Georgia football to sell beer to all fans at Sanford Stadium this fall
ATHENS — After being one of the final holdouts in the SEC, Georgia will open beer sales to all fans at home football games in 2024.
Athletic director Josh Brooks announced the news at Wednesday's meeting of the school's athletic board. The move comes five years after the SEC lifted its ban on alcohol sales at conference events.
Georgia and Auburn were the final two SEC schools to not sell beer to the general public at football games. Auburn has not formally announced whether it will do so this fall but has been slowly moving in that direction, selling beer at basketball games in Nov. 2023, becoming the final SEC school to sell alcohol at athletic events.
Georgia has been on a slow march to full-fledged alcohol sales.
When the SEC lifted its ban in the summer of 2019, Georgia allowed alcohol to be brought to private suites and certain club areas. The school later allowed beer sales for men's and women's basketball games at Stegeman Coliseum, followed in 2022 by baseball and softball games.
Brooks, who became Georgia's athletic director at the start of 2021, has been a cautious advocate for moving towards alcohol sales. When he was the A.D. at Millsaps College, a Division III school in Mississippi, he opened a beer garden at the school's football.
Attendance and revenue are of course the two driving factors. College sports officials have known for several years they had to work harder to get fans who preferred the comfort of home or to just tailgate but not spend to go in the stadium. The recent signs are the efforts are working, with attendance increasing for college football games as a whole between 2021 and 2022.
And while the schools always want to make more money, there may be more urgency with the prospect of revenue sharing with the athletes. That may still be years off, but there's a growing sentiment it will be part of the future. Between that and trying to get fans to donate more to NIL collectives, the chase for money is not abating any time soon.
LSU was the first school to sell beer at football games, during the 2019 season, and reported more than $2 million in net revenue for that season. Tennessee reported more than $3.3 million in beer sales over the 2022 season, per the Knoxville News-Sentinel.
Georgia has reported smaller revenue for alcohol sales at non-football events, around $230,000 during the 2021-22 season, the school said.
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