The 2025 baseball season could be the most memorable and heated season yet for Tampa Bay Rays fans.
The Rays are hosting over 10,000 ticket holders at Steinbrenner Field — the New York Yankees’ spring training home — Friday on Opening Day.
Over 20 miles and a bay apart from their roots, Steinbrenner will be home base for the Rays this season. In October, Tropicana Field was damaged by Hurricane Milton — tearing off the roof panels and displacing 300 Rays employees and players.
While the home opener is officially sold out for the 19th year in a row, the capacity at Steinbrenner is only about 40% of Tropicana Field’s baseball capacity.
“2025 is a unique opportunity to see regular-season Major League Baseball in one of the most intimate venues in the country,” Bill Walsh, the Rays’ chief business officer, said during a press conference Wednesday. “The 10,000 seats at Steinbrenner Field are as good as the best 10,000 seats at any other major league park in the country.”
RELATED: Get an early look at the Rays' transformation of Steinbrenner Field in Tampa
For the first time in their 27-year history, the Rays will be playing their home games outside. The open-air ballpark will host the team's first pregame flyover — but could cause its first official rain delays.
Previously planned games that were supposed to take place in Tampa Bay in July and August have been moved into April and May. The Rays are playing 19 of their first 22 games at home to avoid the heat and storms of summer.
Additional paramedic teams are also being hired to deal with the heat-related emergencies.
Steinbrenner Field's official capacity is 11,026, but the Rays have lowered the maximum number of ticket-holders to 10,046, including standing room.
“Some of the additional infrastructure that we had to bring in caused us to actually have to take some seats offline,” Walsh said. “Knowing that we’re going to be operating here at capacity during the summer months, we wanted to make sure that we didn’t overcrowd certain areas.”
Unique to 2025, the Rays are also releasing limited-edition Steinbrenner merchandise alongside new cooling towels, sunglasses and hats.
“When you talk about a baseball field and having to renovate a baseball field, it’s nothing in comparison to what this whole community has faced over the last couple of years,” said Warren Hypes, the Rays’ vice president of creative and branding.
The transition comes with a lot of work as the staff is flipping the stadium from displaying Yankees’ branding to that of the Rays in 120 hours.
Over 3,000 signs and advertisements will be replaced in time for Friday’s first pitch.
“It’s been really cool to see everybody from every level of the organization, hundreds of people, nobody’s in a bad mood, everybody’s working hard, everybody’s really rallying together,” Hypes said. “The coolest thing is not the adversity, but seeing how everybody has rallied around it to make something out of a bad situation.”
