Almost $2M in alcohol sales at Purdue football, men's basketball in 2021-22

Almost $2 million.

That's how much gross alcohol sales revenue Purdue athletics generated at Ross-Ade Stadium in 2021 and in Mackey Arena for men's basketball in 2021-22. (See charts below.)

The gross alcohol sales figures in 2021 in Ross-Ade Stadium were $1,293,584.57 for six home games. That's an average of $215,597.43 per game.

In 18 games in Mackey Arena for men's basketball, Purdue had $570,640.73 in gross alcohol sales. That's an average of $31,702.26 per game.

The combined gross sales figure was $1,864,225.30, which comes on the heels of a 2020-21 sports calendar that had no fans at games due to the pandemic.

"It's really on us within athletics and our concessions provider Levy to do a good job of making sure people are taken care of once they're within the facility and I think we did a really good job of that," said Purdue associate athletics director for strategic communications Patrick Crawford.

The top selling football game for alcohol sales: Michigan State, which generated $269,178.84 on Nov. 6. The Wisconsin game on Oct. 23 ($238,729.31) and the Indiana tilt on Nov. 27 ($232,086.75) also had over $200,000 in alcohol sales. None of the other three games exceeded that threshold.

The lone night game was the season opener on Sept. 4 vs. Oregon State, which had the second-lowest alcohol sales figure.

The top selling basketball game for gross alcohol sales was the season finale on March 5 vs. Indiana, which had $58,088.70 in sales. The only other game with over $50,000 was Illinois at $55,680.13 on Feb. 8.

For perspective, Iowa made $2.4 million revenue after sales tax on alcohol sales at seven football games in 2021 ($342,857.14 average), according to a story in the Cedar Rapids Gazette. Iowa earned $338,839 in revenue after sales tax in 18 men’s basketball games in 2021-22 (18,824.39 average).

Purdue Intercollegiate Athletics compiled the data on alcohol sales at Ross-Ade Stadium and Mackey Arena in 2021-22. The information was obtained via an open records request.

"We were happy that fans were finding things that they liked, that were accommodating," said Crawford. "There are different specialty concessions and sandwiches and hot dogs, foods that they can find throughout the stadium. There's alcohol that's premium beer, there's domestic beer that gives people options once they're in the stadium."

In 2015, Ross-Ade Stadium began selling beer and wine to a select few season ticket holders and VIP students who were over the age of 21. In 2017, Purdue began to sell beer and wine throughout the stadium, in concession stands and even stand-alone beer vendors.

According to reports, Purdue had gross alcohol sales in Ross-Ade of $567,778.76 in 2017. That number jumped to $1,063,632 in gross sales in 2018 with a seventh home game. Three night games in 2018 also likely helped sales, which are cut off at the end of the third quarter.

Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Maryland, Ohio State, Purdue, Rutgers and Minnesota are the eight schools within the Big Ten that sell beer and wine to the general public during home football games.

Wisconsin, Penn State, Michigan State and Northwestern sell or offer alcohol as part of seat donations in private suites and other premium seating areas.

Nebraska and Michigan are the only Big Ten schools totally dry on game days.

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