The Wall Street Journal - 17.08.2019 - 18.08.2019

A14| Saturday/Sunday, August 17 - 18, 2019 ** THE WALL STREET JOURNAL.**

for some time that they wanted to

be able to buy alcohol in general

seating areas.

Bjork, at Texas A&M, said mil-

lennial fans in particular seem

more interested in shared social

spaces at games than reserved

seats, which could lead to more

sports-bar type areas.

“Then alcohol is a part of it be-

cause it’s typically in a space like

that,” Bjork said. “Just going to a

game, sitting in your seat, that’s

more traditional.”

The policy shift has created a

bigger marketing opening for beer

companies, who are pursuing—and

increasingly losing—a similar de-

mographic group. Though signifi-

cant limitations remain—the SEC

still bans alcohol signage at stadi-

ums, for instance—colleges have

become more open to partnering

with beer companies where they

can.

The University of Louisiana at

Lafayette in 2015 became the first

college to license its own beer,

partnering with a craft brewer to

create Rajin’ Cajuns ale.

In addition to expanding sta-

dium sales, Arkansas recently

signed a sponsorship deal with An-

heuser-Busch worth around

$400,000 per year.

seats on Saturdays.

Average attendance for Division

I Football Bowl Subconference

schools has fallen for five consecu-

tive years, according to the NCAA.

It is down 11% from a decade ago.

And as The Wall Street Journal re-

ported last year, the actual atten-

dance is often well below the pub-

licly listed figure for any given

game.

“The biggest thing that makes a

difference in attendance is that

‘have to be there’ moment, and the

feeling that watching on TV or on

your phone is not going to capture

the moment like being there in

person,” said LSU senior associate

athletics director Robert Munson.

Winning teams, marquee oppo-

nents and modernized stadiums

can all help. But success is fickle,

quality of the opponent varies and

facilities upgrades can be costly.

Selling alcohol is relatively simple

and actually makes money.

“Of the things you can imple-

ment that do have a positive im-

pact, it’s certainly one of those

things we can most easily imple-

ment,” Munson said.

Though LSU ranked fifth in the

nation with more than 100,

fans at home games last year,

Munson said fans have made clear

allowed fans to leave during half-

time and return.

“People would leave, go to their

tailgates and booze up again for

the second half,” said Oliver Luck,

who was then the Mountaineers

athletic director and is now chief

executive of the XFL.

Luck proposed an experiment:

sell beer inside the stadium and

ban re-entry. In 2011, West Virginia

became one of the first programs

in a major conference to sell alco-

hol in public areas.

The added annual revenue

wasn’t massive for a major pro-

gram—around $500,000, by Luck’s

estimate—but the decline in alco-

hol-related incidents in and around

the stadium was substantial. The

use of “Code V”—security person-

nel parlance for vomit in the

stands—fell by 35%, Luck said.

That led more schools to em-

brace a counterintuitive idea: beer

sales as a public safety measure.

Other major programs, including

Ohio State and Oregon, have seen

similar results in recent years.

But that only softened opposi-

tion to the policies among univer-

sity presidents and board mem-

bers. What has driven more

schools to embrace wider alcohol

sales is the growing sight of empty

Texas A&M, Louisiana State and

Missouri in expanding booze sales,

which had previously been re-

stricted to suites and private club

areas.

There are still many stadiums in

the SEC and elsewhere where alco-

hol is not widely sold. But when

the conference most rooted in so-

cially conservative, football-crazed

areas feels compelled to liberalize

its drinking policy, it represents a

clear shift in the prevailing think-

ing among administrators.

“The evolution we’re in now is

all about the fan experience—safe

atmospheres but providing some-

thing for everyone,” said Texas

A&M athletic director Ross Bjork.

“The alcohol piece provides that

something for everyone.”

Colleges have long shunned al-

cohol out of a mix of public safety

and optics concerns. Even if in-sta-

dium sales could be handled legally

and with limits, many schools were

wary of being viewed as promoting

drinking while dealing with under-

age and binge drinking on campus.

One of them was West Virginia,

which only a decade ago was

plagued with a growing binge-

drinking problem at football

games. Though alcohol wasn’t sold

in the stadium, its re-entry policy

T

here are still prohibi-

tion laws banning the

sale of alcohol in many

places in Arkansas, but

the state university’s

football stadium is no longer one

of them. Beginning this fall, beer

and wine will be sold in general

seating areas of Razorback Sta-

dium, where the announced atten-

dance is down 14% over the past

two years.

“I don’t know that someone is

going to make a decision to come

to a game just because alcohol is

being served,” said Arkansas ath-

letic director Hunter Yurachek,

“but we just can’t take that chance

anymore.”

