 33
AVG | 44 | 32
*assumed completion
PS - the “30min drive time” metric is significant to teams because that’s how you fill MLB stadiums during the regular season.
It’s not nearly as relevant for a marquee event, like a MLB playoff game or NFL game.
Look, I’ve been covering this for 18 years.
For those of you who haven’t:
1) The Rays don’t have bad fans.
2) There isn’t the appetite to drive 50min for MLB that there is in other markets
3) Fla fans also aren’t as willing as other cities to spend $200-$400 on tix.
That’s it.
PSA: Google and chatGPT are not quality sources of facts.
They are great at giving you LINKS to quality sources (and some bad ones too).
But this is a perfect example of how outsourcing your problem-solving to AI generates terrible inaccuracies.
I’m really curious to get his expertise on climate change too.
Reporters: DO NOT DO THIS. Pitting a random guy versus an entire body of scholarly research. And then highlighting the non-expert's pure conjecture as the lede. This is like interviewing a Reddit anti-vaxxer with the qualification that doctors are "dubious." #bothsidesism
Such a dumb debate. Location has nothing to do with this.
Lots of teams struggle to get 35k fans out until 11:30pm on a weeknight. And we know TB doesn’t have the disposable income or corporate support of large markets.
But this one will be different!
This is impossible. You can't costlessly devote ~$1 billion in public money to a new stadium without raising taxes. No stadium has ever generated enough tax dollars to pay back its taxpayer contribution. It's NEVER happened before. sports.yahoo.com/articles/jo…
Nooooooooooo waaaaaaay
Donors with ties to the Rays have given more than $5M to candidates and political committees across Florida this election cycle.
Some of that money came weeks before the Rays cleared a massive hurdle for the team’s $2.3B ballpark project.
Via @TB_Times | ow.ly/za6B50ZVvRV
Out of curiosity, does anyone know the taxpayer ROI on making a team’s parking structure prettier?
Such vital Nationals stadium upgrades as "wrapping the exterior of the parking in a more visually appealing material" will cost DC taxpayers $410m under Mayor Bowser's plan, part of a $7.8B district spending spree on privately controlled sports venues. fieldofschemes.com/2026/10/0…
Baseball may rely on socialist stadium funding…but it very much prefers capitalism in selling you tickets.
Shadow of Stadium retweeted
Reminder: No method exists for projecting the economic impacts of sports stadiums. What we do know is that no stadium has ever generated enough new tax revenue to pay for itself. There's a reason you have to hire a paid consultant to come of with these numbers: they're bogus.
New Royals stadium report projects $1.4B in revenue, concerts, and All-Star game kansascity.com/news/local/ar…
It seems clear: politicians will NEVER learn that teams really don’t want to relocate.
Almost all relocation threats are only done to scare communities into handing over billions in corporate subsides.
The communities that push back virtually always get a better deal.
None of this necessarily means that the Bears owners will necessarily give up on an Indiana move if Illinois coughs up property and sales tax subsidies — or, for that matter, that the Bears definitely will move to Indiana if Illinois doesn't. fieldofschemes.com/2026/10/0…
Rays and their boosters really saying the quiet part out loud here:
The team is getting a new ballpark because the governor was willing to funnel a donor support through the backdoor of Hillsborough College subsidies.
"I wouldn't be surprised if this is a movie one day, honestly. This thing was on life support 10 times, honestly."
For @SBJ: How the Tampa Bay Rays' new owners found a home — and a new future
sportsbusinessjournal.com/Ar…
