Orlando Magic co-founder Pat Williams has proposed a new baseball stadium in the city to lure a Major League Baseball team -- and he’s looking to take the one that’s only a two-hour drive away.
Williams is leading the Orlando Dreamers group that proposed a $1.7 billion stadium in Orlando on Tuesday and wants to make it the new home of the Tampa Bay Rays.
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The Rays have the best record in the MLB this season, but have been rumored to be moving out of Tampa Bay in recent years after struggling to put fans in seats.
The Rays have consistently been in the bottom four in MLB attendance since they were established in 1998. And despite the incredible start to their season this year, the team is still just 23rd out of 30 MLB teams in terms of attendance, according to ESPN’s tracker.
The other team in Florida, the Miami Marlins, has also struggled to build a sustainable business despite having successful teams that won the World Series in 1997 and 2003.
But that isn’t stopping the Dreamers from thinking fortunes would change in Orlando.
Williams envisions a 45,000-seat stadium around which he’d develop other commercial establishments like retail shops, hotels, restaurants, and even a convention center. He’s banking on Orlando’s influx of tourists driven by the popular theme parks in the city to drive traffic.
“[The Orlando site] is right next to all the central highways,” Williams told the Tampa Bay Journal. “It’s a 15-minute drive depending on traffic. Six miles from Disney, 6 miles from Universal. We’re very bullish on these 80 million tourists that will come through here this year. And by the time we might start playing, say in 2028, we’re probably going to be at 100 million tourists.”
