Rays Last in Attendance, but TV Ratings Exceedingly Strong

According to FOX Sports Florida, the Rays are Tampa Bay's second-most-watched program in prime time:

Rank	Network	HH Rtg
1	10 WTSP CBS	5.54
2	RAYS ON SUN	4.32
3	8 WFLA NBC	3.07
4	13 WTVT FOX	2.83
5	28 WFTS ABC	2.76
6	TNT	1.81

Full disclosure, my employer, WTSP-TV, was No. 1.

Nevertheless, the Rays' last-in-the-league attendance isn't the only thing getting noticed this week:

Last night's #Rays game drew a 6.3 household rating in Tampa Bay. 115,000 homes. Tied for highest of the season, per Fox Sun Sports.
— Matt Baker (@MBakerTBTimes) July 30, 2014

#Rays average local TV audience this year is 79,000. That would rank 6th in the NBA, behind only NY, LAL, Mia, Chi, GS
— Cork Gaines (@CorkGaines) July 30, 2014

FOXSports also reports at least a 40% increase in July 2014 ratings, compared to June 2013.  And the team's recent winning streak has drawn at least a 5.0 HH rating eight games in a row.

Fuel to the fire for Rays fans who insist the team has broad support across the Greater Tampa Bay television market...as well as those (i.e. yours truly) who insist the team will make a boatload when it renegotiates its television contract, which is up at the end of 2016.

Indians Go All High-Tech in Studying Attendance Issues

What happens when you already have a modern stadium and you can't draw folks to the ballpark?

Interesting read from Crain's Cleveland on the Indians' attendance analytics.  An excerpt:

Shapiro attributes the Indians' attendance to the size of the Northeast Ohio market, what he calls the “fragmentation” of the sports entertainment market, and such variables as the number of people living downtown.

One crucial number the Indians can control is their season-ticket base of about 8,000, which Shapiro has said significantly lags behind major-league teams in similar markets. To the Indians, that core group of customers represents a certainty in a sport in which weather and other elements can be such unknowns.

Kriseman, Buckhorn Sit Down Together, Talk (a Little Bit of) Baseball

In this week's Political Connections on Bay News 9, St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman and Tampa Mayor Bob Buckhorn sit down to talk a variety of topics, including (of course), the ongoing Rays Stadium Saga.  Adam Smith of the Times summarizes {link to Times' site}:

We asked them to predict where the Rays will be playing in 10 years.

No idea, said Buckhorn.

Kriseman predicted they will remain in St. Petersburg, and cited recent comments by Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig and Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg as evidence that his administration is making more progress dealing with the team than his predecessor, Mayor Bill Foster, did.

"What you heard Stu Sternberg say was that he has confidence in our discussions moving forward, which is very different from what you've heard before," said Kriseman, 51. "And you even heard Bud Selig not throwing missiles and bombs about this relationship being broken and there being a problem here. The reason you didn't hear that from him is that there has been progress in our discussions."

Buckhorn's response didn't exactly make him seem like a guy who is going to spend some much-needed political capital trying to finance a ballpark.  He has grander aspirations for his career, after all.

And Kriseman's response is a reflection of the difficult position he finds himself in as mayor of St. Pete; he can want to broker a deal all day long, but how does he squeeze any value out of the remaining years of his contract if the Rays don't want to compensate the city?

Furthermore, it seems little has changed in the 18 months since we sat Buckhorn and then-mayor Bill Foster down to talk sports.  At the time, Buckhorn said he understood where his counterpart was coming from in fighting for the equity St. Pete had built up in the contract.  And even though Buckhorn campaigned for Kriseman, claiming the Stadium Saga was a reason voters should vote out Foster, those comments likely had as much to do with political leanings than they did the Rays.

Political Connections re-airs tonight at 8 p.m.

If St. Pete Builds It, MLS Will Come (Maybe)

The Tampa Bay Times had a story on page 1B this morning about the worst-kept secret in St. Petersburg: Bill Edwards' long-term bid to take the Rowdies to Major League Soccer {link to Times' site}.

