Alabama president claps back at Tuscaloosa mayor in messy alcohol debate

Alabama Athletics’ plan to sell alcohol at games was thwarted by the city of Tuscaloosa’s service fee. Tuesday, Alabama’s president responded with a statement against the decision.

Stuart Bell released a statement Tuesday responding to the city’s decision. Earlier this month, the city approved the decision to serve alcohol at games. But this week, officials approved a fee structure increase for events of at least 1,000 people where alcohol is sold, according to The Tuscaloosa News’ Nick Kelly.

“The University of Alabama supports and appreciates the many public safety officers who work gameday, including UAPD, and City, County and State officials,” Bell stated. “UA Athletics and our fans currently pay more in ticket and concession sales taxes than all but one EC school. Those sales taxes go to support the City, County, and State, and their officers. The City, County and State also receive significant sales taxes from restaurants, bars, retail outlets and hotels generated by our athletics and campus events. We believe the success of our athletics programs and growth of our university have had a tremendous positive impact on our community.

“The University was surprised by the city’s arbitrary service fee. Therefore, the planned new sales at our UA venues will remain on hold as we review the impact this fee could have on our University, Athletics, and fans.”

Greg Byrne announces pause on alcohol sale plan 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.”