Stu Sternberg’s era owning the Tampa Bay Rays has ended, and his style of running baseball operations on a shoestring budget has wrapped as well.

The Rays on Tuesday officially announced the long-awaited sale of the team to a group led by Jacksonville, Fla., developer Patrick Zalupski, after MLB owners approved the deal in a vote last week. The sale price was not disclosed but has been reported to be about $1.7 billion. Sternberg will retain a 10% share of the franchise for the time being.

Zalupski is the founder and CEO of Dream Finders Homes, which specializes in home construction and is a publicly traded company with a market cap of about $2.5 billion.

MLB directed Sternberg to sell the team in March after he scuttled a deal in St. Petersburg, Fla., to build a new domed stadium with government agencies adjacent to storm damaged Tropicana Field. It was the second ballpark deal Sternberg rejected in the Tampa Bay area in recent years.

Already changes are happening. Co-team presidents Matt Silverman and Brian Auld on Sept. 17 announced they will step down from their roles. There have been rumors that president of baseball operations Erik Neander might move on.

The future of manager Kevin Cash may also be in doubt even though both Cash and Neander reportedly signed deals earlier in the year that would keep them tied to the club until 2030.

Sternberg bought the team in 2004 from the late Vincent Naimoli, the Rays’ founding owner, for $200 million. The Rays were an American League expansion team in 1998. The new sale price is a hefty profit for Sternberg. Sportico valued the Rays this season at $1.35 billion, No. 29 of MLB’s 30 teams. Only the cross-state Miami Marlins at $1.3 billion are worth less.

The Rays had revenue of $311 million in 2024 playing at the Trop, 28th in MLB. But that figure will certainly plummet in 2025 considering that the Trop is under construction after damage suffered during last year’s Hurricane Milton, and the Rays had to play their home games at 10,000-seat Steinbrenner Field in Tampa, the spring home of the New York Yankees.

The Rays had the second-worst average home attendance in MLB at a shade under 10,000, just ahead of the Athletics, which play their home schedule at Sutter Health Park in West Sacramento, another minor-league facility. Total Rays home attendance failed to break 800,000, well down from the 1.33 million the Rays drew in 2024 at the Trop.

Under Sternberg, the Rays have typically fielded a bottom-five MLB payroll. They have still made nine playoff appearances since 2008, including two losing efforts in the World Series in 2008 and 2020. This season, after all they have coped with, the Rays missed the playoffs for the second year in a row with a $98.5 million payroll for luxury tax purposes, 28th in MLB. Even with the sale pending, at the trade deadline, the Rays shed players including their starting catcher, two starting pitchers and a high-impact utility player.

Rays fans hope habitual cost-cutting will end with new ownership and an influx of capital.

The city of St. Petersburg is currently repairing the Trop, which had its Teflon roof blown off last year during Hurricane Milton. Pictures of the repairs show a few of the new panels in place. But the inside of the Trop was also severely damaged by flooding during the storm and since then.

Manfred said during his All-Star Game press conference that he expected the Rays to be back at the Trop during the 2026 season. The Rays open the season with their first nine games on the road and the home opener on April 6 vs. the Chicago Cubs.

By terms of their lease, the Rays have to play three years at the resurrected facility through the 2028 season, giving them plenty of time under new ownership to determine where they will build and relocate their new home in the Tampa Bay area.