This blog has gone into depth several times since March about the behind-the-scenes lobbying efforts by Edwards and former St. Petersburg mayor Rick Baker to land a new soccer-only stadium on the St. Pete waterfront.  And a new stadium is surely a requirement for MLS acceptance. 

But it won't be easy to convince local residents, who were so concerned about legacy and tradition downtown that they spiked a well-thought-out proposal to replace the city's failing pier.

Times reporter Charlie Frago writes Edwards and Baker are eyeing the MLS' planned expansion to 24 teams by 2020, "all but one of (which seems) spoken for."  All to "have a chance" at MLS acceptance:

To have a chance, the Rowdies need more fans. The team averages 5,000 fans a game.

"If I can get 8,000 people coming to 15 games a year, it'd be a no-brainer to take it up a level to the MLS," Edwards said.

Another challenge is the proximity of another MLS franchise a little more than an hour away.

Would the 19-team league allow two franchises in Central Florida? MLS didn't return calls for comment.

Of course, Al Lang upgrades (or replacement) would be expensive, and Edwards, although one of the area's most generous donors at times, hasn't said a peep about where the money would come from. 

However, he did successfully lobby state senators (one of which, he donated $50k to afterward) and governor (to whom he donated $1 million) to add the Rowdies to the list of major-league sports franchises now eligible for state stadium subsidies, originally designed to drive tourism.

The humor in that is captured in the Times story:

Getting enough out-of-towners to justify bed tax dollars for an Al Lang soccer makeover would be a stretch, said Kevin King, chief of staff for Mayor Rick Kriseman. The Tourist Development Council, which makes recommendations on how to distribute bed tax money, focuses on attracting overnight hotel guests, he said.

Like that will stop Edwards and Baker from getting their way in St. Pete...

Well, at Least There's This Practical Thought:

Good news Tampa Bay, nobody right now thinks playing baseball in our sticky summer heat (when it's not raining) is a good idea:

Joe Maddon says for any new stadium planned for the #Rays, there needs to be a roof, retractable or not.
— Steve Carney (@stevecarney) July 22, 2014

More Claims from Cleveland on the "LeBron Effect"

So this made the rounds yesterday, supposedly providing more evidence of the huge economic "LeBron Effect" in Cleveland:

“@darrenrovell impact on arena debt service payments w LBJ back" Yeah, that LeBron effect all made up @StadiumShadow pic.twitter.com/8DZJU0FTIf
— Ian VanBuskirk (@tampagatoraid) July 22, 2014

I reached out to the incomparable Neil deMause, of Field of Schemes fame, since he is more familiar with Cleveland's financing, and he pointed out a number of possible problems with this message:

1. Like the $500 million LeBron economic impact claim, there is no source to this data. So, who knows if it was just made up like the $500 million LeBron economic impact claim.
2. For LeBron's eight years in Cleveland, the ticket sales tax had five crappy years and three good ones; after he left, three crappy years and one good one. 
3. The Cavs currently sell about $30 million a year in tickets (per Forbes) and the ticket tax is 8%.  So it makes no sense that the chart claims the ticket tax alone is providing $4M-$8M per season in revenue.  Furthermore, 8% of an extra 200,000 tickets per year (at ~$50 a pop) would only seem to generate an additional $800,000 in tax receipts.
4. The arena also hosted non-Cavs events as well, so its impossible to tell from the chart how much of the tax revenue was actually due to basketball games.
5. As for the 2014-2015 and 2015-2016 projections, deMause indicates the asterisk next to the projections likely means "wild-assed guess."

UPDATE NOV 17: Holy Cross economist Victor Matheson joins the chorus debunking the $500 million claim - it's worth a read.  His conclusion: "why accept economic impact studies that are off by at least a factor of 10? Sports fans, not to mention local taxpayers, deserve better."

