Rays unveil rebranded stadium – DRaysBay

TAMPA, FL: Right this moment the Rays gave the media its first look contained in the Tampa Bay Rays dwelling for the 2025 season.

Primarily the workforce has a little bit greater than 4 days to show the Spring Coaching dwelling of the Yankees into the common season dwelling of the Tampa Bay Rays, an all out effort involving almost all of the workforce’s employees in addition to exterior contractors.

Invoice Walsh, the Group’s Chief Enterprise Officer, outlined a number of the modifications they’ve made. Some will not be seen to most followers, together with enhancements equivalent to upgraded Wifi and higher umpire amenities

Most blatant to guests is the trouble to rebrand the stadium, and also you won’t even understand how a lot Yankee there’s within the stadium till you attempt to erase it or cowl it over. The merchandise in all of the workforce shops has been changed, and the workforce has tried to interchange Yankee signage and banners, some situations extra profitable than others.

The dugouts look nice:

The tougher efforts to cowl the “Yankees” lettering across the stadium doesn’t look fairly nearly as good:

Whereas the move-in has needed to occur in only a few days, the workforce has been making ready for the transfer because the transfer to Steinbrenner Area was introduced, with what the workforce spokespeople referred to as “artwork” ordered effectively prematurely. Little was introduced over from the Trop, since in so many instances dimensions and placement are so completely different.

The workforce additionally has to make some cost-benefit analyses about what can and may’t be rebranded. Zooming in on the seats, you’ll see that there’s a Yankee emblem on the head of every row:

Placing decals over every of those can be a significant enterprise, after which these decals would almost definitely begin peeling off inside a number of weeks.

The workforce made nice efforts to show the house participant areas into a very Yankee-free zone, nevertheless. There’s material draped over a Yankee ceiling decoration within the clubhouse, and even the remedy tables have misplaced their Yankee branding, with caps protecting Yankee logos even within the whirlpools.

Once we had been there, a lot of the televisions had been tuned to the Yankee owned YES community. Taylor Wall, who manages the amenities, mentioned they might be determining the right way to change the tv broadcasts this afternoon.

Aside from branding, the participant areas are all extraordinarily top quality. I heard a number of the beat reporters saying they thought the Legends Area clubhouse was roomier and had extra upgrades than the one at Tropicana Area.

Throughout the season, reporters are restricted to the clubhouse so I’ve by no means seen the Tropicana Area coaching and exercise areas, however these in Tampa are very good and have one thing I’m certain they lacked in St. Pete: pure gentle.

Considerably oddly, visiting gamers who enter their clubhouse are greeted with this:

For these of us who’ve gotten used to massive and more and more fascinating foods and drinks choices at Tropicana Area, this 12 months could also be considerably of a letdown. The Rays shall be working with the Legends Area concessionaires, and my recollection from previous Spring Coaching video games is that the choice of meals is restricted. Count on way more conventional ballpark fare, though there are a number of native concessionaires like Coppertail Brewing who will comply with the Rays to Tampa.

One of many upsides of the transfer to open air is that the workforce can lastly have fireworks, which we are going to see throughout night video games to rejoice a homerun or a win. And there’s now an official sponsor of rain delays! (Budweiser, in case you are questioning).