Roundtable: Tampa Bay Sports

®oundtable:

Tampa Bay Sports

Sports plays an integral role in any community and the Tampa Bay area is rich in professional teams that not only provide entertainment but also an opportunity to build relationships.

Josh Bullock President Tampa Bay Vipers

What brought the Tampa Bay Vipers to Tampa Bay and what are your expectations for the team? The process of bringing this team to Tampa Bay has been exciting, intense and rewarding. Thankfully, we have great leadership, both in the region and throughout the league, starting with the chairman of the XFL who gave us the time and resources to build this league the right way. We anticipate playing a fast, fun style of professional football at Raymond James Stadium for Tampa Bay fans.

I believe Tampa Bay is perfectly suited for this XFL team because of the great sports fans we have throughout our community. There are many entertainment options available and our community will continue to gravitate to products that are enjoyable, engaging and o™ered at an a™ordable price. That is exactly what the XFL is going to provide.

What impact does sports have on the region? Sports can have a major impact in a lot of ways. Not only does a sporting event provide entertainment value for families, but it gives them an opportunity to relationship build and spend time together. Economically, we are proud of the jobs that the XFL has created, not only in the professional football space with our players and coaches, but also with the support sta™s.

We are really excited about the impact we will have on the local hospitality sector, where our team will house approximately 100 players and coaches for four months and accumulate approximately 4,000 room nights by the time our season is over. All of this plays a strong role in supporting the Tampa Bay region’s economy.

Brian Ford COO Tampa Bay Buccaneers Matt Silverman President Tampa Bay Rays

What new developments can fans expect at Raymond James Stadium? Many of the enhancements stem from two new partnerships with companies that provide a great part of our game day experience. We teamed up with Legends Hospitality and Fanatics last season and those two partnerships received rave reviews in their debuts last season. Legends is a premium partner from a food and beverage standpoint and Fanatics is an industry leader in sports retail merchandising. They are working with us side-by-side to enhance the game day experience. We also enhanced our level of service with more training for our customer service sta™. In six of the past eight years, we have attained a top ranking in the area of overall customer service in the NFL.

How has Tampa Bay’s accelerated urban growth reflected on ticket sales? Our programming is about trying to identify potential fans. We have one of the largest charter season ticket programs with folks that have been with us since 1976. We want to embrace those people and look at ways to continue to engage them outside of what happens on the football field. But we are just as focused on connecting with those fans that follow our team but have yet to experience a game at Raymond James Stadium. We feel very confident that once those fans get a taste for a Buccaneers home game, they will be hooked. 2020 is going to be a great year for our team and the city as it prepares to host Super Bowl LV. It’s a great time to be a football fan in Tampa Bay. How does sports play into the culture of the Tampa Bay region? There are very few things that bring us together as a community and that can unite us across party divisions like sports can. The two playo™ games we had at home this year filled Tropicana Field full of Rays fans. It is the type of environment that can only be created through sports. We were the talk of the town and I would like to believe we lifted the spirits of so many in our community.

How big of an economic driver is the Rays organization for the region? We are a large employer in the area, one that helps attract other companies. When companies are thinking about where to locate, or how to recruit new employees, the fact that Major League Baseball is here, coupled with NFL and NHL franchises, is a great di™erentiator. Beyond that, we have a number of visiting-team fans who like to come root for their team and visit Tropicana Field, St. Petersburg and greater Tampa Bay. That tourism influx is a major driver for the area as it helps fill hotel rooms, restaurants and bars, to name a few. I would like to think that when visiting fans come here and experience a great weekend, it entices them to come more often, even outside of baseball season.

What are some of the organization’s long-term plans? Our expectation is to be here for generations to come. Our lease with Tropicana Field ends in 2027, and we have been actively looking at how to build a new facility here that will keep us in the region for the long term.

( ) The Beer Institute, the beer industry provided more than 16,000 direct and indirect jobs and generated $2.3 billion in total economic output in the Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater metro area in 2018. The study found a rise in popularity of craft beer, with many shying away from larger international brands with a preference for some local breweries’ offerings.

Sports Sports are big business for any city, but for those that have the infrastructure to host the major annual sporting events, the benefits are far higher. The 55th Super Bowl is scheduled for Feb. 7, 2021 in Tampa. The economic impact of the game can be in the hundreds of millions. Added to that hotels (official hotel packages that include a game ticket start at $6,945 per person), travel, retail and eating out, the Super Bowl alone is sure to see the county’s income explode.

It is not only football that holds a special place in Tampanians’ hearts. After extensive negotiations, there was widespread disappointment across Hillsborough County when negotiations with the Tampa Bay Rays baseball team over where the team would be located after 2027 fell apart. Plans to relocate the Rays to a proposed $892 million stadium in Ybor City hit a wall in December 2018. Although Mayor Rick Kriseman does not rule out reopening talks, focus has now fallen on what will happen to the Tropicana Field property, which should shortly be opened to proposals.

But it is not all doom and gloom as ice hockey team The Tampa Bay Lightning signed a seven-year deal with PepsiCo that hives the conglomerate soft drink rights to the arena and naming rights for the secondlevel deck. One of the factors that reportedly tempted PepsiCo was the new $3 billion mixed-use urban district under construction just outside Amalie Arena.

Looking ahead Tampa is sometimes described as the new Miami, and so far its tourism industry seems to be going from strength to strength. But it may still serve the city well to observe the mistakes made by its neighboring Florida city. One of the major challenges the city will undoubtedly face is in maintaining the rate of growth of the tourism industry, while also ensuring residents don’t get priced out of Tampa life.

The developing COVID-19 crisis is another hurdle the industry will need to face in the early part of 2020. No doubt, revenue generators across all tourism streams will face hardship, from sports teams to hotels big and small. But most industry watchers expect that an

The Tampa Bay Vipers are the latest professional team in the region.

eventual return to normalcy for people will also mean a return of normalcy for the industry.

Overall, there is reason for optimism. “The economy is set to remain strong for the next year and all of us in the hospitality industry just need to learn how to play in the sandbox together to reap the benefits. That is going to be essential because we don’t want any one entity to begin offering lower rates and disrupt the ecosystem. If we are going to continue to be successful, we need to remind visitors that Tampa Bay’s products are better, not cheaper,” said David Rowland, general manager of The Westshore Grand.