Tampa Bay Rays Employee at Center of International Scandal

North Korean leader Kim Jong Un is reportedly pretty pissed off about a parody video circling the Interwebs...and a Rays employee is indirectly responsible.

Recognize him in the first 0:38?

Vinik Finally Puts Channelside Bay Plaza Drama Behind Him

From Richard Mullins at the Tampa Tribune, Lightning owner Jeffrey Vinik will pay more than $7.1 million (but we don't know how much more) for Channelside Bay Plaza:

Vinik, officials with Port Tampa Bay and executives with the Liberty Group/Convergent Capital pair of developers all agreed over the weekend to a new legal settlement of their issues, just hours before a judge was scheduled to rule on the matter Monday. The deal now gives a green light to Vinik’s long-term hopes and dreams to remake the entire neighborhood into a gleaming mixed-use entertainment and shopping district around the Forum.
...
As for what happens next, Vinik’s representatives have been especially quiet about their specific plans for Channelside, but there have been some hints of where they intend to take the center.
During a June 30 meeting before the port’s governing board, Lightning Chief Executive Officer Tod Leiweke described their general hopes to make better connections around the neighborhood spanning from Florida Avenue to the cruise ship terminal.
That presentation included watercolor artistic renderings of the area it called “Channelside Live” with glass-walled bridges between parking garages, and back-lit, window-like facades of buildings, altogether giving the area the feel of an entertainment district in the vein of Downtown Disney or Universal City Walk.

Let the Rays stadium rumors continue!

Kriseman to Throw Out First Pitch

According to the calendar of St. Petersburg Mayor Rick Kriseman, the man who has reportedly given Rays' owner Stu Sternberg hope in recent months, will throw out the first pitch at next Saturday's game (7/26).

It will end a streak of more than four years without a first pitch from St. Pete's mayor (Bill Foster had the honor on July 10, 2010).

In those four years, Bob Buckhorn has thrown out a Rays' first pitch twice (even though the stadium resides in St. Pete).

What's the over/under on how many Stadium Saga questions Kriseman will field next week?

Selig Thinks Baseball Can Work in Tampa Bay...Maybe Because it's Currently Working in Tampa Bay?

In his annual All-Star Weekend press avail, MLB Commissioner Bud Selig reminded us he is still un-intervening in the Rays' Stadium Saga {link to Times' site}:

"It's obvious they need a new stadium," Selig said. "It's no secret. … All you have to do is look at the daily attendance figures, the attendance figure to date this year, … and you can see what they need."

Despite MLB-worst attendance — an average of 16,902 that is barely half of the MLB average (30,028), Selig said, "The demographics in the market are good, I have no question about that."

Asked later if that meant he felt that baseball can work in the market, he told the Tampa Bay Times, "I'm sure it can, but talk to Stu Sternberg."

For what its worth, Sternberg emailed the Times later and said he was optimistic of the progress with Mayor Rick Kriseman at the helm of St. Pete.

Selig also said Montreal was an "excellent candidate" to land another MLB team sometime, but wouldn't elaborate.  Why?

Because, of course, he's confident baseball can work in Tampa Bay, as long as the Rays get a new stadium!

My response would be, "is baseball working in Tampa Bay right now?"  Because the team is turning a profit, it's usually competitive, and its TV ratings are high enough the team will get a huge windfall in 2017....it would seem to be working.

So then, Mr. Commissioner, at what point would baseball in Tampa Bay stop working without a new stadium?  Are we talking 2015 or 2025?  Because that's a big difference to the taxpayers being asked to figure it out and shell out the cash.

Anyway, the latest headlines are not worth getting worked up about - they're really just fodder for sports talk guys so they can make bold statements like "it is time to quit playing around and address the Rays stadium issue once and for all" because "Montreal could be back in the baseball business by 2027."

Because we only have 13 years to solve this problem!!!

Terrible Journalism = Letting Sports Fans (or Teams) Make Economic Claims

A Cleveland politician said LeBron James' return would mean $500 million a year to the city.  And for some reason, Bloomberg printed it.

