The Stadium

The Stadium
Location	Lake Buena Vista, Florida United States 28.338434; -81.551903
Building chronology
Built	1997
Former names
Cracker Jack Stadium The Ballpark at Disney's Wide World of Sports Champion Stadium
Capacity
9,500

The Stadium at the ESPN Wide World of Sports complex near Kissimmee, FL was a home of Kissimmee-area affiliated baseball from 1997 through 2019. (Osceola County Stadium was the other.) As Champion Stadium, its last regular use in Organized Baseball was the Atlanta Braves' 2019 spring training.

In 2023, because of Hurricane Ian damage to Charlotte Sports Park, the Tampa Bay Rays began their spring training at the ESPN complex. They played their first home game at The Stadium, then moved to their regular-season home, Tropicana Field, for the rest of the spring schedule. Few if any hometown fans took advantage of being able see a spring game at spring prices in the main venue; box scores show none of the games drew even 10,000.

Although the ballpark has a Kissimmee address, it actually lies physically closer to Bay Lake, FL, than any other area municipality.

The Braves played the last spring game of 2019 in their new facility in North Port, FL, and their Gulf Coast League (now Florida Complex League) team began play there that July. Their departure from Champion came after ballparks in Kissimmee and Viera, FL, simultaneously lost the Houston Astros and Washington Nationals operations to a new joint facility in West Palm Beach, FL. That concurrent move left the Braves with only one opponent within an hour's bus ride.

The stadium, opened in 1997 as Cracker Jack Park per a Frito-Lay naming-rights contract, hosted the Double-A Orlando Rays from 2000 through 2004. When Frito-Lay didn't renew, it spent the 2007 season as The Ballpark at Disney's Wide World of Sports. HanesBrands then picked up the naming rights to promote its Champion sportswear line. The surrounding complex rebranded from Disney to ESPN Wide World of Sports Complex in 2010 - 14 years after Disney bought ESPN - and the Champion name dropped off the stadium in 2017.

The ballpark hosted a three-game big-league Rays regular-season series in each of the 2007 and 2008 seasons.

The complex's website says the stadium can seat 9,500.