Between in-stadium sales and

sponsorship deals, colleges and al-

cohol companies are increasingly

becoming allies in trying to main-

tain interest in two products

whose popularity is falling: foot-

ball tickets and beer.

The Southeastern Conference

this year lifted its longtime ban on

alcohol sales in public seating ar-

eas, an indication of how even

schools with the most devout fans

are searching for ways to stem at-

tendance declines. Arkansas joins

BYBRIANCOSTA

College Football’s Unlikely Savior: Beer

Four Southeastern Conference schools are the latest to expand alcohol sales at stadiums amid attendance declines

unhappy at PSG and unat-

tractive to the rest of Europe.

But in what has been one of

the weirder summers at the

top end of soccer’s super-

charged transfer market, he’s

not alone. All over the conti-

nent, high-price stars are

caught in the same limbo.

In Spain, there is the bi-

zarre case of Gareth Bale, the

Welsh winger who landed

there in 2013 for over $

million. Though he has scored

vital goals for Real Madrid in

Champions League finals, he

has become the club’s odd

man out since the return of

Zinedine Zidane as manager.

Zidane hasn’t been shy about

his desire to offload Bale.

He said as early as June

that he hoped a sale would be

resolved soon. Bale’s agent

replied by calling Zidane “a

disgrace” on British radio. But

it’s now August, with barely

two weeks left in the transfer

window, and Bale—whose

preference is to stay in Ma-

drid—seems no closer to the

exit. The question for Real is:

who could even afford to sign

him and pay a salary widely

reported to be north of $

million? The swelling of the

global transfer market has

produced 10 transfers in soc-

cer history worth €100 mil-

lion ($111 million) or more, all

since 2013. But they involved

just six different buying clubs:

PSG, Barcelona, Real Madrid,

Manchester United, Juventus,

and Atlético Madrid.

Manchester United is in a

similar spot with Alexis San-

chez, the Chilean forward

whose career has fallen off a

cliff since he moved to the

club from Arsenal. He is obvi-

ously not in United’s plans for

the season and yet no one

seems interested in taking

him off their hands due to his

astronomical salary.

Weather

Shown are today’s noon positions of weather systems and precipitation. Temperature bands are highs for the day.

