Orange County’s piggy bank is overflowing, and now comes the hard part:
What do you do when tourists hand you $400 million a year?
The county’s Tourist Development Tax revenue — the 6% surcharge paid primarily by visitors staying in hotels, Airbnbs and vacation rentals — is exploding. Collections are on pace to top $400 million for the first time ever, thanks to a tourism industry that continues to shatter expectations. Nearly 77 million visitors came to Central Florida last year, and with Epic Universe now open, the region is marching toward the 80-million-visitor mark.
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As a result, Orange County Mayor Jerry Demings is reassembling the Tourist Development Tax Citizens Advisory Task Force to help determine how to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in tourism-generated revenue. The task force will meet this summer and recommend projects that comply with Florida law — projects tied to tourism, sports, arts and convention-center development. (OBLIGATORY MEMO TO CRITICS: Yes, it would be great if we could use this pot of money for projects like roads, affordable housing and other things this community desperately needs, but state lawmakers keep rejecting the idea).
The last time this task force convened three years ago, it made one glaring mistake: It didn’t take the Orlando Dreamers’ pursuit of a Major League Baseball team seriously.
This time, it must.
In 2023, the late, great Pat Williams stood before the community and made his pitch for baseball in Orlando. Williams wasn’t some random dreamer with a PowerPoint presentation and a fantasy. He was the man who helped bring the Orlando Magic to Central Florida when many people thought that idea was impossible.
Yet when Williams pitched baseball, too many people treated it as a retirement hobby. There was no political momentum behind the effort, little organized public support and plenty of skepticism. The task force looked at the proposal and essentially shrugged.
Looking back, that may prove to be one of the biggest missed opportunities in Orange County history. Had local leaders embraced the Dreamers effort then, Orlando might already be positioned to land the Tampa Bay Rays. Instead, the county chose the safe route — yawn, more convention center improvements — and more of the same incremental thinking that has defined TDT spending for decades.
Now the landscape has changed dramatically. The Dreamers are no longer just Pat Williams and a vision. They have evolved into a serious organization with serious financial backing. The group says it has secured commitments exceeding $1 billion toward stadium financing and another $1 billion toward acquiring a team. Two local billionaires — high-powered attorney John Morgan and UFL owner Mike Repole — say they are willing to put their money behind bringing a team to Orlando.
The Dreamers have also assembled a leadership team that includes Hall of Famers and former MLB stars such as Barry Larkin, Johnny Damon and David Eckstein, along with behind-the-scenes Orlando business leaders (like Dreamers co-founder Jim Schnorf) who have spent their professional lives investing in this community.
These aren’t out-of-town speculators looking for a subsidy. They are people who either grew up here or moved here and raised families here and genuinely care about Central Florida’s future.
More importantly, the Dreamers now have something they lacked before: political support. Gov. Ron DeSantis has publicly acknowledged Orlando as a viable Major League Baseball destination. State Rep. Anna Eskamani, the frontrunner to become Orlando’s next mayor, has enthusiastically endorsed the effort. Even Demings appears far more receptive than local leaders were a few years ago.
Meanwhile, the Tampa Bay Rays’ stadium situation remains unsettled. The Rays’ new ownership group is pursuing a new ballpark project in Tampa, but negotiations continue and significant hurdles remain. Deadlines are approaching, votes have been delayed and questions about public financing persist. Nobody can say with certainty that the Rays will remain in Tampa Bay, especially with the Tampa Bay Bucs also hitting up area leaders for a billion-dollar renovation of Raymond James Stadium.
If the Rays don’t get their stadium in Tampa, Orlando must be ready — not scrambling, but ready.
That’s why this new task force cannot make the same mistake its predecessor made. Even if the Rays ultimately stay put, Orlando should position itself as a major player in the next MLB expansion race. Opportunities to land a professional sports franchise don’t come around every year. They come around once a generation.
If Orange County has been willing to invest billions in convention-center expansions designed to attract trade shows, why wouldn’t it at least seriously consider investing in a Major League Baseball franchise that could become a permanent part of the community’s identity?
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Critics will argue that baseball has already failed in Florida. Maybe. But baseball hasn’t failed in Orlando because Orlando has never had baseball. Miami and Tampa are entirely different markets with entirely different demographics and tourism models.
As Morgan and Repole have repeatedly argued, Orlando possesses something neither market can match: tourists. Millions upon millions of tourists.
Yankees fans. Mets fans. Phillies fans. Cubs fans. Red Sox fans. These are people who could easily build a vacation around seeing their favorite team play an Orlando franchise.
Frankly, this makes sense. No city in America combines tourism and population growth quite like Orlando — the largest metropolitan area in the country without an MLB or NFL team..
The financial case deserves serious consideration as well. The Dreamers are the only group seeking TDT funding that commissioned an independent third-party feasibility study. According to that study, a Major League Baseball franchise could generate more than $40 billion in economic impact over 30 years and return an average of more than $25 million annually to TDT coffers.
Maybe those projections are optimistic. Maybe they’re not. But at least they’re projections backed by analysis instead of wishful thinking.
And here’s another reality local leaders need to acknowledge: Property-tax reform discussions continue to gain momentum across Florida. If local governments eventually face pressure on traditional revenue streams, they will need transformative projects that generate new economic activity, attract new visitors and create additional tax revenues. A Major League Baseball franchise certainly qualifies.
Most importantly, this isn’t about asking Orange County residents to foot the bill. The TDT exists because tourists pay for it. Visitors staying in our hotels generate this money. This is one of the rare opportunities where tourists can help fund a transformative community asset without directly raising taxes on local citizens.
Nobody is suggesting the county write a blank check or that the Dreamers automatically deserve funding. But they absolutely deserve a seat at the big-boy table.
Three years ago, Pat Williams walked into a room full of skeptics. Today, the Dreamers walk into a room full of possibilities.
Orange County’s tourist-tax jackpot is bigger than ever. The question is whether local leaders will keep spending it on the same old projects, or whether they’ll finally take a swing at something truly transformational.
Pat Williams spent years asking Orlando to dream bigger.
This time, the task force should listen.
Email me at [email protected]. Hit me up on social media @BianchiWrites and listen to my radio show “Game On” every weekday from 3 to 6 p.m. on FM 96.9, AM 740 and 969TheGame.com/listen.
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