Review by Michael Fedorowski in KIN 332 (Section 2)
The article “Colleges Weigh Risks, Rewards of Stadium Beer Sales” (sportsbusinessdaily.com, Don Muret, September 19, 2011) weighs the benefits and negatives of allowing the sale of alcohol inside collegiate stadiums during athletic events. Beer sales during football games have been an ever-increasing trend for universities as athletic departments continue to look for new streams of revenue. The article itself concentrates on Western Virginia University for they are the newest school to follow suit. Currently it is up to the school to decide whether they will sell beer during their games, as the NCAA has no rules against it. WVU made $75,000 in beer sales during their first game and expect to gross between $500,000 and $1.2million annually this year. Selling beer not only has its increase in revenue advantage but also opens new doors to sponsorships and endorsement deals.
Companies such as Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors can pour beer during games, but they are not permitted to advertise within the bowl arena or outside the stadium. Both the schools and beer companies still benefit greatly from sponsorships with some deals ranging in the six figures annually. Brewers also receive commercial time on radio broadcasts and program ads such as pamphlets. WVU believes that selling alcohol during games will curb binge drinking at tailgates while also bringing in extra revenue for their athletic department. It is a win-win situation. The fans, school, and brewing companies are all happy campers.
---
Review by Katie Minter in KIN 332 (Section 2)
This article was very interesting and I think a topic that has been widely discussed at different colleges and universities around the United States. In this article, Don Muret introduces us to the idea that West Virginia University has decided to start selling beer at public sporting events, especially at their football games. He explains that this idea is not widely accepted in the world of college sports except for a few colleges like Colorado State, which is right next door to Coor’s Brewery, University of Nevada, and University of Louisiana-Lafayette. With the decision of West Virginia University to start selling beer at their stadium, they are slowly intergrading the new policy and acceptance of selling beer into their football traditions. WVU estimated that they would gain $500,000 to 1.2 million dollars in new revenue from selling beer alone at their stadium this season. Along with raising revenue, they will also be increasing the opportunity to gain sponsorships. This process is taking sometime to figure out because WVU is not advertising their sponsorships inside of the stadium, except for small signs on the concourses that direct fans to the appropriate concession stand to purchase the type of beer that they want. To fill the void of advertising inside of the stadium, they are allowing the breweries to advertise on commercial broadcast and with ads in the game programs. Along with raising revenue and increasing the opportunity of sponsorships, WVU is also using this to curb the habit of binge drinking before and during games. WVU hopes this will control the level of consumption of alcohol before games, since fans will now be allowed to drink during the game and in this situation both parties win with fans being able to drink during the games, and the university can generate revenue.
I thought this article was very interesting because I think it is the beginning of what is to come in the world off college sports. I think there are still a lot of people against advertising and consumption of alcohol at on-campus events, but with the economy not being as stable as it has been and the drop in ticket sales, some schools are going to have to start offering new perks to get ticket sales up. I think it is a genius idea to be able to regulate student drinking, to an extent, and also to generate revenue for the school. It may be against a long running tradition to not drink at college games, but college student will always drink before games, and usually a lot before games to last the whole game, so why not curb that tradition and start a new tradition of selling beer during games and helping the school generate profit. I think it is still a work in progress, but I will not be surprise if in a couple years, more and more universities are starting to sell beer at on-campus events.
No comments:
Post a Comment