Tampa Bay Rays: Can a World Series title save Major League Baseball in Tampa?

The Tampa Bay Rays play baseball in an absolute dump in front of very few fans every year. Will a World Series be enough to keep the team in Florida?

The Tampa Bay Rays are on the ropes in the 2020 World Series. Down 3-2, they need to tap into the deepest analytic data they have to find the slightest edge to keep them alive.

But even if they come back to win the 2020 World Series, is Major League Baseball in Tampa doomed anyway?

For starters, the Rays organization is actively trying to split its home schedule between Tampa and Montreal. The organization is taking clear steps in pursuit of moving the team to a new city. How long will it take them to cite better attendance numbers at Montreal games than Tampa games as reasoning to move the team full-time? Canadian interest in baseball isn’t as low as it was the last time Montreal had a team. The success of the Toronto Blue Jays has made it possible for baseball to flourish there again.

And speaking of attendance, the Rays rank in the bottom echelon of the league in every single year. In fact, they ranked last or second to last in attendance every year from 2012-2019. The only year that they ranked in the top 20 in fan attendance was their inaugural season in 1998.

Even in 1998, the best year of their attendance history, they only ranked 14th in the league. Tropicana Field has a capacity of over 42,000 and the Rays routinely finish with under 20,000 fans in attendance each game. Even in 2008, the last time the Rays made the World Series, they averaged only 22,370 fans per game. So when the Rays are a top team in the league, fan interest is still extremely low.

But what’s the underlying reason for that? Shouldn’t fans want to watch a good team?

Well, the Rays current business model doesn’t exactly lend itself to continued fan interest. Their organization is one of the most analytically advanced in the league. They find value where other teams see failure. They reap the rewards of all their great young talent, and then trade them for more young talent when the time to pay them comes.

Unfortunately, the thing that makes them so shrewd financially may be the thing that kills fan interest. I’d ask you to think of your favorite player from your favorite team. The guy that was so important to your franchise, that every little leaguer in town wanted to wear his number and play his position. The career-long staple at the backbone of the team you love for over a decade. The Derek Jeters, Ken Griffey Jr.s, and Clayton Kershaws.

Who do you think of when you think of transcendent talent in Tampa Bay? Probably Evan Longoria, who has now been with the San Fransisco Giants for three years? Anyone else?

The fact is, the Tampa Bay Rays haven’t had a lot of franchise cornerstones in their brief history. Every year, fans essentially have to learn an entirely new roster. The Rays take the personal attachment to players completely out of the equation. That approach can’t be ignored when even successful teams struggle to draw fans.

And to be fair, that approach isn’t going to change if the team does in fact move to Montreal. Those fans will struggle with the same problem, watching players they’ve come to love get their big pay days from somebody else. Hardcore fans will support a team no matter who’s on the roster. But the casual fans, the people who just want to catch a ballgame on a Sunday afternoon, will continue to show up at the park and have absolutely no idea who’s playing for their hometown team.

Maybe a World Series appearance will cause a slight uptick in fan engagement. But long-term, those casual fans will disappear as soon as their favorite players do.

Further, Tropicana Field is an absolute disgrace to baseball stadiums everywhere. I mean for god’s sake, they have specific rules for dealing with the catwalks that hang above the field. A high pop-up can turn from an easy out to an infield double with regularity. Who designs a field like that? The roof of the stadium makes routine fly balls extremely difficult to track. The turf is an absolutely brutal surface to play on. And overall, it’s just a really depressing place to watch a baseball game.

Major League Baseball in Tampa is probably doomed already. World Series or not, they’ve proved that even division winning teams can’t attract fans. Maybe they’ll catch on in Montreal, maybe they’ll continue to see abysmal attendance numbers every year.

But the writing is on the wall for Tampa Bay Rays fans. They may be looking for a new team to support in the coming years.