IU's football program has undergone many changes this offseason, both internally and around Memorial Stadium, and it can now add the selling of beer and wine to that list.
On Tuesday afternoon, IU announced that beginning this fall, Memorial Stadium will offer fans the opportunity to purchase alcohol during games.
“Our main goals with this initiative are to enhance the gameday experience for our fans and reduce alcohol-related incidents in and around the stadium," IU Athletic Director Fred Glass said in a press release.
This comes shortly after the athletic department hired an independent commission to study the effects of alcohol on overall gameday experience.
The commission studied roughly 50 different schools including Ohio State, which showed a 65% decrease in alcohol-related incidents during its first year of selling alcohol. The results depicted similar decreases in alcohol-related incidents at numerous other schools as well.
"While there will be some comparatively modest revenue generated by these sales, that is not the primary purpose of this program,” Glass said. “Ten percent of our net beer and wine public sales revenues will be given to campus for alcohol safety programming."
Additionally, the athletic department announced it would work in tandem with IU’s Superintendent of Public Safety in order to facilitate a safer gameday environment.
No sales prices or specific third-party vendors have been disclosed to the public at this time, though Glass mentioned that the change would be a pilot program that would help decide on similar policies for other IU events in the future.
Currently, IU does sell alcohol inside Assembly Hall during basketball home games, but only at select locations.
With the reversal of a decades-long alcohol-free policy, IU now joins Illinois, Minnesota, Maryland, Ohio State and Purdue as the only Big Ten schools to offer alcohol at football games.
