At SHI Stadium at Rutgers University, advertisements for Eric LeGrand Whiskey flashed across the Jumbotron and on digital billboards during football games this season as bartenders used it to whip up old-fashioned cocktails in premium seating areas.
Last year, Rutgers University Athletics partnered with the whiskey, its first partnership with a spirits brand. Now during home games, it’s everywhere.
Fans have started tailgating with it, said Bill Tankiewicz, 48, a Rutgers football fan who works in finance and lives in South Plainfield, New Jersey. “We take the bottle and have shots of it before the game,” he said, laughing. “Tailgating is the best part of football anyway, and this makes it more fun.”
No one is more tickled by it than Eric LeGrand, the former Rutgers football player who was paralyzed during a game in 2010 and went on to create a namesake bourbon. LeGrand reached out to the Rutgers athletic department to see if it wanted to work together. “This is my home away from home,” he said.
In the past couple of years, alcohol brands have begun directly sponsoring college athletic departments. A number of teams competing in the College Football Playoff, which kicks off Friday, have recently partnered with spirit companies. Last year, Teeling Whiskey announced its four-year sponsorship of Notre Dame. In August, Buckeye Vodka became a sponsor of Ohio State Athletics, and Ole Smoky Distillery became the “exclusive moonshine of the Vols” at the University of Tennessee.
These new partnerships come at a time when universities need more money than ever to shoulder the growing costs of running large football programs — including potentially compensating their players directly as a result of a class-action lawsuit against the NCAA. As these needs become more urgent, colleges are tapping into revenue streams they may have steered clear of in the past.
Alcohol “was always this taboo thing,” said Chris Bigelow, a food service consultant in Naples, Florida. Universities, after all, mostly work with underage populations who cannot drink.
Most college stadiums wouldn’t sell alcohol during games — but that began to shift about a decade ago. “We started seeing universities say, ‘This is ridiculous, obviously there is a big market here,’” he said.
The early adopters started to see fewer alcohol-related incidents. West Virginia, for example, reported a 35% decrease in game day arrests after it started selling alcohol in its stadium. “People wouldn’t sit in the parking lot all day and get drunk,” Bigelow said, adding, “Once they started and the results were positive, a lot of schools followed.”
Now, selling alcohol in stadiums is the norm. According to an Associated Press survey conducted last year, 80% of schools in the five major college athletic conferences serve alcohol in public areas of their stadiums. The rest either sell alcohol in only luxury areas or still prohibit booze sales.
College athletic programs need more revenue as they spend millions on coaching salaries and facilities. “College sports wasn’t this huge business, but now it is,” said Nicole Auerbach, a college football insider for NBC Sports and a former reporter for The Athletic.
The settlement of the class-action lawsuit against the NCAA could set the stage for schools to pay out players through revenue sharing as early as next year. All of this means that college athletic programs are looking for additional ways to make money. “Anything that is new that has never been done before, people are batting around these ideas,” Auerbach said.
Despite a 2021 name, image and likeness (NIL) ruling by the NCAA that allows athletes to make money from their fame, college athletes are still barred from accepting deals with brands in certain categories, including gambling and alcohol. The irony “has been pointed out for sure in conversations I’ve had,” Auerbach said, “but I’m not sure people care that much, since it’s still overall a positive and new thing that athletes can do NIL deals at all.”
Even as they wade into alcohol partnerships, college athletic programs have different levels of comfort about what roles their boozy sponsors should play on and off campus.
Some colleges, like Rutgers University, are comfortable with spotlighting alcohol brands on campus.
“It makes Rutgers feel good to give back to Eric, and supporting something that ultimately supports him,” said Lisa Tirrell, who oversees merchandise and ticket sales for Rutgers Athletics. “We want to push as many bottles of whiskey for sale.”
At Ohio State University’s Ohio Stadium, the logo for Buckeye Vodka flashes on dozens of screens. Specialty cocktails using the family-owned vodka brand are served at bars in select seating areas, and there is even a special Buckeye Vodka bar located in the club level: “We had it designed specially,” said Jim Finke, a co-founder of Buckeye Vodka.
Buckeye Vodka is also served and advertised at sports bars across the state that show Ohio State games. “When I approach a liquor store to build a display, I’ve been getting a lot more yeses once I mention our contract with Ohio State,” said Zachary Heeney, regional sales manager at Buckeye Vodka.
Notre Dame, by contrast, is more hesitant to promote alcohol on its campus. Alcohol is served only in premium seating levels of its stadium. “We have to prioritize responsible drinking,” said Pete Bevacqua, Notre Dame’s director of athletics. “We are very cautious about that, and what we do on campus is very different from what we do with our fans around the world.”
Teeling Whiskey therefore limits its activities to off campus. Far from campus, in Ireland, where its distillery is, it makes limited-edition bottles and merchandise for Notre Dame fans. Closer to home, the brand also throws watch parties and tailgating sessions around the United States when Notre Dame plays away games.
“We call it Teelgating,” said Stephen Teeling, director of sales and marketing at Teeling Whiskey. “The university has a massive fan base.” The company can tap into an audience of 50 million people who feel connected to Notre Dame.
“These are fans who like to drink,” he added.
This article originally appeared in The New York Times.
