The Sports Economist

From the Chicago Sun-Times:

Bars and restaurants around Wrigley Field will be asked to stop serving alcohol after the seventh-inning stretch -- just as they do inside the ballpark -- to prevent Cubs playoff celebrations from turning ugly.

Ray Orozco, executive director of the city's Office of Emergency Management and Communications, said the proposed seventh-inning cutoff -- discussed at a playoff security meeting Monday -- would occur "only if it's a clinch game." Liquor sales could resume once the game is over, he said.

The voluntary moratorium would be effective on Sheffield between Newport and Irving; on Clark from Irving Park to Newport; and on Addison from Wilton to Racine.

"We're asking bar owners in the area to participate in the interest of public safety so we celebrate in the most responsible manner possible," Orozco said.

"It stops people from drinking for probably at least an hour. If they choose to, they can pick it up again. You're assuming everyone is going to start drinking again [after the final out]. I don't know if that's necessarily so. But if you stop drinking at 3:26 p.m., you won't be as physically impaired at 4:26 p.m."

My forecast: if implemented, it will result in people stocking up on beers before the 7th inning stretch. It's unclear whether this ban would have any effect on drinking, and it certainly could make fans more unruly because of the queues the ban would likely produce.

Cross-posted at Market Power

Labels: beer, Wrigley Field

E. Frank Stephenson at DOL writes on an attempt to allow Sunday beer sales at minor league baseball games in Georgia:

The legislative kerfuffle over Sunday beer for Gwinnett brought to mind my recent IJSF paper (with math colleague Ron Taylor and former student Andrew Chupp). Rome's 2004 referendum created a natural experiment for us to assess the effect of alcohol availability on attendance. We compared the Rome Braves 2003 and 2004 Sunday attendance (before beer sales were allowed) to their 2005-2006 Sunday attendance when beer was available. (We controlled for lots of other factors that might influence attendance--promotions, rehab appearances by Chipper Jones, ...) We found that allowing Sunday sales resulted in a small (2%) and statistically insignificant increase in attendance. Attendance does seem to be influenced by cheap beer--the team offers two for one beverages on Thursdays and draws about 8% more fans than on other weeknights. While Rome's experience may not carry over to other communities, our paper does call into question the conventional wisdom about beer and attendance.

This calls into mind Oi's "Disneyland Dilemma" QJE paper. If concession pricing is indeed part of a two-part pricing scheme aimed at capturing consumer surplus and the team priced tickets and beer "correctly", then allowing beer sales would not be expected to alter attendance. Or as Steven Landsburg could have written in his Armchair Economist: Economics and Everyday Life , why is beer so expensive at the ballpark?

Cross-posted (a few days ago) at Market Power.

Labels: beer, Steven Landsburg, two-part tariff, Walter Oi