Scott Stadium's New Beverage Policy

Recently, my friends and I were talking about the changes Scott Stadium is making to the 2019 Virginia football season. A notable change includes Virginia Athletics announcing that Scott Stadium will sell alcohol—beer, wine, and cider—during football games to attendees 21 years old and older. At first thought, I considered the many implications of the proximity of of-age Virginia students to a large stash of alcohol in a competitive, high-octane environment. One can argue this announcement introduces a possible negative consumption externality to Virginia football games. Given the psychological and physiological effects of alcohol consumption, consider other attendees who may be bothered by intoxicated Virginia fans who may or may not be rowdy. Thus, a Virginia fan’s private demand and consumption of alcohol, in this case, would directly affect the social marginal benefit, which for simplicity would be the sum of all private marginal benefits of every attendee, reflecting an over-consumption of alcoholic beverages in Scott Stadium. Assuming each of-age attendee enters Scott Stadium sober (because it would deny the possibility of of-age attendees only consuming alcoholic beverages outside Scott Stadium), we can construct a simple economic model detailing the effect of Scott Stadium offering alcoholic beverages for 2019 football games: 

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Assuming the marginal damage is $2 for every alcoholic beverage consumed by attendees who have a blood alcohol concentration of 0.05 percent or above (the level where impaired judgment, slurred speech starts) and that attendees over-consume by 2,000 beverages every game, a deadweight welfare loss of $2,000 is created (1/2 of $2 multiplied by 2,000). Predicting this deadweight loss, Scott Stadium has also enacted caps on alcohol consumption for each of-age attendee. Each of-age attendee will get a bracelet allowing them to purchase at most two alcoholic beverages at once and at most four during the course of the game. Further, alcohol cannot be consumed outside specially-designated areas and all alcoholic beverage sales will end once the third quarter ends. So it appears Virginia Athletics and Scott Stadium are opting for a rules-based remedy rather than a market-oriented remedy in attempting to mitigate this negative consumption externality.