Sports

Moving The Rays To Montreal Half The Year Is Dumb, But At Least It's Also An Impossible Legal Nightmare

It could be worse, you could be the Mets.

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When news came down that Major League Baseball was opening the door for the Tampa Bay Rays to split their season with Montreal, it seemed like an odd development. Why split one unpopular franchise with another city where baseball was already so unpopular they already left town? There’s not even a direct flight from Tampa to Montreal. How does one sell a free agent on an improbable vagabond season paying Canadian taxes half the year?

What do Tampa and Montreal have in common anyway? The answer, of course, is “pills, strip clubs, get mad when people speak the wrong language.”

But if the deal seemed stupid to you, take heart that it seemed downright nutty to lawyers familiar with Tampa’s legal landscape.

Sheryl Ring at Fangraphs dug into some of Tampa Bay’s legal documents and it’s not a particularly promising outlook for a team hoping to pull off an unconventional relocation.

First, the team’s use agreement with the city of St. Petersburg simply doesn’t allow it. That’s right – the Rays, unlike most teams, aren’t technically a tenant.

What does that mean? Well, she cites a Forbes piece:

The Rays never signed a traditional lease. Rather, they signed a Use Agreement, which, to say the least, is an onerous agreement that strongly favors St. Petersburg. A Use Agreement is in stark contrast to a traditional lease, where a tenant typically owes the landlord what’s left on that lease after breaking it.

As for sharing games with Montreal, the Use Agreement at Section 2.04 expressly provides that the Rays must “play all its homes games” at Tropicana Field unless St. Petersburg consents to the Rays playing some of its game elsewhere.

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Most clubs would never sign such a crazy deal, though society would probably be better off if they did. If cities had more pull over the teams we might not see the annual carousel of teams forcing cities to slash education spending for the privilege of a sub-.500 team and vague pledges of an economic renewal that never arrives. As is, the Rays are bound to St. Petersburg until 2027 come hell or high water, which due to accelerating climate change may indeed arrive before 2027.

But the Use Agreement isn’t the only problem. Back in 2016, the team also signed this Memorandum of Understanding with St. Petersburg, which addressed the team’s efforts to find and fund a new stadium. That MOU only allowed the team to seek new stadium sites in two Florida cities: Pinellas and Hillsborough. That MOU also prohibited the team from playing its home games anywhere other than Tropicana Field (which the MOU rather ominously calls “the DOME”) until after 2027, and further bars the team from even negotiating to play its home games elsewhere until then. Paragraph six on page three of the Agreement allows the team to break the agreement only if it finds a stadium site in Pinellas or Hillsborough. Montreal isn’t mentioned. On page eight of the Agreement, St. Petersburg is given the right to obtain a court order requiring the team to play in Tropicana Field if the Rays breach the agreement and start playing their home games elsewhere. So simply put, if the Rays started playing home games in Montreal, the city could sue them, and the team would likely lose. If the team even started to negotiate with Montreal, the city could sue them, and the team would likely lose.

So far, that seems to be the city’s response, with the mayor going on TV to explain in no uncertain terms that they will not be allowing the Rays to talk to Montreal.

So this was all about the MLB trying to give the Rays an opportunity to leverage a new deal out of St. Petersburg? With a proposal that makes no sense? Despite having no legal leverage at all?

And people wonder how this sport can’t get people to come to games.

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The Legal Ramifications of the Two-City Rays [Fangraphs]

HeadshotJoe Patrice is a senior editor at Above the Law and co-host of Thinking Like A Lawyer. Feel free to email any tips, questions, or comments. Follow him on Twitter if you’re interested in law, politics, and a healthy dose of college sports news. Joe also serves as a Managing Director at RPN Executive Search.

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