Tampa Bay Rays principal owner Stuart Sternberg has agreed in principle to sell the team to a group headed by Jacksonville developer Patrick Zalupski for roughly $1.7 billion, according to a report by The Athletic.
The agreement comes just four months after the Rays backed away from a deal to build a new stadium in St. Petersburg near the site of their longtime home, Tropicana Field.
The deal is expected to be completed as soon as September, an unnamed source told The Athletic, with the club remaining in the Tampa Bay area. However, the source said Zalupski’s group has a strong preference to be in Tampa, rather than St. Petersburg.
Sternberg headed a group that bought the Rays in 2004 for $200 million. He has spent considerable time since then attempting to find a new stadium to replace Tropicana Field, which was built in 1990 and is generally regarded as one of MLB’s worst stadiums.
The most promising opportunity materialized last year with an agreement on a sprawling $1.3 billion ballpark project on essentially the same site. However, a pair of hurricanes devastated Tampa Bay last fall, rendering the Trop unplayable and creating a fiscal and political environment that the club determined was untenable.
As repairs continue in an effort to get the ballpark ready for the 2026 season, the Rays are playing their home games at George Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, the New York Yankees’ spring training headquarters.