The scary thing is this number will be repeated enough that some gullible folks will believe it.  But if you want real economist opinions, I point you to The Sports Economist blog, which writes, "The Worst Economic Impact Estimate Ever?"

Even before getting into the more serious economic problems with the study, let’s look at the raw data itself. With a metropolitan area population of 2.1 million, a $500 million impact on the area would mean that every single man, woman and child the region will be engaging in an average of $240 in Caviliers related spending every year for the rest of James’ career. Possible, but unlikely.
...
The bigger problem with Fitzgerald’s claim is that it falls prey to one of the most serious fallacies in economic impact analysis: the failure to account for the substitution effect. Any money spent by local residents at Cavs games is money not spent elsewhere in the local economy. The extra 150,000 fans that will be going to watch LeBron next year are 150,000 less people going out to nightclubs, restaurants, and theaters. The higher ticket prices that fans will be paying leaves less disposable income to spend on Indians or Browns games, or movie tickets, or bowling, or free-style skydiving, or whatever it is that Clevelanders would do, and have been doing, without being able to watch LeBron win games. Similarly, every kid in Cleveland will be getting a LeBron jersey for Christmas or Hanukkah this winter but this doesn’t mean they will be getting more presents, just different presents. The jersey manufacturers’ gains are equally matched by losses for the makers of ugly sweaters.

If you needed more analysis, there's always Field of Schemes:

Last year the Cavs sold 710,000 tickets, and had 132,000 go unsold. Even if the team were, let’s say, to double ticket prices next year, each of those 132,000 new attendees would have to spend $3560 apiece on their visit to a game in order to generate $500 million in economic activity.

A little piece of Bloomberg's credibility died with the publishing of that piece.

Rays Attendance Watch: All-Star Edition

For those of you keeping score at home, the Rays enter the 2014 All-Star Break with the league's worst attendance mark, 16,902 fans per game.  That represents an 858-fan drop from last year's mark at the very same point.

The good folks at Tampa Bay Baseball Market have been doing a good job at tracking attendance this year, which includes all of the minor league teams too:

Tampa Bay Baseball Attendance – July 13, 2014: Total attendance: 19,446 http://t.co/fCNawl1xCq
— TBBaseballMarket (@TBBaseballMkt) July 14, 2014

But for the Rays, there's not a ton of good news.  They still have a number of games against the Red Sox and Yankees remaining, but with the team struggling to stay out of last place, it's unlikely they'll get out of the MLB cellar in attendance.

Brilliant Observations on the Stadium Saga

Turns out Opening Day isn't the only day you can compare Tropicana Field to the rest of the "Joneses."

This morning's must-read column in the Tampa Tribune is courtesy of Joe Brown, who contends Minneapolis' Target Field offers lessons for baseball fans and taxpayers alike:

Target Field emblematizes the fantasy of the owner and some fans of the Tampa Bay Rays: moving out of a dome into a new, outdoor, downtown ballpark. The reality, however, doesn’t always produce the imagined results.   

Brown, who also recently heralded Pinellas County's decision to rethink event subsidies, follows the lead of Trib columnist Joe Henderson, who has asked intelligent questions about the Stadium Saga.

Brown doesn't argue against a new stadium, he merely cautions (since some fans/taxpayers need a reminder) that a half-billion-dollar "investment" in a private team may not be necessary.  He also echoes many points made in this blog over the years.

New stadiums not only have little impact on performance; they also typically see attendance drop back close to old stadium-levels:

Although Target Field is a huge upgrade from the Metrodome (what wouldn’t be?), it has not improved the fortunes of the Twins on the field. The team has finished below .500 the past three seasons there. Additionally, attendance there has gone down every year since it first opened.
...
It’s part of what urbandictionary.com calls “new car syndrome,” where you want to wash your new vehicle every day. Once the new-car smell fades, however, not so much.

