{"id":777462,"date":"2026-08-13T08:06:32","date_gmt":"2026-08-13T08:06:32","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/777462\/"},"modified":"2026-08-13T08:06:32","modified_gmt":"2026-08-13T08:06:32","slug":"is-orlando-destined-to-be-one-of-the-next-mlb-cities-the-orlando-dreamers-are-looking-to-make-it-happen","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/777462\/","title":{"rendered":"Is Orlando destined to be one of the next MLB cities? The Orlando Dreamers are looking to make it happen"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

When you think of Orlando, Florida<\/a>, your mind immediately goes to theme parks.<\/p>\n

That’s fair enough; they’re what helped make Orlando one of the most-visited cities in the world, drawing tens of millions of tourists every year.<\/p>\n

And that’s just one of the reasons the Orlando Dreamers think the Central Florida city is the perfect place for a Major League Baseball<\/a> team.<\/p>\n

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\"Orlando <\/p>\n

With the MLB looking to expand, the Orlando Dreamers are hoping the fast-growing tourist destination can become home to a team. (Credit: Orlando Dreamers)<\/p>\n

While cities like Nashville and Charlotte are often at the top of people’s lists when they talk about MLB expansion, Dreamers co-founder and COO Jim Schnorf believes there’s a multitude of reasons why Orlando will land a team.<\/p>\n

“We have no Major League Baseball here. We don’t have minor league, and we don’t have spring training,” Schnorf said. “Every other competing city except one has Triple-A, and the one that doesn’t have Triple-A has Double-A. So there’s an anomalous absence of professional baseball from the Orlando market.”<\/p>\n

Orlando also happens to be the biggest media market in the country without an MLB presence.<\/p>\n

And then, of course, there’s the tourism.<\/p>\n

“We’re the most visited destination in the Western Hemisphere, with over 80 million tourists this year,” Schnorf said. “Tourism matters a lot. Anyone who doesn’t believe that merely needs to look at the Las Vegas<\/a> model.”<\/p>\n

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\"Orlando <\/p>\n

The Orlando Dreamers hope that the city’s massive tourism industry and large media market will help land an MLB franchise. (Credit: Orlando Dreamers)<\/p>\n

Schnorf \u2014 who got the Dreamers ball rolling with the late Pat Williams, the long-time NBA executive who helped bring the Orlando Magic<\/a> to town \u2014 was referring to how Las Vegas went from no teams in the Big 4 professional leagues to being on the cusp of having all of them within about a decade.<\/p>\n

Schnorf pointed to the success of the Vegas Golden Knights and the relocation of the Las Vegas Raiders<\/a> as examples of how a city with tourism as its biggest industry could support big league teams.<\/p>\n

“So tourism matters immensely when it comes to the success of sports,” he said.<\/p>\n

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It can also help pay for it.<\/p>\n

\"Orlando <\/p>\n

The spot the Orlando Dreamers hope to develop into an MLB-caliber stadium is located south of the city’s downtown area, close to major attractions like SeaWorld and Walt Disney World. (Credit: Orlando Dreamers)<\/p>\n

The organization recently put out new renderings of a state-of-the-art stadium that would be built on land near SeaWorld<\/a> just off of I-4, the main thoroughfare through the Orlando area.<\/p>\n

The Dreamers hope to use some of the tourism resort tax money that Orange County, Florida generates to fund it.<\/p>\n

“Orlando generates the most tourism resort tax of any metro area in the country, which can be used for tourism, sports facilities, convention centers, and so forth,” Schnorf said.<\/p>\n

However, while a task force was put together to review proposals for projects like the stadium, they did not recommend moving forward with it.<\/p>\n

Schnorf said that this was not a surprise as it came in the middle of an election cycle, among other reasons, plus the Dreamers’ pitch had to be distilled into just fifteen minutes.<\/p>\n

“We requested $975 million,” he said. “To put that in perspective, we got only 15 minutes to present that package. Normally, you would spend a minimum of a day, following months and months of work and research on our financial model and metrics.”<\/p>\n

He did note, however, that the Dreamers already have a hefty amount of funding committed to the team.<\/p>\n

“We’ve got well in excess of $2 billion towards stadium financing and team acquisition in place under letters of intent,” he said.<\/p>\n

Of course, even with a stadium in place, the MLB has to want to come to Orlando. Considering there are already two franchises \u2014 the Tampa Bay Rays<\/a> and Miami Marlins<\/a> \u2014 and neither one is known for packing stadiums, that seems like a tough sell.<\/p>\n

However, Schnorf pointed to a moment in baseball history that suggests it can work.<\/p>\n

“People ask about the other two teams in the state, ‘How can Florida possibly support a third team here?’ Well, in 1969, California had five teams with a significantly lower population than the state of Florida has today,” Schnorf said. “Orlando is the fastest-growing metro area in the fastest-growing state in the country.<\/p>\n

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“We can definitely support Major League Baseball here.”<\/p>\n

Matthew Reigle is a writer for OutKick.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"When you think of Orlando, Florida, your mind immediately goes to theme parks. That’s fair enough; they’re what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777463,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2290],"tags":[5,182,4,184,86174,95765],"class_list":["post-777462","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-baseball","tag-baseball","tag-florida","tag-mlb","tag-orlando","tag-outkick-sports","tag-theme-parks"],"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/117087173910267919","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777462","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=777462"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777462\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777463"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777462"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777462"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777462"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}