No public money for a stadium-village right now.
The Orange County, Florida, Tourist Development Tax Citizen Advisory Task Force has decided that the Orlando Dreamers ownership does not own a real baseball team and has decided that there is no reason to give the owners of the phantom baseball team around $1 billion as seed money to build a stadium-village. It is a setback for the investors in the Dreamers phantom franchise but there is no indication that Major League Baseball is ready to add two teams or that the owners of the Tampa Bay Rays franchise want to sell the club. The Rays franchise owners are trying to get money out of the city of Tampa to use in their quest to build a stadium in the city. The Dreamers owners plan to continue their quest to put an MLB team in Central Florida. But if the Rays franchise owners do get money to build a stadium, it is very unlikely that MLB would put a team in Central Florida whose territory overlaps with the Rays franchise footprint.
Major League Baseball owners have to get a new Collective Bargaining Agreement with the players as the present pact ends in December. Then the owners have to figure out regional, national and international video deals as regional cable TV networks are failing financially. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has been talking about a possible expansion for years but there is a major hurdle. Stadium issues in Oakland and in St. Petersburg have to be solved. The Oakland situation has been settled as John Fisher is taking his Athletics franchise to Las Vegas. The Tampa situation is unsettled as Rays ownership and Tampa elected officials don’t have a financial agreement in place that would allow Rays ownership to build a stadium-village. Politicians in Vancouver, Salt Lake City and Sacramento are behind efforts to land an expansion franchise.
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