Drinking at the Ball Game Has Changed — for the Better
While sporting events and alcohol have always had a cozy relationship in America, we’ve come a long way from the days of draft pours of macro lager. Yet even in the last few years, drinks programs at stadiums, arenas, and other sporting venues around the country have undergone a major evolution. Driven in part by technological advancements, changing consumer demand, increased interest in premium offerings, and the realities of a post-Covid landscape, drinking at a ball game has never been this dynamic, varied, and flexible.
Like much of the rest of the country, arenas have in many cases become cashless venues that rely on a fair degree of automation to facilitate transactions, even of alcohol. Between a desire to expedite the process and in some cases deal with staffing issues, “frictionless” locations have become more prevalent, allowing rapid transactions that don’t even require a cashier. As Meagan Murray, Sodexo Live! district manager in charge of Seattle’s T-Mobile Park, notes, “post-Covid, one of the things we were looking at is ‘How do we get our fans back to their seats faster?’ And so ultimately our beverage program has aligned with everything that we’re doing in the building, trying to move transactions faster. Coming out of Covid, we got a new point-of- sale system, and we stopped taking cash.” For thirsty Mariners fans, that means not having to wait in a 10-minute line for a Fremont Lush IPA.
The same push for faster service and less time spent out of seats holds true in other parts of the country, even where you might not expect it. “Here in Milwaukee, we’re Midwesterners, we like our meat and potatoes, and we like things how they’ve been for the last 25 years,” says Mason Gohlke, vice president of hospitality for Fiserv Forum, home of the NBA’s Milwaukee Bucks, and Deer District. “So when you inject something new, you sometimes get a little resistance, but eventually you also get some buy-in.” For Gohlke and others, finding the balance between efficiency and hospitality, while honoring the traditional means of purchasing, is crucial. “There is still a large group of people that like the traditional belly up, order from a bartender, my bartender makes my drink, talks me up a little bit, and then gives me my beverage, I move on,” Gohlke says. “But we are seeing more of a demand for frictionless sales, whether it’s demand to get back to the game or the event faster, or they just don’t want to talk to anybody, right? Some people just don’t want to interact, and our ‘Just Walk Out Marketplace’ lets them get back to their seat and watch Giannis dunk on some fools.”
Evolving the Offerings
That kind of outlet has also allowed for the most pronounced shift at these venues: the massive importance of canned products. Not just beer, but also all manner of RTDs. The canned boom took off during Covid and has changed the landscape of drinking at sporting events, often for extremely practical reasons. “We had a bit of a staffing shortage, so I personally was helping pour some beer during those days,” says Murray. “I would sit there and think, ‘Yeah, our POS is faster, but we’re selling the 24- or the 32-ounce draft beer. Come on, you know, pour it faster!’” Given the considerable time and experience it takes to properly pour a draft beer, Murray and her team started looking at more cans, which had grown in variety and availability, particularly since 2020. As an example, the Bodhizafa IPA from local favorite Georgetown Brewing was never in cans before the pandemic, but is now a staple of the T-Mobile Park program. “So we have started to pivot to cans more and more, where we were 80-20 draft versus canned, and now we flipped 80-20 the other way,” Murray says.
Additionally, while each of these venues has an anchor tenant or two, they’re also home to plenty of other events: often concerts, but sometimes other sporting events or performances. The move to more data-driven planning and more flexible points of sale allows venues to bring in products specifically for an anticipated audience, like a touring musician’s celebrity spirit or just a targeted product for a concert crowd.
For every venue, the offseason provides a valuable chance to refresh and refocus. Often, the core menu and set of offerings is largely finalized before a season begins, but venues these days need to be responsive to fast-developing trends. “If you were to ask me that question about six years ago, I’d say ‘once the menu is set, it’s set,’” Gohlke explains. “But that’s just not the world that we live in anymore. Trends can happen that impact people’s desire for a certain product. So you’ve got to be able to respond to that. Our mentality now is 75 percent [of the offerings], that’s what it’s going to be. The rest is flexible.”
For Murray, the process is similar. “Basically starting in October, at the end of every season, we start working on the following year’s beverage program. We start looking at what is trending and we start analyzing the sales from the year before. What patterns were we seeing already with our own fans, not just the market? What are Seattle Mariners fans in the ballpark drinking?” That kind of analysis is a mix of in-house sales data and collaboration with providers that may have a broader sense of industry trends and new products in the pipeline that could easily be the hit offering of the next season.
Baller Bottles
Stadiums and arenas have also become more attuned to the possibility of and demand for extremely high-end beverage experiences. Perhaps no venue better illustrates this than Brooklyn’s Barclays Center, home to the NBA’s Brooklyn Nets and the WNBA’s New York Liberty. “Our approach is intentionally layered across spaces to meet guests where they are,” says Jen Cortellini, the vice president of wine operations strategy and experiences at Brooklyn Sports & Entertainment Global. “At Crown Club, Barclays Center’s most exclusive membership club and premier dining experience, the breadth of our collection highlights some of the world’s most sought-after wines, including Pertrus and Domaine de la Romanée-Conti, while also allowing guests the option to enjoy a selection of wines by the glass.” The Crown Club’s private cellar has nearly 5,500 bottles and its premium bar offers high-end spirits like Yamazaki Whisky, Macallan Scotch, and Blanton’s Bourbon, all of which provide an exclusive experience that aligns with the expectations of their clientele.
The commitment at Barclays Center goes beyond the drinks on offer, with a service staff that perhaps shares more in common with a Michelin-starred restaurant than the typical concessions you might expect. As Cortellini shares, “We are believed to have been the first arena in the country to have our own full-time sommelier, which began as part of the opening of Crown Club in 2021, and have since expanded to a full team of sommeliers.” Led by wine director Brady Gorsuch, the team includes wine professionals who have worked at some of the best restaurants in New York, and they regularly receive training on the wine list before the start of the NBA and WNBA seasons.
While there’s no doubt that fans looking for the same kind of experience they’ve always had at a stadium or arena can still have it, it’s also true that these venues have become hotbeds of change and innovation. Whether it’s Murray’s team creating a selection of slushie drinks or piloting a local program allowing fans to bring mixed drinks back to their seats, or the staggering ambition of Cortellini’s courtside offerings, we’ve come a long way from Ten-Cent Beer Night.
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