Who owns the Tampa Bay Rays? Patrick Zalupski, explained

Patrick Zalupski, 45, is the control person and co-president of the Tampa Bay Rays. His investment group took over the club on September 30, 2025, replacing Stuart Sternberg after 20 years. Zalupski runs the operation alongside co-president Bill Cosgrove and CEO Ken Babby, making him the youngest owner in the American League East and one of the newest faces in baseball ownership.

🏟️ Ownership at a glance

Principal owner	Patrick O. Zalupski
Controlling group	Investment group led by Patrick Zalupski
Current group since	2025
Purchase price	$1.7B
Latest valuation	$1.7B
Owner’s net worth	$1.1B
Value multiple	1× the purchase price

Heads up: The 2025 sale price (approximately $1.7 billion) is what the press reported: the club’s official statement did not disclose the figure.

Who is Patrick Zalupski

Zalupski built his fortune in residential construction. He was born November 29, 1980, in the Detroit suburbs, spent his high school years in Belgium after his father transferred there for General Electric, and studied finance at Stetson University in Florida. He started buying and selling houses in Jacksonville in 2004. In 2008—the exact year the U.S. housing market collapsed—he co-founded Dream Finders Homes. He bought out his partner in 2013 and took the company public in January 2021. The growth was steep: 27 homes built in his first full year of 2009; 6,878 sold in 2022. Today Dream Finders operates across eight states, mostly in the Southeast, targeting first-time homebuyers.

Zalupski’s estimated net worth is $1.1 billion as of March 2026. He lives in Jacksonville, is married with three children, and since 2023 has served on the University of Florida’s board of trustees by appointment from Governor Ron DeSantis. He had no prior ownership stake in baseball before acquiring the Rays.

How they bought the team

Zalupski’s group paid $1.7 billion for the Rays on September 30, 2025. The sale price was not officially disclosed by MLB or the club; the figure comes from reporting by ESPN, Sportico, and the Tampa Bay Times. The valuation coincides exactly with Forbes’s assessment of the franchise in March 2026, which marked a 36% jump from the prior year—the largest increase of any MLB team, driven by the Zalupski transaction.

The Rays have changed hands three times since their 1995 expansion birth. Vince Naimoli paid $130 million to launch the franchise as the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. Stuart Sternberg acquired majority control in 2004 and took full operational command in October 2005. Sternberg was pushed out by Commissioner Rob Manfred and fellow owners after withdrawing from the Historic Gas Plant District stadium project in St. Petersburg in March 2025—one of the clearest cases in recent MLB history of an owner forced out by his peers.

Year	Buyer	Amount
1995	Vince Naimoli (expansion franchise, Tampa Bay Devil Rays)	$130M
2004	Stuart Sternberg (purchased majority stake; took full operational control in October 2005)	—
2025	Patrick Zalupski group (purchased from Stuart Sternberg)	$1.7B

What else they own

Zalupski remains founder, president, and CEO of Dream Finders Homes Inc. (NYSE: DFH), the publicly traded homebuilder. His investment group also acquired the Tampa Bay Rowdies of the USL Championship as part of the deal—two professional franchises in one transaction. His partner Ken Babby controls Fast Forward Sports Group, which owns the Akron RubberDucks (Double-A) and Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp (Triple-A). Co-president Bill Cosgrove is CEO of Union Home Mortgage.

Where the games air

The Rays’ broadcast situation underwent a complete overhaul in 2026. The club terminated its contract with Main Street Sports Group, which operates FanDuel Sports Network (formerly Bally Sports/Diamond Sports), after the company stopped paying rights fees. Starting in 2026, MLB produces and distributes all local Rays broadcasts through MLB Media. All 162 games are available via local cable and satellite, national broadcasts, and streaming. The direct-to-consumer product is called Rays.TV, sold through MLB.com and the MLB app at $99.99 for a season package, with no local blackouts—a major benefit of MLB’s distribution model. The team does not own any broadcast network.

Facts worth knowing

Sternberg did not sell because he wanted to: Commissioner Rob Manfred and other owners pushed him out after he withdrew from the new stadium project in the Historic Gas Plant District of St. Petersburg in March 2025. It is one of the clearest cases of an owner ousted by his peers in recent MLB history.
Hurricane Milton tore the roof off Tropicana Field in October 2024. The Rays played the entire 2025 season at George M. Steinbrenner Field—the Yankees‘ spring training stadium, with a capacity of 11,000—and returned to the rebuilt Trop in April 2026. A Major League team playing an entire year in the spring training home of its East Division rival.
In February 2026 the Rays presented renderings of a proposed $2.3 billion stadium on land at Hillsborough Community College, on the Tampa side. The new ownership said starting in October 2025 that it wants the park ready by 2029, finally crossing the bay from St. Petersburg.
Zalupski founded a home construction company in 2008, the exact year the U.S. real estate bubble burst. Seventeen years later he bought a Major League team with that money.
The price of $1.7 billion was NEVER officially confirmed: neither MLB nor the club disclosed it. The figure comes from reports by ESPN, Sportico and Tampa Bay Times, and curiously matches exactly the valuation Forbes assigned to the team in March 2026.
The purchase included as a bonus the Tampa Bay Rowdies, a USL soccer team: Zalupski got two professional franchises in a single check.

Where they stand among the 30 owners

List	Rank
By franchise value	#24 de 30
By purchase price	#5 de 27
By owner’s net worth	#21 de 21
By years in charge	#29 de 30

Amounts are nominal and not adjusted for inflation: comparing a decades-old purchase price with today’s valuation overstates the real gain.

Zalupski stands at 24th among the 30 MLB franchises by valuation, yet the Rays rank 5th by purchase price paid. He is the 29th-longest-tenured owner and has held the club for 1 year. The team’s $1.7 billion valuation equals what he paid—a break-even position on paper that reflects the market’s immediate confidence in new ownership. In February 2026, his group unveiled renderings of a proposed $2.3 billion stadium on Hillsborough Community College land in Tampa, with a target opening of 2029, finally moving the franchise across the bay from St. Petersburg after 28 seasons at the Tropicana Field.