The Rays are in St. Pete. Good to hear they're getting a new ballpark. It better have a retractable roof, with all the rain.
Tampa sites made sense because there's room there. Pinellas county is something like 99.7% developed already. There's almost literally no undeveloped land on the peninsula.
Tampa's fanbase problem has to do with the fact that half of baseball fans there are Yankees fans. NYY has held spring training in Tampa for 25+ years. It's a few hundred yards from the Bucs' stadium and across the street from a strip club. To be fair, everything in Tampa is across the street from a strip club.
Those ladies must make a pretty penny in March every year.