A Tampa-area investment group has expressed interest in purchasing the Tampa Bay Rays and keeping them in the region as Major League Baseball pressures owner Stuart Sternberg to sell the team, according to published reports.
Joe Molloy, a Tampa native and former managing partner of the New York Yankees, told the Tampa Bay Times that he is leading the group.
Meanwhile, The Athletic reported that baseball commissioner Rob Manfred and other team owners are trying to convince Sternberg to sell and is even threatening to take away some of the Rays’ revenue-sharing income to force a move.
The Athletic reported that Eddie DeBartolo Jr., former owner of NFL’s San Francisco 49ers.
“We have assembled an incredible team that shares our vision,” Molloy told the Times.
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The Athletic also said Dan Doyle Jr., who owns Clearwater’s DXL Imaging, is part of an investment group. Doyle was the lead investor for a group that tried to buy the Rays in 2023 for $1.85 billion.
Sternberg has given no indication he is interested in selling the team, which has been valued at $1.23 billion by Forbes. Sternberg’s group paid $200 million for the franchise in 2004.
The development comes with a March 31 deadline for the Rays to commit with the city of St. Petersburg on a planned $1.3 billion stadium with Pinellas County to replace Tropicana Field. The venue, built as part of $6.5 billion redevelopment, likely would open in 2029 at the earliest.
Muddling the stadium plan, Hurricane Milton ripped the roof off the stadium on Oct. 9, leaving it damaged and unusable for at least 2025.
The Rays are playing this season in Tampa at Steinbrenner Field, the New York Yankees’ spring training facility while St. Petersburg determine what needs to be done to make the Trop baseball-ready.
The Rays have waffled on whether to accept the new stadium deal, citing cost overruns they would be responsible for because of delays after the hurricane. Sternberg has blamed the county commission for the delays.
Another complication could arise should the team’s two-decade stadium quest remain unsolved.
The Athletic reported that this year’s end of the collective bargaining agreement between MLB and its player union could lead to negotiations on “ways to lessen the team’s share in revenue sharing or put contingencies around it.”
MLB’s revenue sharing distributes money from wealthier teams to poorer teams to make the league more competitive. Each team contributes a percentage of local revenue to a pool, which is equally split among all 30 teams.
The Rays are historically among MLB’s struggling franchises - with Tropicana Field among the worst-attended venues - despite making the playoffs five of the past six years, including a World Series appearance.
In 2024, Tampa Bay home attendance was 1.34 million, down 1.44 million from 2023. Playing this season in 11,000-seat Steinbrenner Field won’t improve that figure.
Large-market clubs that pay the most into revenue sharing are not happy keeping the Rays afloat, and at least some of the small-market teams are annoyed, The Athletic reported.
The Times reported that Molloy’s intention would be to pick up on the St. Petersburg stadium deal.
Molloy was a Yankees senior executive for 11 years and served as managing general partner from 1992 to 1995. Among his Yankee credits is the planning and building of Steinbrenner Field with local government partnerships. Molloy is currently chair and CEO of Tampa-based JAM Sports Ventures, a sports franchise consultant firm.
DeBartolo Jr., a Pro Football Hall of Fame inductee, ran the 49ers over a 23-year span in which they won five Super Bowls. He was suspended by the NFL for a year and in 2000 stepped down after his indictment for failing to report a 1998 extortion attempt by former Louisiana Gov. Edwin Edwards. He pleaded guilty, was fined and sentenced to two years of probation, then pardoned by President Donald Trump in 2020.
Doyle, an inductee in the Tampa Bay Business Hall of Fame, started DEX Imaging in 2002 with his father, the founder of Danka Business Systems. They sold DEX to Staples in 2019 before buying it back with Gamut Capital Management in 2024.
This is a developing story. Stay with WUSF for updates.
