St. Pete Mayor Rick Kriseman will serve in a leadership role in the Mayors Professional Sports Alliance within the U.S. Conference of Mayors.
Kriseman was appointed to the leadership role by the president of that group, Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake.
“I thank Mayor Rawlings-Blake for entrusting me to this important position. Our mission at the Alliance is to share information, to network, and to support one another on issues related to professional sports,” Kriseman said. “I look forward to learning from my colleagues serving on the Alliance, and talking about what works in the Sunshine City.”
The alliance is headed by Oklahoma City Mayor Mick Cornett and includes mayors from cities with major league sports teams.
St. Pete is currently home to the Tampa Bay Rays Major League Baseball team, but that could change in coming years as the team becomes increasingly restless because of consistently low attendance at home games.
Kriseman is embroiled with City Council over a Memorandum of Understanding that would allow the Rays to explore possible stadium locations outside of St. Pete in Pinellas and Hillsborough counties. It’s widely expected that if the team is not allowed to explore regional alternatives it could mean the team may leave the region entirely.
City leaders are hopeful that if the team does explore other stadium sites they will ultimately decide to stay in St. Pete. The issue isn’t likely to affect Kriseman’s appointment to the Mayors Professional Sports Alliance because the team has a contract to play ball in St. Pete at Tropicana Field until 2027.
If they leave, it would likely not be until after Kriseman leaves office.
The United States Conference of Mayors is a nonpartisan organization of cities with populations of 30,000 or more. There are 1,407 such cities in the country today.