According to MLB attendance figures going into this past weekend, Target Field ranks 18th, but some other new ballparks are doing worse: the Mets’ Citi Field (20th), the Padres’ Petco Park (21st), the Diamondbacks’ Chase Field (22nd), the Mariners’ Safeco Field (24th), the Astros’ Minute Maid Park (25th), and the Miami Marlins’ new park (27th). The Rays, in case you didn’t know, are dead last at 30th.

And, TV dollars are far more important than butts-in-seats to MLB teams these days:

Recent trends in the business of baseball show that a local cable TV deal may be more important to a franchise’s profit than a new ballpark. Forbes magazine estimates that with the new, richer deals signed by many teams, local television revenue could exceed $1.5 billion in 2015.

The Los Angeles Dodgers, playing in the second oldest park in the National League, had their value soar by hundreds of millions because of a 25-year deal the team signed with Time Warner Cable that will pay an estimated $6 billion. It also allowed them to have the league’s highest payroll.

The Rays’ deal with SunSports, which pays the team $20 million a year, expires in 2016. Ratings have been some of the best in baseball the last three years, which bodes well for them when they negotiate a new contract. In this age of DVRs, networks are hungry for live, DVR-proof programming. I don’t know when the Rays will get a new ballpark, but I can almost guarantee my cable bill will go up in a few years.

Finally, Brown offers some balance, acknowledging a new ballpark "doesn't hurt."  But its also not as important as the talent in the front office:

Would Rays attendance improve with a new ballpark? Maybe, but what has happened in other cities proves it would likely be short-lived. To paraphrase the famous quote from the movie Field of Dreams, if you build it, they will come — for a while.

Fact-Checking Spartan Race's Charity Claims

Launched a big project last night on WTSP.com - months after Spartan Race came to Tampa, home of U.S. Special Operations Command, we checked their promises of charitable donations for local military non-profits.  The findings were not impressive in any sense of the word.

Worth five minutes of your viewing time, or 10 minutes of your reading time.

For-profit companies are well within their right to charge whatever they'd like and profit however they'd like.  But if they are going to make claims about charitable donations or economic claims, they should be able to back them up.

As a side note, the Competitor Group, which ran the ill-fated, but well-subsidized St. Pete Rock n Roll Half Marathon, failed to return numerous requests for how much their one remaining St. Pete half-marathon donated to charity.

Vinik, Port Accused of Channelside Collusion

No sooner had I suggested the legal potholes of a Tampa Port Authority-approved Jeff Vinik bid for Channelside Bay Plaza, did the losing party, Liberty Channelside LLC, file a motion in court claiming collusion.  This, according to the reporting of Jamal Thalji {link to Times' site}:

Liberty is trying to scuttle Vinik's winning bid while also proposing a new deal to the judge overseeing the Channelside auction: Liberty offered $10 million for the fading downtown Tampa mall.

Liberty will present its case to U.S. Bankruptcy Judge Christopher Sontchi on July 15. The judge is handling the liquidation of Channelside's owner, the Irish Bank Resolution Corp., and still has to approve Vinik's winning bid.

Even before the auction started, Liberty indicated that it would challenge the result. Liberty attended the auction in New York but didn't make a bid. It made the $10 million offer in Tuesday's court filing.

Where Could the A's (and thus, the Rays) Relocate?

Field of Scheme's Neil deMause writes for Sports on Earth today that the A's can leave Oakland as of 2018, but have few options for relocation.  An excerpt:

Portland, Charlotte, San Antonio, Sacramento, etc.: Every time there's an MLB team unhappy with its current situation, speculation gears up around what could be called the MLB Lite cities, those big enough to be on the cusp of big-league status without ever having landed an MLB team...The problem with all these cities, aside from none having stadium plans that are any further along than Oakland's, is that they're relatively puny by MLB standards. Sacramento, at number No. 20 among U.S. cities, is the largest TV market of the lot, with Portland (No. 22), Charlotte (No. 25), and San Antonio (No. 36) trailing behind. (And Sacramento looks less promising when you consider that its NBA franchise is limiting the number of luxury suites at its new arena because "we have zero Fortune 1000 companies.") Any of these cities could possibly be a marginal baseball market -- the two smallest current MLB markets are Milwaukee (No. 34) and Cincinnati (No. 35) -- but they all pale in comparison beside even a slice of the Bay Area, which nearly has more TV households than Sacramento and Portland combined.

