The Tampa Bay Rays are hoping if you build it, they will come. Actually, if you build it in a different location, hopefully they will come.
The Rays need help with their attendance and they’re hoping a new ballpark will boost their numbers.
When it comes to home-field advantage, The Tampa Bay Rays are in the MLB cellar.
Only one other team draws fewer fans to their home games -- The Miami Marlins rank dead last in the league with an average of 9,671 fans per home game. The Rays aren’t much better. They rank 29th with an average of 14,744.
“When a million plus people show up in your ballpark every year, while it’s well below what Major League Baseball is accustomed to or standard, that’s a lot of people enjoying Tropicana Field,” Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg said. “We expect to put a great product out there and a great show on.”
When the Rays unveiled their plans for a new stadium in Ybor City, it was more than an unveiling of a state-of-the-art facility; it was a hope of putting more fans in the stands.
“It’s a little closer to the central population, it will be a little more accessible,” Sternberg said. “And with a new building that is really fan forward as I like to call it, I think it will be something that will be an attraction that will bring people in.”
During the glory days with their World Series appearance and postseason games, the fans packed the Trop. But now, a variety of reasons keep them away. The Rays are banking a new stadium brings them back home.
“It will be unlike anything else that’s in Major League Baseball,” Sternberg said. “To come to something that’s so incredible and beautiful vision of it, I pinch myself.”