People are reportedly waiting for Nashville Democratic Mayor John Cooper and the Nashville Soccer Club to announce the latest on a solution on the soccer stadium at the Fairgrounds.
But disgraced former Nashville mayor Megan Barry, who wanted to bring soccer to Nashville, chimed in on the matter to the Nashville-based NewsChannel 5.
“I think that there’s a lot of back and forth right now between the ownership and the uncertainty of what’s going to happen. My worry is that we might lose this team,” the station quoted Barry as saying.
“Everybody in Nashville is excited about soccer. We don’t want to lose this momentum. We have our first match coming up this month and there’s no lockout today, so that’s exciting. I think we just have a really great opportunity to bring another major league team to our already great major league teams here in Nashville.”
NewsChannel 5 reported that Barry does not know what’s going on behind the scenes.
“But from what was been made public, she believes the current mayor should take the new deal he worked out, which includes an additional $19 million in infrastructure funds paid for by the ownership group, and a commitment from the city to fully-fund the stadium,” the station reported.
As reported, Barry’s choice to spend nearly $175,000 in taxpayer money on an extra-marital tryst earned her top billing in the Beacon Center of Tennessee’s 2018 Pork Report.
Beacon, a Nashville-based free market think tank, releases a report detailing government waste, fraud, and abuse in Tennessee once a year.
“We won’t get into the personal aspect of the affair,” said Beacon President Justin Owen in 2018, in a series of online videos that accompanied the think tank’s press release.
“What matters to us is that Mayor Barry did this on the taxpayers’ dime. She used taxpayers’ money to pay overtime pay to her bodyguard so she could be with him more often. The mayor of Nashville doesn’t need security in Paris, France or in Greece, but, ultimately she used taxpayer money to further her affair and that is why she pled guilty to felony theft as a result.”
As The Tennessee Star reported last year, ticket sales for Major League Soccer in Nashville are reportedly sluggish compared to the league’s other new expansion teams, and this is happening when Nashville officials want taxpayers to pay for a pricey new soccer stadium.
The Nashville Business Journal quoted multiple anonymous sources who said the Nashville Soccer Club has “only sold around 5,000 season tickets.”
“That number lags well behind the pace set by recent expansion clubs Atlanta, Minnesota, LAFC and FC Cincinnati. The number also trails fellow 2020 newcomer Inter Miami, which, according to a source, has sold significantly more than 5,000 season tickets for their inaugural season,” The Business Journal said, citing an article in The Athletic.
A columnist opined in 2018 that Nashville Metro Council members should save taxpayer money and arrange for the city’s MLS team to play in Nissan Stadium.
Eric Boehm published his column for Reason that year before Metro Council members voted 31-8 for a $275 million MLS stadium project at the Nashville Fairgrounds.
He said his idea, though, makes more sense.
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Chris Butler is an investigative journalist at The Tennessee Star. Follow Chris on Facebook. Email tips to [email protected].
Don’t be so hard on Megan.
Bad mayor. Lousy deal. Do not waste taxpayer money on this boondoggle.
We need to get this accomplished soon, so that we can get started on the major league baseball stadium! (“We” means you folks in Davidson County.)