Commissioner Wostal on why taxpayers would be “bludgeoned” by the Rays stadium agreement

Added: 2026-05-23

[00:00:02]The Rays are demanding 100% revenue of all sources including the naming rights, including the ancillary concerts. They want all ticket revenue, concession revenue, parking revenue, naming rights revenue. Respectfully to the new owner of the Rays, he did just find $700 million in cash to buy Beazer Homes out of Georgia. And it begs the question of, well, you could find $700 million of cash for that home company because it's going to make you profit, but you can't find $700 million of cash for the stadium because it's your loss leader and you want the taxpayers to subsidize the loss. I want to be more clear about this. We're putting people's property taxes up for this. This is low-income residents, people working paycheck to paycheck. Their property taxes are now going to be paid for this rich and wealthy stadium to go move forward. That's a question that we should all be soul-searching about, I think, at the end of the day.

[00:00:58]It's not about The answer could be that no taxes make sense. They could say that 50% taxes. Maybe there's an answer in the middle, but right now the deal on the table just to to wear it down is that the taxpayers are being bludgeoned to death by this deal.

[00:01:11]Um, we have no guarantees that there's going to be any return. We don't understand the costs and I think that that's reality that we're faced with if this move forward.