{"id":739526,"date":"2026-06-30T15:15:22","date_gmt":"2026-06-30T15:15:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/739526\/"},"modified":"2026-06-30T15:15:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-30T15:15:22","slug":"governor-desantis-threatens-tampa-bay-rays-could-move-mlb-team-to-orlando","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/739526\/","title":{"rendered":"Governor DeSantis Threatens Tampa Bay Rays Could Move MLB Team to Orlando"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doubling down on his threat to move the Tampa Bay Rays to Orlando, which he reiterated at a press conference on Monday, June 29.<\/p>\n<p>Tampa Bay Rays<a data-fslightbox=\"1\" data-type=\"image\" aria-label=\"Open fullscreen lightbox with current image\" href=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Desantis-1200x675.webp\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"1200\" height=\"675\" src=\"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Desantis-1200x675.webp\" alt=\"The press conference was held at Hillsborough College's Dale Mabry campus, where the Rays want to build their new stadium. DeSantis is pushing for the Florida state budget to approve $117.6 billion, $50 million of which would go to the college if the stadium were to be built. \" class=\"wp-image-919253\"\/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>The press conference was held at Hillsborough College\u2019s Dale Mabry campus, where the Rays want to build their new stadium. DeSantis is pushing for the Florida state budget to approve $117.6 billion, $50 million of which would go to the college if the stadium were to be built. <\/p>\n<p>At this point, the Tampa Bay Rays have already said they would pay over $1.25 billion for the ballpark, which will cost roughly $8 billion, according to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.wusf.org\/politics-issues\/2026-06-30\/desantis-restates-rays-stadium-support-50-million-hillsborough-college\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" aria-describedby=\"external-link-warning\">WUSF<\/a>.  The team is also in the process of securing $976 million in public funding from both Hillsborough County and Tampa for the building of the new ballpark.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe\u2019re going to continue to work with Hillsborough College,\u201d DeSantis said in the press conference. \u201cI think this is probably got to come to a head pretty soon one way or another, and then, you know, we\u2019ll have a discussion if somehow it doesn\u2019t happen, but I know we\u2019re both very excited about what\u2019s going to happen on this campus with the potential facility here and everything surrounding it.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>DeSantis pushed that the budget should be finalized soon. He threatened that the team could instead move somewhere else, like Orlando, North Carolina, or Tennessee, if the team doesn\u2019t get the funding they are seeking. <\/p>\n<p>What do you think of the team\u2019s potential move? Let us know on social media. <\/p>\n<p>For the latest Disney Parks news and info, follow <a href=\"https:\/\/wdwnt.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" aria-describedby=\"external-link-warning\">WDW News Today<\/a> on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/wdwnt\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" aria-describedby=\"external-link-warning\">Twitter<\/a>,\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/WDWNewsToday\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" aria-describedby=\"external-link-warning\">Facebook<\/a>, and\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/www.instagram.com\/wdwnt\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer nofollow\" aria-describedby=\"external-link-warning\">Instagram<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>\t\t<script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><script async src=\"\/\/www.instagram.com\/embed.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Florida Governor Ron DeSantis is doubling down on his threat to move the Tampa Bay Rays to Orlando,&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":739527,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2377],"tags":[5,91932,4,297,16597,2550,68,2551,2549],"class_list":["post-739526","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tampa-bay-rays","tag-baseball","tag-government-funding","tag-mlb","tag-rays","tag-ron-desantis","tag-tampa-bay","tag-tampa-bay-rays","tag-tampabay","tag-tampabayrays"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116839719021737705","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739526","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=739526"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/739526\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/739527"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=739526"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=739526"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=739526"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}