Is Orlando just Dreaming?
The St. Pete plans are dead (although apparently the Rays have floated a plan to stay in the Trop beyond 2028 at some point in the last few months), and if there is a Tampa stadium plan in the works, its proponents have certainly not shared details.
As we face this Tampa Bay stalemate, could a plan to move the team to Orlando take shape?
The Rays latest stadium endeavor in St. Petersburg ended when team owner Stu Sternberg told Mayor Ken Welch that the deal was dead. Within a day, the Orlando Dreamers released a statement in which they’ve claimed to have achieved significant milestones in the initiative to bring Major League Baseball to Orlando.
As we reported last week, Barry Larkin, the MLB Hall of Famer who serves as the MLB Ambassador for the Dreamers, stated that the Dreamers have, “identified an anchor investor for the control ownership group.” Larkin also stated that, “a letter of intent for a significant portion of stadium financing has been received.”
An International Drive site has been identified, between Sea World and the Orange County Convention Center, and a preliminary rendering was recirculated.
So…is Orlando a real possibility?
For as long as we’ve been discussing the stadium saga, we’ve been hearing people say “hey, the Rays should move to Orlando!”
Some of these are Orlando area residents who just want the team closer. Others recognize that Orlando has become a tourism juggernaut, based on theme parks and conventions, and assume that would make the area a good fit for yet another entertainment project.
We’ve long maintained that Orlando is not a better market for baseball than Tampa Bay. They have very similar populations, with the Tampa Bay metro area just over — and Orlando metro area just under — 3 million people. They have similar demographic profiles, with Tampa Bay’s median household income just over — and Orlando’s just under — $70,000 a year.
Tampa Bay has a somewhat larger media market, but no doubt an Orlando-based baseball team would still broadcast to the Tampa area. Indeed, the Rays are the top draw on cable television in central and north Florida. That’s sure to ring true no matter where along I-4 the team plays.
Both areas have traffic issues: Tampa Bay has those bridges acting as choke points; Orlando’s main arteries turn into huge parking lots for a surprising number of hours each day. Although, a positive note for Orlando is that they have gotten farther with its mass transit, with a commuter light rail system called Sunrail, and a connection to the Brightline train that travels to South Florida that is only a gleam in the eye of Tampa planners. But the region is SO sprawling that large percentages of residents are nowhere near either of these lines.
Tampa and St. Pete at least have actual destination downtown or downtown adjacent entertainment districts where a stadium could be part of a critical mass of activity. To anyone who says Orlando has a downtown I say: “Bless your heart!”
And I’m sorry but theme parks and some Michelin stars do not make downtowns.
What Orlando, or more accurately Orange County, has that we don’t have in Tampa Bay is an absurd amount of hotel tax revenue.
O’ Money, Mo’ Problems for Tampa Bay Residents
Remember how we’ve noted that a stadium was ending up on the Pinellas County side of the Bay because Pinellas County, with its beaches, collected a lot of hotel tax revenue, an income stream that can be used to fund a sports stadium but not a ton of other things?
Well Orange County’s hotel tax revenues are much higher than even Pinellas County’s.
Pinellas County produced just under $100M in 2023 and 2024. Orange County’s hotel tax collected three and half times that amount — nearly $360M in revenue in 2023 and then again in 2024. The County’s success shows no sign of slowing down as they produced new single month records in several of the past months.
You can finance a lot of baseball stadiums with that kind of revenue.
But decisions about how to spend hotel tax revenues can be complicated. The state law that enables the collection of a hotel tax requires the revenues to be used for “tourism purposes.” That statement is not as clear cut as you might assume.
Each county has a board that makes decisions about how to spend that county’s money. By law, the board represents a few local elected officials, but its members are mostly drawn from the tourism industry. The board is also staffed by the county’s convention and visitor bureau, which in this case is an organization called Visit Orlando.
In the Orlando area, the tourism board has, for decades, fought to ensure that those hotel tax dollars largely go to fund the Orlando Convention Center — which somehow seems to require a new renovation and/or expansion nearly every year — and the marketing efforts of Visit Orlando, which sees a limitless need to promote the region.
The board, and most county commissioners who must ratify its decisions, has swatted away any suggestion that these funds should be used for such necessities as more affordable housing or more robust transit As the hotel tax collections have grown, the board has been willing to devote smaller set-asides to some other Orlando projects, including the soccer stadium and basketball arena, the performing arts center and science museum.
In the 1980s, the term “tourism purposes” was expanded to include the financing of professional sports venues, interestingly a change initiated by Orlando area interests who thought about landing a professional football or baseball team. Right now the county has long term financial commitments for the most recent renovations of Camping World Stadium and the Convention Center. Tourism leaders in the area have, in the past, not been enthusiastic about taking on other major obligations.
The question for those promoting Orlando as the new home of the Rays is: has that position changed? Or, more specifically, is there political support for using future hotel tax revenues to build a baseball stadium?
The Dreamers group say that they have a “letter of intent” for $1 billion in financing for stadium costs from private funds, but they have not indicated who would be guaranteeing that money and whether those guarantees assume any public support beyond standard infrastructure costs for what is likely a $2 billion project.
For Orlando to become a reality, a commitment of some prospective Orange County hotel tax revenue toward the project could be the crucial step in moving it forward.