Greg Byrne makes stunning announcement regarding alcohol sales at Alabama

Less than two full weeks since the Tuscaloosa City Council approved the sale of alcohol at Alabama basketball games inside Coleman Coliseum, beer, wine and hard seltzers won’t be served inside the venue after all. Not only will Coleman Coliseum not sell alcohol, but neither will any Alabama athletics venue – even Bryant-Denny Stadium, where the Crimson Tide football team plays.

Alabama director of athletics Greg Byrne publicly announced Monday that if the school sold alcoholic beverages at sporting events there would be a service fee added to all tickets where alcohol is served as a result of a new plan put forth by the City of Tuscaloosa.

“It is very unfortunate that the City of Tuscaloosa’s plan would unreasonably target Alabama Athletics and our fans with a service fee on all tickets where alcohol is sold, even tickets sold to children,” Byrne wrote in a statement posted to his Twitter account. “For these reasons and more, we don’t think this is a reasonable approach that the City is attempting to take, and pending further review of this service fee, Alabama Athletics will not be moving forward with alcohol sales at this time.”

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— Greg Byrne 🥋 (@Greg_Byrne) February 14, 2022

The aforementioned added service fee comes after the Tuscaloosa City Council on Feb. 8 approved a fee structure increase for ticketed events of at least 1,000 people where alcohol is served, according to Nick Kelly of The Tuscaloosa News.

For a southern school that competes in the SEC, it’s a real shame that Alabama fans won’t be able to enjoy their favorite alcoholic beverages while watching their Crimson Tide teams compete.

Alabama posts profit despite COVID-impacted year

The final numbers for Alabama’s previous fiscal year are in and they showed a shocking result for the COVID-19 impacted year. UA athletics made $179.8 million in revenue while spending only $170.2 million in expenses. This gave Alabama’s athletics department a $9.6 million dollar profit, far exceeding their projected $75 million deficit.

Revenue did fall by nearly $9.5 million from the previous year overall. Alabama’s fiscal year numbers cover July 2020 through June 2021 during the peak of reduced-capacity games. Bryant-Denny Stadium used only 20% of its seating for the 2020 season, resulting in an 81% drop in athletics ticket revenue during the period.

On3’s James Fletcher III contributed to this report.