- July 19, 2025
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The owners of Tampa Bay Sun FC, the women’s professional soccer team, are considering building a new 15,000-seat stadium on the waterfront near Ybor City.
The team, which just completed its inaugural season winning its league’s championship, says for now its vision for the stadium is just that, a vision, and that there is no anticipated start date for construction or cost “as it’s too early in the process.”
Despite that, the Sun announced its intentions to build the new stadium Tuesday on land currently under contract to its majority owner, local developer Darryl Shaw.
The plan calls for the stadium to be built and anchor Shaw’s planned 33-acre mixed-use development Ybor Harbor on the Ybor Channel, just south of Adamo Drive.
The stadium, which would have the flexibility to expand to 18,000 seats, would include a boutique hotel. The team sees it as a year-round venue that could host sporting events, concerts and festivals, as well as U.S. National Team and international soccer matches for both men and women.
The project will also create a headquarters home for the United Soccer League, the governing body overseeing the league the Sun play in. It employs 120.
While a total cost is not yet known — or at least not publicly disclosed — the team says it would likely seek taxpayer money, as professional sports organizations often do, to help pay for the stadium. The goal, it says, is “to establish a public/private partnership to develop the stadium and surrounding public infrastructure.”
“We are committed to transparency and building something that creates value for the community.”
Ybor Harbor is a 6-million-square-foot project where plans call for 500,000 square feet of office space, 800 hotel rooms and more than 150,000 square feet of ground floor retail space.
It will also include 4,750 residential units, 10% of which will be set aside for affordable housing.
The project is near Shaw’s 50-acre GasWorx development in Ybor City and would continue an effort to connect that part of the city with Water Street and downtown.
The announcement about the stadium plans comes just days after the Tampa Bay Sun won the league championship and hours before a celebratory boat parade was announced for Wednesday afternoon.
The Sun played its first game in August as part of the inaugural season of the USL Super League’s Division One professional women’s league. It finished with a record of 14-6 with 10 ties.
On Saturday it beat Fort Lauderdale United FC 1-0 in the championship game.
The team’s inaugural season was played at Blake High School, where the Sun paid $6 million to refurbish the stadium on the school’s campus across from downtown Tampa.
While plans for a stadium in Ybor Harbor would be a boost to the Tampa Bay Sun, it is fair to say that it closes another door for the Tampa Bay Rays.
Conventional thinking was that the Rays, which unceremoniously pulled out of a deal to build a new ballpark in St. Petersburg earlier this year, could consider building a ballpark along the waterfront in Ybor City or a little further inland.
Logistically that does not seem to be an option anymore.
The Sun, in an FAQ that accompanied the announcement, says as much: “The Ybor Harbor site cannot accommodate both a soccer and a baseball stadium. Only one of the two options will be able to be built on the site.”
Based on the response of one Tampa Bay Sun FC fan who’s attended games this season, it is clear which way the city is leaning.
“The stadium,” Tampa Mayor Jane Castor says in the announcement, “would deliver a place that captures our city's energy, inspires the next generation and stands as a national symbol of what happens when cities invest boldly in women’s sports and inclusive economic growth.”
