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City Of St. Petersburg Case Study

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The dream, the vision and the action to finalize a deal which would bring a Major League Baseball (MLB) team to the City of St. Petersburg was realized in 1998 when the Tamp Bay Devil Rays took the field for the first time at Tropicana Field. The City of St. Petersburg became victorious in succeeding where Tampa had prevailed so many times before. The triumph came when a group of ambitious businessmen collaborated to build what became the Florida Suncoast Dome in 1988 in downtown St. Petersburg. There had been a competition between Tampa and St. Petersburg to see who would build a new baseball stadium first. Tampa already had Raymond James Stadium, had built MacDill Air Force Base and the Florida Aquarium, St.Petersburg had nothing. St. Petersburg desperate to attract big business and attractions to the west side of Tampa Bay went and built the new stadium before securing a major league baseball team. The city was buried deep in the controversial move, for a mid market city to invest in a stadium without first securing a franchise could cost the city and the tax payers significantly. The gamble paid off and through years of trying to lure a franchise from other cities and being denied at every opportunity, the City of St. Petersburg was granted an expansion team by MLB. …show more content…

Team owner, Vincent J. Naimoli finally had succeeded in bringing major league baseball to St.Petersburg. The only problem was, the team in the early years failed to ever make a successful run for the World Series. The Devil Rays were the worst team in baseball and for years had the worst record for attendance. Naimoli, after sucking the team dry financially sold the team to Stuart Sternberg who turned the team and the franchise into a successful business model for Major League Baseball, including a 2008 World Series

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