Rays cut Trop's capacity below 30K amid attendance issues
Baseball's smallest stadium just got even smaller.
The Tampa Bay Rays, who drew the second-fewest fans in baseball last season amid ongoing attendance issues, announced Friday that they're reducing seating capacity at Tropicana Field to between 25,000 and 26,000 as part of a larger renovation plan. They'll accomplish this by closing off the entire upper deck of the cavernous and often derided stadium.
This will make Tropicana Field the only stadium in Major League Baseball that seats fewer than 30,000 fans. The second-smallest park, Cleveland's Progressive Field, holds a little over 35,000.
Rays president Matthew Silverman said the reduction "will help create a more intimate" fan experience, according to Carl Lisciandrello of the Tampa Bay Times.
Last season, the 90-win Rays cut the Trop's capacity to a league-low 31,042, but still averaged only 14,258 spectators over 81 home dates, outdrawing only the Miami Marlins. That figure also marked a drop of over 1,000 fans from the Rays' league-low attendance in 2017.
Friday's news comes just a few weeks after the Rays scuttled plans to build a new stadium in the Ybor City area of Tampa - the latest blow to the team's continued quest for a new baseball-only home in the Tampa-St. Petersburg area.
The Rays' lease at Tropicana Field runs through 2027.