WTSP Channel 10 Tampa - Florida Suncoast Dome Grand Opening 

😂

Mayor of St. Pete: we're going to develop an emotional attachment to this infrastructure. No sentence can ever better describe trying to be a Rays fan at Tropicana Field under Rays Way management practices. We're GOING to develop an emotional attachment to this infrastructure! Let's go, whoever is wearing our laundry this week! Get some of this dome field advantage!

It would have been a waste of a stadium if a baseball team would of never came.

Yes they did that's why they built the stadium just like here in Buffalo New York we built pilot field we were supposed to get the Marlins or the Colorado Rockies but we were fools out of that

it was built with the intention of attracting a team

likely not. raymond james was brand new at this point.

It'd be too small for an NFL team

Note: If you happen to have the rest of the newscast-would love to see that as well!

I don't think they misjudged the popularity of baseball, the Rays have solid TV numbers. They just put the stadium in the wrong place.

...badly misjudged the popularity of baseball in this market - NOT TRUE 23,000 people signed up to be season tickets holders for a baseball team prior to the opening. ...awful location - NOT TRUE what was a dying downtown is now thriving three decades later, in part to this project. ...poor highway system - NOT TRUE three interstate highways surround the site, name any other stadium in the US that has that... and go. ...what a farce it's turned out to be. Did Naimoli screw things up? Probably. Did it change the future of St. Pete? Absolutely. Do Haters have to hate? ALWAYS.

@@davidfreeman4808 ok explain the attendance issues!! always been an attendance issue even during playoff runs in recent years, I'm a Rays fan but we can't keep a team averaging sometimes only 12,000 fans a game

@@greenbursts3390 I think it's way too convenient to pretend that in 20+ years nobody has gone to games. The mission statement in 1998 was to get the AL East fans to come out strong which obviously caused a lot of local resentment. But that's a long time ago and there are new owners and an exciting new St. Pete surrounding The Trop. I also don't know which playoff runs you speak of because in 2019 those games at The Trop were packed. The teams the Rays have put on the field the last two years have been exciting and fun to watch as opposed to the overpaid teams they beat to get in the playoffs. The Rays TV numbers are GREAT. And it's easy to understand why those not actually here between April-October have trouble understanding why Florida baseball has to be played inside a dome, but their ignorance just adds to the fake legend of The Trop being the worst place ever built in the history of mankind. At the end of the day, if people in St. Pete would rather come up with lame excuses why they don't want to go inside the Trop, then the Rays will go somewhere else. A place where haters like the writer of this post are few and far between.