Hockey over baseball in Florida?

Friend of mine moved from that area to Wisconsin several years back, and we also have relatives in Tampa.

Bottom line is the Lightning do a tremendous job with marketing & they have a great arena, and the Rays kinda don't & really don't.  People tend to just watch the Rays on TV & do other things.  Their stadium is a dump.

I went with family to see the Milwaukee Bucks game yesterday.  Their brand new arena is flat out stunning.  I commented to my father-in-law that the entire atmosphere between the music and strobe lights & the acrobats during TV timeouts and the T Shirt tosses and the mascot dunking basketballs off of trampolines etc was "half circus/half basketball game".  He agreed.  And we all had a blast.  They were playing the Cavs who suck this year, and none of us cared.  I'm about as casual of an NBA fan as you could find, it was a ton of fun & I'd make a point of going back, especially because my kid is a fan.

as you alluded to with the Lightning, it helps that the team is really good.  The Rays are surprisingly good but everyone knows they can't take that division.  Back when the Brewers sucked, as soon as the NFL preseason started people stopped going to Brewers games and only cared about the Packers.  It helped when the Brewers built a new stadium, and it helped even more when they built a contender.

My son and I usually drive to Tampa once a year to watch some baseball for a week. We head there when the Rays play the Yankees (our favorite team) or when the Angels are in town so he can see Trout play. We also catch some Tampa Tarpons games at Steinbrenner field in hopes of seeing a future Yankee.

Personally, I don't consider Tropicana Field a dump. It's just older and doesn't have all of the bells and whistles of the new ballparks. All of the staff I have encountered at the Trop are above and beyond fantastic. And for the kids, the players are very good at signing autographs before every game. Unfortunately, NONE of the visiting teams we have seen will sign autographs before games. This even happens on the Thursday afternoon games when there is no pre-game BP on the field. We site first or second row visitor dugout (only about $90 per ticket) and Trout, Judge, and all the others won't even make eye contact with the kids.

Even when the Yankees are in town they don't sell out, although attendance is higher those games. I'd also say 2/3 of the people in the stands are Yankee fans.

For the Tarpons (formerly Tampa Yankees) games, Steinbrenner Field is a beautiful place to watch a game. But the stands are nearly empty every night. I don't think I've ever seen more than 1,000 fans there. But we love to go there and most of the players are really great with the kids.

So for whatever reason, the fans don't seem to show up at any of those games. But I'm OK with that because it means we get cheap ticket prices whenever we head down there.

I went to a few Rays games last year for the first time.  Tropicana Field was not as bad as it looks on TV, but it's pretty bad...  The Rays have been trying to get a new stadium for years and they surely need one.  But even more important is the team's current location:  St. Petersburg is a great town, but the only way in from the mainland to the west and south is across a handful of bridges/causeways over the bay that are traffic nightmares during rush hour (that is, during the time fans would need to get from Tampa to the Trop for an evening game).  The Tampa/St. Pete metro area has just over 3 million people, but most of those are on the wrong side of the bridges from the Rays.  Plus, a stadium built on the Tampa side potentially draws from a portion of another 2.5 million people in the Orlando metro who might drive to Tampa for a game, but not to St. Pete.

It's a shame--the Rays have an exciting young team and are fun to watch.  But the Yankees and Red Sox are juggernauts and geography is working against the Rays.  Efforts to build a new stadium in Tampa seem to be dead again (they resurface every few years).  The area around the Trop is booming and would be great for a combo stadium-entertainment district like the new Braves facility--but the transportation issues will remain.    

I've always heard Florida hockey draws a lot from northern residents (usually older) who spend their winters in Florida.  I have no idea if that's true but I can see the logic of the argument.

AMALIE Arena is in the city of Tampa Bay (Excellent location) with a capacity of 20,500... Average of 19,092 fans per game in 2018.

Tropicana Field is in the City of St. Petersburg (Piss-Poor location) with a capacity of 42,735... Average of 14,259 fans per game in 2018.

I also wonder if the extreme moneyball style of play hurts the rays a little. Nothing against analytics and if you really win this doesn't matter but the rays kinda do have an unusual product out there with the opener, a ton of platooning and a really high roster turnover.

I mean it is great they look for every marginal win but the team looks totally different every year and some of those strategies like the opener don't exactly help building stars (because it marginalizes starters which might be good financially but is not so great for the fans.

If they make the world series nobody cares but if they are only kinda competetive it could have an effect.

The Dodgers do that too and while i can understand the GM doing it I can understand fans being pissed if their young stud bellinger never plays against lefties. I mean I get it the Dodgers, rays and cubs play strict platoon and lefties never hit LHPs but for a fan it is not so great if there is another line-up every day and young studs sit on the bench twice a week.

The Lightning are not only good, but near historically good, and have some fantastically exciting players. They are not just some "hockey team". 

57special posted:

The Lightning are not only good, but near historically good, and have some fantastically exciting players. They are not just some "hockey team". 

The Lightning haven’t won the Cup yet. Winning the Presidents Cup (best season record) doesn’t guarantee winning it all. They haven’t won it all since 2004. So it’s not about this season. Their attendance is historically better than the Rays. 

Obviously winning the cup was huge and then the drafting of Steven Stamkos cannot be understated with the top pick in the 08 draft. Tampa has also been a cup contender for a handful of years now.

Hockey is timed and constantly moving - appeals to a different fan. Lightning are doing well now and everyone likes a winner. As a former NH resident, I recall a few lean years of low attendance for the Bruins when they weren't doing well. They drew in the college age crowd with $10 tickets and beer promotions - my oldest loved it when he was at Tufts. Cannot get those $10 tix now. As for the Rays (and Marlins) - they haven't consistently put out a good product, so fans avoid them. Also, IMO, baseball is an outdoor sport. There had been talk of the Rays moving to the Ybor City area, but it seems that talk is dead. I think that area would be hard pressed to absorb the traffic too.