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Attendance (real vs announced) 974 actual, 10,377 reported
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BullsFanInTX Offline
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Post: #21
RE: Attendance (real vs announced) 974 actual, 10,377 reported
(04-13-2018 06:30 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(04-13-2018 05:39 AM)otown Wrote:  
(04-12-2018 09:28 AM)quo vadis Wrote:  
(04-12-2018 09:10 AM)Hokie4Skins Wrote:  The Rays should move to Montreal.

03-lmfao

They will give downtown Tampa a shot. The St Pete location and lousy stadium has been used as the excuse for the anemic attendance for 20 years, and the reasons it resonates is because (a) the stadium is terrible, and (b) in terms of the geography of the area, the St Pete location does suck.

Thing is though, I don't think those are the real problems. One problem is the nature of the TB area. It's spread out over a very large area, and there is no public transportation worth mentioning, so a significant number of fans will still have a terrible car commute no matter where the stadium is.

The other problem is the nature of Tampa Bay's relationship to baseball. While Tampa Bay has a rich baseball legacy, its contours are as an area that has produced great baseball talent (e.g., Lou Piniella, Dwight Gooden, Steve Garvey, Al Lopez, Gary Sheffield, Fred McGriff, Wade Boggs, Tony La Russa), and as a location for spring training for northern clubs (Tampa is basically the New York Yankee's second home - George M Steinbrenner Field is a great place to catch a Yankees spring game). Plus, the area is filled with transplants and retirees from up north, who generally don't abandon life-long attachments to the teams they grew up with.

So the fan base for every day MLB attendance is spread out, and not very committed to Rays baseball, and that's true wherever they put the stadium and whatever amenities it will have.

I don't think the Ybor location will make them the second coming of the Yankees attendance wise, but I do think they are more than capable of being a mid pack MLB attendance team as long as they put out a decent product. The Ybor location can also attract the nightlife crowd going to the ybor District or hoping on the streetcar to Channelside.
This is in addition to adding essentially a whole new market (even though Orlando is "technically" a new market. I can get to Ybor in just under an hour with no traffic. Getting to St Pete requires dealing with the crappy I4/275 interchange, heart of Tampa traffic, and then a never ending journey over the bridge to St Pete. At its worst, we are talking about a 2-3 hours commute from Orlando........ this is why they must move and I finally think everyone is on the same page......... finally. Just gotta come up with the $$$$.

That's a good point. I recall that when I used to vacation in St Pete, if i drove to Disney World, fully 40% of the entire trip in miles and almost half in terms of time was just getting from St Pete to the eastern edge of Tampa.

As I said, it's a sprawling area, and as you said, that I4/275 interchange and traffic can be a beast. For you guys to the east, that's all largely avoided with an Ybor location.

The Ybor location will dramatically improve attendance. Basically, now, you have the worst MLB stadium in the worst possible location for a franchise. Ybor would be a top tier stadium in the best possible Tampa location. When I lived in Brandon, it would take me for absolute ever to get to the Trop. The trop is just too far away from the population center. Do you really expect folks to drive 2 hours round trip a day to watch a bad baseball team? The only people going now are St Pete residents for the most part. They Ybor stadium will bring the Rays attendance to a mid pack MLB attendance, at least for a few years, and then it will be on the Rays to put a decent product on the field to maintain it.
04-13-2018 12:05 PM
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Love and Honor Offline
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Post: #22
RE: Attendance (real vs announced) 974 actual, 10,377 reported
Ybor would be a perfect location given the access to I-275, I-4, the Selmon Expressway, existing parking downtown, and nearby amenities. One thing to keep in mind (and it's been implied already) is that St. Pete/Clearwater has such a big snowbird population of northern baseball cities that the Rays' current market is depressed from what they'd normally draw based on population. Yeah you cut out some current fans on the west side of the bay if you move, but when I lived in Tampa I was surprised how many people around there were actually from Florida; those are the potential supporters who are less likely to be Yankees or Red Sox fans like the sixty-somethings on the beach. The Lightning have shown how well that city can support a team in the right conditions, and with hockey of all sports.

For all the new ballparks built over the last 30 years that shouldn't have been (Comerica and New Yankee Stadium in particular), it's pretty bad how Oakland and Tampa Bay are still rotting away in their facilities. There's plenty of legal, financial, and political issues that explain it of course, it just sucks that a classic like Tiger Stadium is gone forever while the Trop is still standing.
04-13-2018 04:20 PM
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