Major League Baseball owners unanimously approved the sale of the Tampa Bay Rays to a group led by Jacksonville homebuilder Patrick Zalupski on Sept. 22, with the $1.7 billion deal expected to close this week, according to several news reports.
Zalupski is CEO of Dream Finders Homes Inc., the Jacksonville-based homebuilding company he founded in 2008 and built into a Fortune 1000 company with $4.4 billion in revenue last year.
Dream Finders went public in 2021, but Zalupski maintains voting control of the company’s stock.
He has not publicly said anything about his plans for the Rays or if it will affect his role with Dream Finders.
The group buying the Rays includes Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp owner Ken Babby, the baseball team confirmed in June when reports about Zalupski’s group negotiating the purchase first surfaced.
The first order of business for the new owners will be finding a ballpark to play in.
Tropicana Field, the Rays’ home ballpark in St. Petersburg, was heavily damaged last year by Hurricane Milton and was unusable this season.
The Rays played their home games at the New York Yankees’ spring training ballpark in Tampa.
The Rays are expected to return to Tropicana Field next year but are looking at long-term options to build a new ballpark.
Current Rays owner Stu Sternberg had been attempting to build a ballpark in the Tampa Bay area, but was unable to come to an agreement with local officials.
At a recent seminar held by sports business news site Front Office Sports, baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred expressed optimism about resolving the stadium situation under Zalupski’s ownership.
“With new ownership, I think you have to assume it’s kind of a clean slate, that they’re going to decide about location, they’re going have to build and make relationships and contacts with people throughout the region to decide what’s the best place for the ballpark in order to make the Rays successful over the long haul,” Manfred said, according to Front Office Sports.