City Hi LoW Hi LoW City Hi Lo W Hi Lo W

Today Tomorrow Today Tomorrow

City Hi LoW Hi LoW

Anchorage 73 52 s 69 50 s

Atlanta 98 75 s 95 75 t

Austin 100 75 s 101 74 s

Baltimore 90 73 pc 94 74 t

Boise 87 59 s 95 62 s

Boston 7768pc 8169t

Burlington 82 68 t 85 69 t

Charlotte 94 73 pc 95 72 t

Chicago 83 71 pc 85 71 t

Cleveland 83 69 pc 90 72 c

Dallas 99 78 pc 100 80 s

Denver 8956pc 9666s

Detroit 85 70 pc 88 73 t

Honolulu 90 76 s 91 76 pc

Houston 96 79 pc 98 76 s

Indianapolis 85 71 pc 92 73 pc

Kansas City 86 71 pc 89 70 pc

Las Vegas 106 79 s 105 79 s

Little Rock 96 75 pc 94 77 pc

Los Angeles 81 62 pc 79 61 pc

Miami 92 80 t 92 79 t

Milwaukee 82 69 pc 84 69 t

Minneapolis 83 68 pc 78 61 t

Nashville 97 71 pc 98 73 pc

New Orleans 92 79 t 88 76 t

New York City 83 74 pc 86 76 pc

Oklahoma City 98 77 pc 100 77 s

Omaha 84 70 pc 83 70 s

Orlando 89 72 t 91 72 t

Philadelphia 90 74 pc 93 74 t

Phoenix 108 84 pc 107 85 pc

Pittsburgh 84 67 pc 89 70 pc

Portland, Maine 71 63 c 78 65 pc

Portland, Ore. 75 60 s 78 59 pc

Sacramento 89 60 s 83 60 s

St. Louis 91 78 pc 91 75 t

Salt Lake City 91 67 s 97 71 s

San Francisco 73 61 s 74 62 pc

Santa Fe 90 55 s 91 58 pc

Seattle 74 60 s 75 59 pc

Sioux Falls 83 62 pc 76 61 pc

Wash., D.C. 92 77 pc 95 78 t

Amsterdam 70 59 r 68 58 sh

Athens 88 72 pc 88 71 s

Baghdad 107 79 s 108 83 s

Bangkok 91 80 t 90 79 t

Beijing 90 64 s 91 68 c

Berlin 75 61 pc 79 59 t

Brussels 70 59 r 69 54 r

Buenos Aires 64 42 r 54 34 pc

Dubai 107 93 s 107 91 s

Dublin 64 51 pc 65 51 sh

Edinburgh 64 54 sh 64 52 sh

Frankfurt 71 63 c 80 60 t

Geneva 84 61 pc 87 63 t

Havana 93 73 pc 93 74 pc

Hong Kong 90 81 t 89 80 t

Istanbul 82 69 pc 82 69 s

Jakarta 90 74 s 91 73 s

Jerusalem 85 69 s 83 66 s

Johannesburg 77 44 s 70 48 s

London 72 57 c 71 55 pc

Madrid 99 65 s 97 66 s

Manila 89 80 t 89 80 t

Melbourne 60 50 s 63 42 r

Mexico City 78 57 t 77 57 t

Milan 88 65 pc 90 68 pc

Moscow 66 57 sh 63 54 r

Mumbai 87 80 sh 87 79 sh

Paris 71 64 r 73 56 r

Rio de Janeiro 80 62 s 87 68 s

Riyadh 108 76 s 109 77 s

Rome 84 65 pc 85 65 s

San Juan 88 77 sh 89 78 pc

Seoul 84 70 t 84 69 pc

Shanghai 97 79 pc 92 78 t

Singapore 91 80 t 91 81 pc

Sydney 66 48 s 74 50 s

Taipei City 96 79 t 94 79 t

Tokyo 92 81 s 92 81 pc

Toronto 81 63 t 84 69 t

Vancouver 71 58 c 72 56 pc

Warsaw 7958pc 8466c

Zurich 78 56 pc 87 61 t

Today Tomorrow

U.S. Forecasts

International

City Hi LoW Hi LoW

s...sunny; pc... partly cloudy; c...cloudy; sh...showers;

t...t’storms; r...rain; sf...snow flurries; sn...snow; i...ice

Today Tomorrow

Warm

Cold

Stationary

Showers

Rain

T-storms

Snow

Flurries

Ice

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Salt Lake City New York

Tampa

Nashville

Memphis

Detroit

Kansas

City

El Paso Dallas

Billings

Portland

Miami

San Francisco

Sacramento

Orlando

Atlanta

New Orleans

Houston

San Diego Phoenix

Los Angeles

Las

Vegas

Seattle

Boise

Denver

Mpls./St. Paul

St. Louis

Chicago

Washington D.C.

Boston

Charleston

Milwaukee Hartford

Wichita

Indianapolis

Cleveland

Buffalo

Austin

Helena Bismarck

Albuquerque

Omaha

Oklahoma City

San Antonio

Des Moines

Sioux Falls

Jackson Birmingham

Cheyenne Philadelphia

Reno

Santa Fe

Colorado

Springs

Pierre

Richmond

Raleigh

Tucson

Albany

Topeka

Columbia

Augusta

Ft. Worth

Eugene

Springfield

Mobile

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Winnipeg

Vancouver Calgary

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Paris

WHILE HIS PARISSaint-Ger-

main teammates opened their

season on Sunday with yet

another trouncing, the most

expensive player in the his-

tory of soccer was preparing

to dash off on vacation.

But if Neymar’s mind was

already away from Paris, his

name wasn’t. Inside the Parc

des Princes, the most fervent

corners of the stadium lashed

out at him in absentia, frus-

trated at what they view to

be a lack of commitment and

years of underperformance.

Two years after PSG spent

$220 million to bring him to

the club, the fans unfurled

signs telling the Brazilian su-

perstar to “get lost.”

All indications are that

Neymar is prepared to com-

ply. The tricky part is that the

universe of potential destina-

tions amounts to no more

than two clubs. PSG has no

intention of writing off a

$220 million transfer fee. Yet

no one else seems prepared

to spend that kind of money

on Neymar again.

“Can I understand the

fans? Yes and no,” PSG man-

ager Thomas Tuchel said.

“This is what our lives are

right now. The emotions are

serious, and they are always

there. But on the other hand,

he is still our player, he’s still

my player.”

So for the time being, Ney-

mar remains on the shelf—

Neymar Remains in Limbo

BYJOSHUAROBINSON

Neymar is unhappy at PSG, but his transfer fee is too high.

LIONEL BONAVENTURE/AFP/GETTY IMAGES

ED ZURGA/GETTY IMAGES

Missouri will expand alcohol sales at Faurot

Field at Memorial Stadium this season.

SPORTS