Newly released transcripts offer look inside city’s MLS negotiations

CHARLOTTE — In two weeks, David Tepper’s Major League Soccer expansion team, Charlotte FC, will play its first regular season match. Tepper paid a league-record $300 million entry fee and negotiated $110 million in taxpayer help as part of the successful bid to land MLS.

The $110 million proposal was later reduced to a $35 million investment by city taxpayers.

According to transcripts of three closed meetings held by council and other city officials in the weeks before MLS awarded Charlotte an expansion team in December 2019, local leaders were concerned that the team would instead be known as Carolina FC. In addition, they discussed and debated how to persuade Tepper to guarantee the NFL Panthers wouldn’t relocate as part of the MLS incentives (which did not happen), and warned of the damages caused by leaking details of the negotiations to the media.

Mayor Vi Lyles and City Council members met once in September and twice in November as speculation heated up that Tepper Sports & Entertainment — the parent company of Tepper’s Charlotte-based sports ventures — was close to securing an expansion team.

Read the full story here for more on the negotiations.

(WATCH BELOW: Charlotte FC hopes to break attendance record for team’s inaugural match)

Charlotte FC hopes to break attendance record for team's inaugural match

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