BILOXI, MISS– The City of Biloxi has filed a lawsuit against the owners of the Biloxi Shuckers baseball team.
The suit is for “accounting, interpretation of contractual provisions, and for other relief,” according to the court documents filed Monday.
The city has claimed that the owners owe $153,550, with offsets not to exceed $100,000.
It is hard for officials with the city to determine exactly how much is owed based on revenue, and upon clarifying the accounting, more may come forward in the lawsuit.
“The City reserves the right to to amend and assert further or additional causes of action after the completion of accounting requested and after the completion of further investigation..” said the lawsuit.
The goal of the lawsuit is to show how much was generated from ticket sales and advertising to determine was is owed to the city. The lawsuit claims that the revenue records have not been certified and accounted for since the beginning of the lease agreement, which began in April of 2014.
In February of 2015, MGM Stadium would have needed an additional $1 million dollars to be able to open by the April 25th deadline, or pay a $10,000 fine for every home game that wasn’t played in the stadium once the season started. A new deal with Yates construction prevented that from happening, and when fans entered the stadium for the first time, it wasn’t finished, but it was operational.
Minor league baseball statistics have shown that in the first year of operation, MGM Stadium and the Biloxi Shuckers brought in 164,076 people, an average of just over 2,600 people a game. Numbers were up just slightly in 2016 with 180,384 people in attendance for the season–an average of nearly 2,700 a game. The stadium was designed for a capacity of 6,000 for baseball games.
