UK expands beer and seltzer sales to all athletic venues and events

It’s official: ice cold beer is coming to all UK Athletics games and events this fall.

On Friday, Mitch Barnhart called an afternoon press conference to discuss the state of his athletics department at the University of Kentucky. Barnhart opened with a roundup of the spring sports’ success, most recently, Kentucky Baseball‘s run to the Super Regional and Kentucky Proud Park’s first turn as an NCAA host. He followed with individual accomplishments throughout UK Athletics and updates on UK’s construction projects.

Then he got to the announcement many fans have been waiting to hear.

“We’re going to expand alcohol sales to all of our athletic venues and events this year.”

Beer and seltzer sales will be fully operational this fall in time for the first Saturday of Kentucky Football‘s 2023 schedule. From there, the taps will flow at Rupp Arena for Kentucky Basketball‘s home games this winter and other UK Athletics events around campus.

“It’s not just a Mitch decision,” Barnhart said. “It’s an institutional decision we made together. Obviously, this was not allowed in our league for a long time. And then the rules, the policy changed and we’ve been able to do that, serve that in our league for a bit. So we basically paid attention to other experiences other schools were going through, did our research with organizations about the effect it would have on crowds and safety, and all of those pieces, and then just kept gathering information.”

The decision was also made partly because the trial run of spring beer sales went well.

“We had a pilot initiative this year for baseball and softball venues with the sale of beer and seltzer and we had no real issues,” Barnhart explained. “Making the decision, we looked at fan experience, experience for our student-athletes, and our capacity to manage the events, and I think our people will do that well.

“Obviously, there will be a much larger scale as we move into a couple of the bigger venues. So we’ve got some training and some getting ready to do. But I think our people understand some of the challenges that have occurred at other places and we’ll use those experiences, plus the knowledge that we learned from this spring, to be able to make sure we manage it correctly.”

Barnhart added that fans at KPP were “awesome.”

Not about money

In an age when most decisions seem to revolve around the almighty dollar, Mitch Barnhart insisted the decision to sell booze was not based on money.

“It is not a revenue decision,” he explained. “You make decisions based on different things that you’ve got in your program that you’re trying to do, whether it’s atmosphere at your games or amenities that your fans desire and work your way through that. So it’s not a financial decision for us, and frankly, I don’t think that, even if we make some money, it’s not really life-changing for our program so I don’t ever want to let that drive what we do.”