The ReliaQuest Bowl in Tampa, Florida

The ReliaQuest Bowl is Tampa's college football bowl game, matching SEC and Big Ten teams at Raymond James Stadium under the nonprofit Tampa Bay Bowl Association.

According to the bowl's about page, the Tampa Bay Bowl Association hosts a college football game featuring teams from the SEC and Big Ten Conference, and the game caps a week-long schedule of events throughout Tampa Bay. The 2026 edition is listed for December 31, 2026, with a noon ET kickoff, and the bowl gives a typical payout of $6.4 million. Tickets are listed at $170 each for club seats and $80 each for all other seats through Ticketmaster, and the bowl office phone is (813) 874-2695.

The organization behind the game is a local nonprofit. The Tampa Bay Bowl Association is a tax-exempt 501(c)(3) corporation governed by an approximately twenty-member volunteer board of directors, which oversees a full-time staff of seven employees, including the President/CEO. The association says it files annual IRS 990 reports and conducts annual audits by an independent auditor, and its office is at 4211 W. Boy Scout Blvd., Suite 560, in Tampa. Its stated mission is to create an economic impact in the Tampa Bay area, showcase the community nationally and internationally, and make a significant financial contribution to NCAA member schools.

One line on the Tampa bowl's about page has fallen behind the schedule: it says the bowl has been part of the New Year's Day bowl lineup since 1989, yet the year-by-year results show the December 31, 2024 and December 31, 2025 games, and the 2026 game is also set for New Year's Eve.

The Tampa bowl began when the NCAA awarded a college bowl game to Tampa Bay on April 16, 1986, and the first Hall of Fame Bowl was played at Tampa Stadium that December 23.

The bowl's key moments timeline records the April 16, 1986 award, and the year-by-year game history lists the December 23, 1986 opener as a 27-24 Boston College win over Georgia. The Tampa Sports Authority timeline, kept by the public agency that built Tampa Stadium, lists the same date and score for the first Hall of Fame Bowl. An NBC television contract followed on August 3, 1987, and the January 2, 1988 game matched Michigan and Alabama, with the Wolverines winning 28-24 in the final seconds.

The Tampa game then moved into the New Year's Day lineup, bringing two top-20 teams to Tampa Stadium for the first time, No. 16 Syracuse and No. 19 LSU. The key moments timeline dates that game January 1, 1989, while the year-by-year history lists it as January 2, 1989, a 23-10 Syracuse win. A year later, No. 9 Auburn and No. 21 Ohio State drew a record crowd of 68,085, a mark the bowl still lists as its attendance record. The bowl signed its first ESPN contract on April 24, 1992, and on October 26, 1994 it signed a six-year deal with the SEC and Big Ten, the conference pairing it still uses.

Each name has followed a title sponsor: the Hall of Fame Bowl from 1986, the Outback Bowl from 1995, the Tampa Bay Bowl briefly in 2022 and the ReliaQuest Bowl since June 2022.

The bowl's about page states that the game was the Hall of Fame Bowl from December 1986 to January 1995 and the Outback Bowl from April 1995 to March 2022. On April 12, 1995, the bowl signed Outback Steakhouse as title sponsor and adopted the Outback Bowl name. The Tampa Sports Authority timeline records the same change, saying the Hall of Fame Bowl was officially renamed the Outback Bowl in April 1995, and lists the first Outback Bowl on January 1, 1996, a 43-14 Penn State win over Auburn.

The current name arrived in two steps in 2022. In March 2022 the association announced a new name, the Tampa Bay Bowl, along with a new logo. On June 9, 2022, the bowl signed ReliaQuest as its new title sponsor in a four-year partnership, and the game became the ReliaQuest Bowl. By the bowl's own count, the game spent nine years as the Hall of Fame Bowl, and the Tampa Bay Bowl Association has stayed the organizer under every name. The authority's Raymond James Stadium page still lists the game as the Outback Bowl among the stadium's tenants.

The bowl has been played at Raymond James Stadium since January 1, 1999, after its first twelve games at Tampa Stadium.

The key moments timeline records that on January 1, 1999, the bowl moved to the brand new Raymond James Stadium and sold out its first game there, Penn State against Kentucky; the Tampa Sports Authority timeline gives the score as a 26-14 Penn State win. The authority's stadium page reports that Raymond James Stadium first broke ground in 1996 and hosted its first game on September 20, 1998, when the Tampa Bay Buccaneers hosted the Chicago Bears.

Ownership and seating are described differently by the bowl and the public agency. The bowl's stadium page names the Tampa Sports Authority as owner and operator, but the authority's timeline records that on December 19, 2003 it conveyed ownership of Raymond James Stadium to Hillsborough County while retaining responsibility for managing the facility. The three pages also give different capacities:

The authority lists the bowl, under its Outback Bowl name, among the stadium's regular events alongside the Buccaneers, University of South Florida football, Monster Jam and the Gasparilla Bowl.

Overtime games define the Tampa bowl's best-remembered moments, and the bowl counts four overtime games in its history.

On January 1, 2000, Georgia beat Purdue 28-25 in overtime in Tampa in what the bowl calls the first sporting event of the new millennium; it was only the second overtime bowl game in history and featured a 25-point Georgia comeback. On January 1, 2010, Auburn beat Northwestern 38-35 in overtime, and the bowl reports that the teams tied or set 39 bowl records and 9 NCAA records. On January 2, 2012, Michigan State came back from a 0-16 halftime deficit to beat Georgia 33-30 in triple overtime, only the third bowl game in NCAA history to go that far. On January 1, 2015, Wisconsin beat Auburn 34-31 in overtime, the bowl's fourth overtime decision.

Other entries on the Tampa timeline mark rankings and firsts. The highest ranked team to appear was No. 7, a spot held by Georgia in 2005 and Indiana in 2020, according to the bowl by the numbers page. Arkansas made its first bowl trip to Tampa in January 2022 and beat Penn State 24-10. The January 2021 game was played during the COVID 19 pandemic before a limited crowd. In December 2025 the bowl celebrated its 40th anniversary game, a 34-27 Iowa win over Vanderbilt played on December 31, 2025, the second straight edition held on New Year's Eve after Michigan beat Alabama 19-13 on December 31, 2024.

By the bowl's own estimates, the game has contributed $190 million to universities and generated about $1.3 billion in economic impact for the Tampa Bay area over its history.

Those are the association's figures, not a government study. Its numbers page reports $190 million in total contributions to universities over 40 years, an estimated $1.3 billion in economic impact on the Tampa Bay area over its history (excluding exposure), and total attendance of 2,131,452 across 40 years. It also counts 27 different schools that have played in Tampa, 122 first-round NFL draft picks who have appeared in the game and roughly 110,500 musicians and dancers who have performed in halftime shows; the about page gives a lower halftime figure, more than 109,000 performers.

Charity giving is a newer line item. The Charitable Giving Initiative began in 2016 to fund non-profit organizations based in, or with a large presence in, the Tampa Bay area. In May 2026 the initiative passed $5 million donated to over 240 area non-profits since 2016, according to the key moments timeline, while the numbers page still counts 230 charities. The bowl says it is committed to contributing at least another $500,000 annually. Recipients listed by the bowl include Feeding Tampa Bay, Metropolitan Ministries, the Florida Aquarium and the Straz Center for the Performing Arts. The bowl says the Tampa Bay Business Journal has named it a One Tampa Bay Honoree for Corporate Philanthropy three times.

Last verified: October 18, 2026, by re-reading six ReliaQuest Bowl pages (about, history, key moments, numbers, charity and stadium) and the Tampa Sports Authority's Raymond James Stadium page and agency timeline.