Montreal: Since the move of the Expos to Washington in 2005, there has been only one major North American market without a major-league baseball team, and that's Montreal, which if it were in the U.S. would be ahead of Seattle and Minneapolis. And the city did nearly sell out two exhibition games between the Jays and Mets this March, and Warren Cromartie is really really excited about getting a team back someday. Unfortunately, MLB deliberately slammed the door on Montreal when it moved the Expos, plus the city also has probably the only stadium standing that Lew Wolff would rather play in less than the Oakland Coliseum, and attempts to build a new one for the Expos went nowhere fast. Montreal should get another baseball team eventually, but it's hardly a ready-made move threat for a team like the A's.

New York: Yes, now we're getting silly. But it's worth pointing out: If you're going to consider San Jose as a place for the A's to move, why not New York City as well, which similarly has no stadium and is in the designated territory of another team, but which is absolutely bursting with rich people. If San Jose's lawsuit really does succeed in tearing down MLB control over franchise territories -- and not just in getting MLB owners to let the A's move to the South Bay in exchange for dropping the suit before things get to that point, which seems slightly more possible -- then there would be nothing stopping Wolff from heading east and building himself a stadium in Williamsburg, at least if half a dozen other teams didn't get there first.

A few good points from deMause:

1. Just as it may be in MLB's best interest to pay off the Giants so the A's can go to San Jose, it may be one day in the league's best interest to pay off the Yankees and Mets so a third team can go to NY/NJ.
2. Montreal remains perhaps the most likely candidate for the "next" relocation, whether it be the A's or the Rays...although:
3. There are still no good relocation options for MLB teams right now.  Good news for Rays fans in Tampa Bay....although:
4. None of this will prevent franchise owners from still threatening to move.  Why?  Because it works.

Pinellas County Examines Special Event Handouts

This week, the Pinellas County Tourism Development Council (TDC) took a step in the right direction by putting a little more scrutiny on claims of "beds-in-heads" for the events that get tourist tax dollars each year.  The Trib's Josh Boatwright reports:

The tourism council on Wednesday approved $982,500 for eight events, which reported drawing more than 440,000 people and giving their host cities exposure on national television.

Applications for a science fair and a music festival in St. Petersburg were rejected because both fell below the baselines of 15,000 attendees or 5,000 hotel room nights.

The county's biggest so-called elite event, the Honda Grand Prix, was approved for $250,000 after reporting attendance of 130,000 people and more than 27,000 hotel nights during the IndyCar race, held in March.

The new requirement helps county officials better evaluate the economic benefit of sponsoring these events, St. Petersburg/Clearwater Area Convention & Visitors Bureau Director D.T. Minich said.

"I think it was more of just a verification that the numbers were there - that they had the attendance or the room nights that qualified them," Minich said.

But sadly, the system is still steeped in the honor system:

Applicants were required to explain how they tabulated attendance, but it's still difficult to independently verify the numbers because they are self-reported, Minich said.

Regardless, the more scrutiny, the better.  Especially after this blog showed how the short-lived St. Pete Rock n' Roll Half Marathon failed to deliver on its tourism promises, but still got to keep the tax dollars.

How the Rowdies' Stadium Saga Will Go Down

If you remember my 2009 post on "How the Rays' stadium saga will go down," or the 2011 update, you know I regularly reference the typical blueprint for how pro sports franchises leverage public subsidies.

Well, since buying the Tampa Bay Rowdies last year, Bill Edwards has followed that blueprint too.  It started with complaining about conditions at Al Lang Stadium, the lease he inherited when he bought the team.  Then, he started talking about a new stadium.

