Arizona football: Wildcats would serve alcohol at home games if they could

Arizona Stadium needs some upgrades before it can serve booze

In this age of 2016, every team in the college and professional ranks are facing a major dilemma:

How to get the fans out to the stadium.

Saturday’s afternoon game for the Arizona Wildcats was a prime example of this issue facing the Tucson college team. While it was announced as a sellout crowd, anyone with eyes could see that the stadium was nowhere near capacity.

While there have been improvements made to the in-stadium experience at U of A in recent years, for an overwhelming majority of fans, not a lot has been done for them.

There are improved concession stands and restrooms, but only on the north side. There are the new videoboards, but even those are kind of old news at this point. There are new seats, but metal bleachers are still the predominant fixture around Arizona Stadium.

The metal bleachers, combined with the heat, and no huge benefit to sitting out in the sun and watch a struggling product over sitting in the comfort of air conditioning at home or at a sports bar, resulted in a very sparse east side.

So outside of some major overhauls (namely to the west side), what can Arizona do?

How about offer some sort of beer garden area, or just sell alcohol in more areas of the stadium than the new suites?

At least two Pac-12 schools added this exact thing this year; Oregon State added a beer garden, and Washington State expanded their alcohol sales.

The entire college football world has seen an uptick in this. Last year, VinePair made a map of all the stadiums that were selling alcohol at the time. Some notables: West Virginia, Louisville, Houston, Texas, and Miami. Ohio State joined the group this year. All of those with the exception of Miami are on-campus stadiums, just like Arizona Stadium.

So what’s the hold up in Tucson?

The stadium’s ability to actually do it.

“Right now at Arizona Stadium, we definitely have to upgrade our concessions and restrooms to be able to support that,” Greg Byrne told me before the 2016 season started when asked about Arizona’s plans to sell alcohol at games. “So right now, there are some areas in Arizona Stadium where we’re currently selling, like the Sands Club for instance. In order to go stadium-wide, that’s something we don’t have the infrastructure in place to do right now.”

The main blowback I hear whenever this is brought up is that having alcohol in the stadium will cause more incidents. But we look to Texas for the stats on this, and they’re not what most people think actually happens.

“We have been watching the schools that have added it,” Byrne continued. “I talked to Oliver Luck, the former AD at West Virginia, about that very thing, and Oliver showed me the information where their gameday incidents went down when they started selling inside the stadium, because people weren’t consuming as much out in the parking lot.”

“We’re watching it closely. Are we ready to do it right now? No, because we can’t support it. But is it something that we’ll consider down the road? Yes.”

Also, as Arizona looks to gain more revenue from outlets that aren’t private donors in order to keep up in the facilities arms race across the NCAA in all sports, alcohol sales would certainly help that as well. West Virginia has brought in over $3 million since beginning beer sales in 2011. Minnesota made $577,216 profit in 2015 between its three major sports after giving the concession company its cut. Texas generated $1.8 million in one year, and then there’s Louisville, where they’re making $2.5 million on a three-year contract with Maker’s Mark.

“There is some financial boost,” Byrne added about what Arizona could see on the money side. “Is it all of the sudden where you’re making five million dollars a year in revenue? No. But is it something that can help be part of your financial model? Yes. On top of that, it’s something you take a look at and say is there an impact on your ticket sales.”

“So it’s an indirect impact of people not cancelling tickets or new people buying tickets.”

And there it is. Get more people to the game, and generate money for the facilities you need to be competitive in all sports, especially the major sports. A win-win proposition for Arizona football, and one that should happen as soon as the stadium can support it.

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