The Tampa Bay Devil Rays were purchased by Stuart Sternberg in 2004 for $200 Million.  According to the Forbes web site, http://www.forbes.com/lists/2007/33/07mlb_Tampa-Bay-Devil-Rays_337975_print.html,
the franchise is currently valued at $267 Million. An estimated gain on investment of almost 25% over a short three year period.  This is really a nice return for a corporation that is subsidized by the City of St. Petersburg.  Forbes further estimates that the Rays total revenue for the coming year may reach $134 Million.  These are really big numbers for a privately held corporation that is subsidized by city of St. Petersburg.  The Devil Rays have never had a winning season; in fact they have finished dead last in their division for eight of the nine years of their existence.  They have the lowest attendance in the major leagues.  And they have the lowest player payroll in the major leagues.  Despite the dubious distinctions the corporation has shown no difficulty in showing a profit.  Portions of which is at the expense/largesse of the taxpayers of the city of St. Petersburg.

The city of St. Petersburg has been overly generous with taxpayer money used to benefit this wealthy corporation while the average city resident struggles to pay their property taxes. The city will pay over  $2.0 Million this year for the Trop's property insurance.  The city council, via a 19 July, 2007 Consent Agenda I, obtained from the city council's website, approved giving the Rays another $1.281 Million for "QUALIFYING CAPITAL REPAIRS" of which $750,000 of that amount is for new turf.   In fact looking at the city 2007 budget, dealing with only the Tropicana Field, it is estimated there will be an overall loss to the city of $1,748,000.  If the city did not "giveaway" the above $2.0M for insurance, and did not "giveaway" $1.281M for capital repairs of Tropicana Field, the city would net $1,533,000.   To add insult to injury, the city receives about $360,000, which is only about one-fourth of the annual "Naming Rights" revenue from the Tropicana Corp, while the Rays reap the remainder!!  The city taxpayers are entitled to all of this revenue and a lot more.  The city even discounts the hourly rate of the off-duty police officers directing traffic at the Trop home games while any private city business, without connections, has to pay a higher hourly rate.  

The taxpayers of St. Petersburg have too many burdens for the city to be subsidizing an extremely wealthy organization when there may not be real benefits to the average city taxpayer.  The CATO Institute, http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=2830, states that, "New sports projects usually rearrange rather than increase local economic activity and tax collections."    The term "rearrange" basically means that since about 90% of the Rays fans are locals, the money they spent at the Trop is taken from some other local entertainment activity and does NOT add to the local economy and local tax collections.