Ahead of UNK football’s first game last fall, UNK announced the introduction of alcohol sales at Ron and Carol Cope Stadium on Aug. 5. However, those plans fell through.
Marc Bauer, UNK athletic director, said the issues were due to the expected profit margins.
“The third-party vendor does not believe that they will make enough money to even profit,” Bauer said.
Initially, UNK Athletics released a statement on Sept. 5 saying that alcohol would not be served at the season opener due to “unforeseen issues with vendor insurance relative to university requirements.” The department had hoped to work out the issues ahead of future football games.
“The challenge was the insurance piece, and it comes at an expense, especially a $10 million life insurance policy,” Bauer said. “They wanted the third-party vendor to have a $5 million policy of their own, and then another $5 million umbrella policy that went over the entire campus.”
The announcement on Sept. 5 was followed up by a statement by Todd Gottula, UNK Chief Communications and Marketing Officer, on Sept. 23 saying that UNK Athletics would not be moving forward with alcohol sales for the rest of the fall. With the door left open to alcohol sales in the future, it is unlikely attendees will be able to buy a beer at a UNK athletics event anytime soon.
“We have a great thing going at the football field,” Bauer said. “It’s called the tailgate, the fan experience. I don’t want to take away from that. The more I look at our situation, and I think to myself, ‘Do we keep pushing the alcohol sales, or do we have what we have going on now and make it better?’”
The other component of introducing alcohol sales was a no re-entry policy at football games, and with the removal of alcohol sales, the no re-entry policy has also gone away.
“We’ve talked to multiple Division II schools, and (a no re-entry policy is) one of their biggest challenges,” Bauer said. “You cannot have re-entry if you’re going to sell alcohol because you’re liable for anybody that goes out, gets hammered, comes in, passes out.”
Among the extra challenges such a policy would bring, the “heightened security” is something Bauer said he would rather people have the ability to come and go from Cope Stadium freely.
As UNK Athletics continues to evaluate the idea of alcohol sales for the future, Bauer said the circumstances involved with insurance are the main factor.
“I just don’t know that I want to pursue it, knowing a third-party vendor, probably with $10 million worth of insurance policy, is not going to make any profit,” Bauer said. “I don’t know why anybody would want to do it.”
