Beer at NIU Games

[wiu712]

From an Associated Press article (no "by" line):

At Northern Illinois, more beer is less trouble!

Northern Illinois officials say a decision to sell beer at Huskie Stadium during football games is paying off monetarily and in public safety.

University police Cmdr. Don Rodman said alcohol-related calls during games have dropped since beer sales began in the second week of the football season. Rodman and senior associate athletic director John Cheney believe the drop is due to fans not binge drinking before going into the stadium.

Calls in the past usually came before the game during tailgating or in the first quarter, Rodman said.

There are three spots on the stadium’s west side that sell beer. Rodman said there haven’t been any alcohol-related calls on that side of the stadium so far this year.

In previous years, there would tend to be one or two such calls each game from the west side, Rodman told the DeKalb Daily Chronicle.

A few more would come from the east side, where the student section is located.

Beer sales will stay on the west side of the stadium for now, Cheney said.

“When you have a defined population that’s underage, you have to be sensitive to that,” he said.

Cheney said there has been a profit from the sales. According to Cheney, Sodexo, which provides concessions, couldn’t give an exact number, but said beer sales rose 30 percent from first game to the second.

The university plans to continue selling beer during men’s and women’s basketball games, Cheney said.

[wiu712]

Illinois State sells beer at their games. But you have to buy a $40 ticket and sit in their new "Touchdown Terrace" in the south end zone.

It looks like the beer sales at NIU are more wide-spread.

[WIU0812]

[huskie]

The Governor has no interest in supporting State schools. This would be a great way to raise some revenue. Lets get beer sales in Western Hall by January 1. Then Hanson Field next fall. Lets not forget baseball and softball games.

[sealhall74]

The Governor has no interest in supporting State schools. This would be a great way to raise some revenue. Lets get beer sales in Western Hall by January 1. Then Hanson Field next fall. Lets not forget baseball and softball games.

You can blame it entirely on his double dose of "Ivy League" education. Y'all should have known better.

[ST_Lawson]

It's probably successful at some places, but you gotta be careful.
Both Minnesota and Eastern Michigan have lost money on beer sales at their stadiums:
http://www.twincities.com/ci_22825672/u ... ney-school
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/ind ... 0_net.html

So, you'd need to look at a bunch of the different schools that do it and try to find out what's common amongst the ones that turn a profit from it. If you have static costs that don't vary depending on how much you sell (so, like the $1,200 for security in the article about EMU) and you have pretty sparse attendance (like EMU has), then you don't make enough of a profit from the sales to cover that.

[sealhall74]

It's probably successful at some places, but you gotta be careful.
Both Minnesota and Eastern Michigan have lost money on beer sales at their stadiums:
http://www.twincities.com/ci_22825672/u ... ney-school
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/ind ... 0_net.html

So, you'd need to look at a bunch of the different schools that do it and try to find out what's common amongst the ones that turn a profit from it. If you have static costs that don't vary depending on how much you sell (so, like the $1,200 for security in the article about EMU) and you have pretty sparse attendance (like EMU has), then you don't make enough of a profit from the sales to cover that.

I don't think you do it to try and turn a profit. You do it simply to enhance the game day experience and make them want to come back again. It will certainly be a negative for a few but I would bet there would be more of the former than the latter.

[ST_Lawson]

It's probably successful at some places, but you gotta be careful.
Both Minnesota and Eastern Michigan have lost money on beer sales at their stadiums:
http://www.twincities.com/ci_22825672/u ... ney-school
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/ind ... 0_net.html

So, you'd need to look at a bunch of the different schools that do it and try to find out what's common amongst the ones that turn a profit from it. If you have static costs that don't vary depending on how much you sell (so, like the $1,200 for security in the article about EMU) and you have pretty sparse attendance (like EMU has), then you don't make enough of a profit from the sales to cover that.

I don't think you do it to try and turn a profit. You do it simply to enhance the game day experience and make them want to come back again. It will certainly be a negative for a few but I would bet there would be more of the former than the latter.

That I could see. If we're at least breaking even, but are able to entice more fans to actually show up to the games, then it's a net positive.
I don't really know, but are there a lot of people where a lack of beer in the stadium is their deciding factor of whether or not to attend a game? I rarely drink (and when I do, it's never been beer), so I don't really get the appeal myself. I'm not against it, but it's gotta be handled the right way. If having beer in the stadium is able to bring in a decent amount more fans to home games, without causing too many problems, then I'm all for it.

[sealhall74]

It's probably successful at some places, but you gotta be careful.
Both Minnesota and Eastern Michigan have lost money on beer sales at their stadiums:
http://www.twincities.com/ci_22825672/u ... ney-school
http://www.mlive.com/news/ann-arbor/ind ... 0_net.html

So, you'd need to look at a bunch of the different schools that do it and try to find out what's common amongst the ones that turn a profit from it. If you have static costs that don't vary depending on how much you sell (so, like the $1,200 for security in the article about EMU) and you have pretty sparse attendance (like EMU has), then you don't make enough of a profit from the sales to cover that.

I don't think you do it to try and turn a profit. You do it simply to enhance the game day experience and make them want to come back again. It will certainly be a negative for a few but I would bet there would be more of the former than the latter.

That I could see. If we're at least breaking even, but are able to entice more fans to actually show up to the games, then it's a net positive.
I don't really know, but are there a lot of people where a lack of beer in the stadium is their deciding factor of whether or not to attend a game? I rarely drink (and when I do, it's never been beer), so I don't really get the appeal myself. I'm not against it, but it's gotta be handled the right way. If having beer in the stadium is able to bring in a decent amount more fans to home games, without causing too many problems, then I'm all for it.

The question I would have is this: Are there more students LIVING on campus or in Macomb who are of legal drinking age than not? If it is even close to 50-50, it is a no brainer IMO. I also will add that most but not all people drink as a form of socializing so that means they do with a handful of buddies around so that is also good for attendance.

[ST_Lawson]

The question I would have is this: Are there more students LIVING on campus or in Macomb who are of legal drinking age than not? If it is even close to 50-50, it is a no brainer IMO. I also will add that most but not all people drink as a form of socializing so that means they do with a handful of buddies around so that is also good for attendance.

I don't have numbers for this year, but the factbook from last fall has data broken down by age. The one issue is that the age groups are broken out by 2 years at a time, with 20-21 being a group. If we assume that half of the 20-21 group is 20 and half is 21 (I don't really know the breakdown, but I don't have anything better at this point), then including full-time and part-time students, both undergrads and grads, then last fall we had 4,375 students under 21 and 4,841 that are legally able to drink.

That split veers more towards the younger if you remove grad students...closer to ~3,900...but it's still not too far off from 50/50 split. I don't know what the number of grad students going to games is, but I'd bet it's at a significantly lower rate than undergrads do. I do know that for a university our size, we have significantly fewer people in the stands than other schools. I was running some numbers with a guy on the AGS board and in terms of Enrollment to attendance ratio, we're 105th in the FCS out of 126 schools. If you compare our average attendance (as reported to the NCAA for last season) to our total enrollment, we're only at about 40%, which is last in our conference. A lot of that can be attributed to the majority of our alumni not staying around the area when they graduate, but we don't get a lot of our current students there either even though they can get into games for free and many only have to walk or drive maybe 5-10 minutes to get to the stadium.