What College Football Stadiums Sell the Most Alcohol?

Every sport — and their respective governing bodies — has a different approach to handling alcohol sales at stadiums. Baseball games halt beer and spirits sales after the seventh innings; Major League Soccer games won’t allow booze to be sold after a certain point in the second half. The Premier League has long barred drinking alcohol in the stands. Alcohol sales at college sports adds another wrinkle into the matter: namely, how do you factor in the presence of underage students into the mix? Does that mean that, say, college football’s beer sales are less than one might expect?

A new investigation from Matt Brown at Extra Points explored the beer sales this season at 21 different college football stadiums. What Brown and his colleagues discovered, via a series of Freedom of Information Act requests, was where beer sales were at their highest for the current season — and where they were down.

At the top of the list was Nebraska, which has sold over $2 million worth of beer for games in August and September of 2025. Coming in just behind them were the University of Tennessee and LSU, at $1.6 million and $1.4 million, respectively. The University of Minnesota, with booze sales of just over $1 million, was the other institution of higher learning on the list to exceed the million-dollar mark for the period specified.

Stadiums Across Sports Are Taking Steps Towards Greater Sustainability

From solar panels to rooftop gardens

There are also some surprises here: Brown pointed out that Wisconsin’s underwhelming season thus far has driven down attendance at their home games, which has also had a similar effect on alcohol sales there.

There’s one big caveat to these numbers: as Brown points out in the article, there were plenty of universities that did not respond to the request. In the article, he detailed plans to follow up after the season ends with the intention of assembling a more comprehensive and season-long chart.

Meet your guide

Tobias Carroll

Tobias Carroll lives and writes in New York City, and has been covering a wide variety of subjects — including (but not limited to) books, soccer and drinks — for many years. His writing has been published by the likes of the Los Angeles Times, Pitchfork, Literary Hub, Vulture, Punch, the New York Times and Men’s Journal. At InsideHook, he has…