Now, after currying favor with local politicians, he's cranking up pressure on St. Petersburg to act (sound familiar, Rays fans?).

According to Kameel Stanley at the Tampa Bay Times, Edwards filed a lawsuit over conditions at Al Lang {link to Times' site}.  Stanley reports the complaint not only alleges maintenance violations, but also a new dispute over the team's share of ticket sales.

I'll stop short of making too many predictions on this one, other than the fact that - much like the Rays' stalemate - it'll take a long time to reach a resolution.

Wednesday: Vinik Jumps Back Into Channelside Game with Auction Interest

Wednesday is auction day at Channelside, where we expect Lightning owner Jeffrey Vinik to bid upwards of $7.1 million for the nearly-vacant plaza adjacent to all his other downtown holdings.

There are only two other bidders that we know of: the Port Tampa Bay and the joint Liberty Group/Convergent Capital group.

The Port, which desperately wants to keep the plaza away from the less-experienced Liberty Group, needs to be careful not to cross into illegal territory in colluding with Vinik.  But there are enough attorneys - and enough watchdog journalists - in on this story to hopefully make sure that doesn't happen.

Then again, nothing is predictable on this story:

Port endorses Lightning vision for Channelside after no one from opposing bidder Liberty shows up https://t.co/WlgvkSjrcl
— Jeff Harrington (@JeffMHarrington) June 30, 2014

UPDATE: Vinik was the only party to submit a real bid Wednesday, lining him up for a July 15 hearing before a bankruptcy judge, who stands to approve the takeover.  While newspapers celebrate {link to Times' site}, Liberty/Convergent says it will continue to fight in court {link to Times' site}.

Rowdies Owner Thanks State Senator with Campaign Cash

ST. PETERSBURG, Florida - Few local businessmen enjoyed Florida's legislative session as much as Bill Edwards, which raises eyebrows about a $50,000 contribution he made to the political action committee of Senator Jack Latvala (R-Seminole).

Edwards, a mortgage tycoon and owner of the Tampa Bay Rowdies soccer club, successfully lobbied the legislature and governor for a half-million dollar improvement to the Mahaffey Theater as well as a stadium subsidy bill that - for the first time - makes the Rowdies eligible for tens of millions of tax dollars.

Latvala was key in re-writing the stadium bill, which was originally designed to subsidize facilities for the "Big Four" sports leagues, considered tourist draws. But this year, in addition to adding NASCAR and MLS to the leagues eligible, Latvala made sure the Rowdies' North American Soccer League (NASL) was added as well.

Even though the NASL averages around 4,000 fans per game (the Rowdies have performed slightly above average), they now stand to qualify for $3 million a year in state tax dollars for new stadium construction. Edwards has indicated he envisions a taxpayer-subsidized soccer stadium on St. Pete's waterfront.

The bill passed on May 2, the last day of the session. On June 17, Edwards contributed $50,000 to Latvala's Florida Leadership Fund, a political action committee (PAC) that allows him to spend contributions almost any way he wants. The Senator is seeking to become the President of the chamber, which generally involves out-raising his peers as a sign of dominance.

"This is America. Jack wants to be the president of the Senate and I want him to be president too, so I support him," Edwards said, indicating there was nothing illegal about making the PAC contributions.
   
Edwards, who also contributed $1 million to Governor Rick Scott's re-election campaign, is not alone in his support of Latvala. Dozens of people and businesses have been pouring money into Latvala's coffers since the end of the session two months ago.

Among them: the Tampa Bay Rays ($15,000), the Jacksonville Jaguars ($5,000), Charter Schools USA ($5,000), and Isle of Capri Casinos ($2,500).

Tuesday, Edwards again mentioned his dream of 18,000-20,000 fans attending Rowdies games in St. Petersburg, but said he wasn't sure about a timeline.

"It's going to depend on the fan base.  If the fans come, we'll keep building."