MADISON, Ala. (WHNT) – On Monday, the Rocket City Trash Pandas’ team executives met with the Madison City Council to present an update on its financial status before the start of another season. 

The team struggled to pay on their multi-million dollar lease from the city in 2020 and had yet to complete a full season of scheduled games and events due to the COVID pandemic.  

Ballcorps, LLC, the team’s owner, made sure to let Madison City Council know that this past season is a far cry from 2020 when the pandemic slowed business to a crawl.  

Although the payments were always up to date, only a minimum payment of one million dollars was made in 2020. Trash Pandas’ general manager Garrett Fahrmann announced a payment of over 1.4 million dollars.  

Fahrmann attributed it to having the first full season of baseball coupled with special events. According to Ballcorps, an audit found nothing that would deviate from making payments in the future. 

“After the first full season of Trash Pandas’ baseball and getting our feet wet over the last couple of years, we obviously went through some ups and downs,” Fahrmann told News 19. “With us getting through where we are today, I think this is where we expected to be, and we expect to keep going north.” 

Fahrmann also mentioned that SEC conference baseball that featured Auburn versus Tennessee Tech played a role in revenue building. The team announced that the Alabama Crimson Tide baseball will play at Toyota Field in March. 

Several other events, including another Christmas light show, were huge successes and will continue to set the goal to be the community staple. 

“It takes a lot of things to happen to get to that 1.4 million number and we are happy to get through our first full season and having it come out like that and we are looking to continue to grow that number,” said Fahrmann.