ST. PETERSBURG, Fla. – The Tampa Bay Rowdies kicked off a new era on Tuesday morning as former owner Bill Edwards announced the official sale of the storied soccer franchise to the Tampa Bay Rays of Major League Baseball during a press conference at Mahaffey Theater.

Edwards, who purchased the Rowdies in 2013 during a period of insolvency, said he was proud of the progress that the club made over the past five years and thankful for all the people that helped contribute to the revitalization of the franchise and its home at Al Lang Stadium. He also expressed a sense of accomplishment for helping keep the team in St. Petersburg and was happy to hand over the reins to the Rays at the end of this season knowing that their management team would do the same.

“There are a lot of people that have courted us, but I wanted to keep it local, I wanted to keep it in town and I wanted to keep it here,” Edwards said. “I’ve known [Rays President] Matt [Silverman] since I’ve owned the team and I’ve banged into him in a lot of different places at speeches and roundtables and all this stuff and I realized he’s a neighbor. He’s been here for 13 years. He’s the boots on the ground for the Rays in this town and he’s one of us. He’s a local. I’ve gotten to realize that he’s a good, honest guy and that he’s going to do the right thing. We’ve had a lot of conversations about how the Rowdies will end up at the end of the day and we both agreed on the things we had to.”

That includes keeping the Rowdies at Al Lang Stadium, which is managed by Edwards’ company Big 3 Entertainment, as Edwards said that the deal requires the team to play in its current home for at least the next five years.

“I made that clear as part of our agreement that the Rowdies would be here,” said Edwards. “I put a lot of money and time into the Rowdies and they’re not going anywhere.”

Silverman, who will join fellow Rays President Brian Auld as Vice Chairmen of the Rowdies and oversee all aspects of the club in concert with current Rowdies VP & COO Lee Cohen, said the Rays and Rowdies will operate as separate organizations and that the baseball team’s plans for a new ballpark in Ybor City won’t affect the Rowdies’ future at Al Lang.

He also thanked Edwards for re-energizing the club’s brand and providing an “incredible foundation” for the Rays to build from as they continue to grow the Rowdies and soccer in general throughout the Greater Tampa community.

“The environment at a Rowdies’ game is electric,” said Silverman. “It’s a fun experience and different from the other sports venues in town. So, like we did with the Rays 14 years ago, we’re going to come in, we’re going to take inventory, but really we’re going to get out of the way and let the people who’ve run the Rowdies continue to do their job. We’ll give them the resources that they need, we’ll give them the runway that they need and let them continue on this great trajectory.”

Silverman said that most of the new management’s contributions will come on the business side, rather than the soccer side, as it tries to attract even more fans to Al Lang Stadium through cross-promotional opportunities.

USL President Jake Edwards believes that providing a new audience has helped the league continue to attract major-league level investment from various existing sports ownership groups. The Rays are now the third Major League Baseball franchise to stake claim of a USL club, joining the Chicago Cubs (2020) and St. Louis Cardinals.

“Certainly, they’re looking at soccer and the different demographic that soccer brings and the business opportunity that the sport brings as well as the growth trajectory that the USL is on,” said Edwards. “So [the league] is attracting credible, quality ownership groups from a number of sports and for us we’re very proud of the ownership group we have behind our teams and as I said, it’s important to have local, committed, well-capitalized ownership groups that are going to make the investment into the club on the field, into the facilities and into the communities.”

Silverman believes that the Rays ownership group has the track record of doing just that in St. Petersburg already and hopes to do the same with the Rowdies.

“For fourteen years, we have proudly owned and operated the Tampa Bay Rays,” said Silverman. “Our future has never been brighter and our commitment to the Tampa Bay area has never been stronger. The Rowdies are a new dimension to that commitment. This is an investment in the Rowdies as well as a significant investment in Downtown St. Pete. We expect the Rowdies will continue to be a large part of the renaissance of downtown and we are uniquely positioned to help fuel this team’s growth.”