The Atlanta Falcons Add Craft Beer to Their $5 Beer Menu
Darren Rovell – After peeling back prices on some of their most popular items last year to unprecedented levels, the Atlanta Falcons are ready to shock the sports world again with a $5 craft beer.
The Falcons will sell the $5 craft beers at their regular-season games — starting Sept. 16 against the Panthers — and any home playoff games. The craft beer price, along with all other concession prices, will remain the same next February when Atlanta hosts Super Bowl LIII at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, despite the traditionally elevated concession prices at Super Bowls.
The Falcons aren’t saying who is making the beer, but it’s produced in small batches locally and costs $5 for 12 ounces and $7 for 20 ounces, the lowest price for a craft beer offering in the four major North American sports.
The beer, a pale ale, was the winner of a taste test among Falcons and Atlanta United season-ticket holders. The $5 price tag matches what the team charged for a regular domestic beer on draft last year.
It’s easy to make fun of Arthur Blank. And I do, every chance I get. He’s big, slow-moving target the way he was dancing around at the Super Bowl like the drunken uncle who embarrasses the whole family at a wedding and leaving the luxury box only to watch his team implode from the sideline. But when a billionaire does a pure good for the little guy, you celebrate that every time.
The Falcons stadium has already been the stuff of legend for offering $5 dollar beer at all. Deservedly so. But it’s one thing to offer some mass produced brand at that price point. Catering to the beer snobs without gouging them is something else altogether.
The kinds of people who go to lakeside Beer Festivals in Vermont wearing lanyards that hold their tasting glasses are basically ATMs the small breweries can draw unlimited amounts of cash from. They’ll shell out 24 bucks for a 4-pack of 16 oz cans on nothing but the label art and words like witbier and kolsch. I’m talking about the guys who would rather sit there watch a game sober before they’d stoop to drinking some major, national label with a screw-off bottle cap. Offering them a microbrew without shearing them like sheep for every dollar they have is more than just a business decision; it’s an act of kindness.
So I envy the people of Atlanta. And the people who’ll be going to the Super Bowl. I say this as a guy who lives in both worlds where I’ll happily crush a bunch of Bud Lights at bar trivia but also loves the brewpubs that are popping up everywhere in New England like pot dispensaries are in Colorado. I’d love to know what it’s like to spend 5 bucks on a nice IPL from inside a stadium. But unless I trek to Atlanta, that’s never going to happen.
The problem is that in a weird, unintentional way, the teams in Boston are doing us a favor with their ridiculously high prices. I’m old enough to remember when a regular working guy could actually afford to get drunk at say, Fenway. Back when the prices were “That’s kind of high, but what the hell,” and before they became “Holy shit! Where do they get off charging that?” When beers at an event became a “special occasion” purchase. And you have to think of money inside the park like it’s chips in a casino: Not real money, just a symbol. And back then, games at all pro Boston teams were absolute chaos.
Take Foxboro. As I said in detail before, Patriots games back in the day weren’t sporting events. They were a breakdown in the societal order. Lord of the Flies with goalposts. The stories are the stuff of legend. Rows of guys handcuffed to the chain link fence because there was no more room in the holding cells. A guy once had a heart attack and while he was being given CPR, a drunk took a piss on the EMT. True story. Fistfights at Fenway averaged one every half inning. I am not exaggerating. If they offered $5 beer at those places or the Garden, it would be The Purge. I mean, I’d love it because when I get drunk I become witty and charming. Basically a handsomer, hetero Oscar Wilde in a “They Hate Us ‘Cause The Ain’t Us” shirt. But I have no desire to go back to the days when tens of thousands of medium-income Massholes can afford to get hammered like they used to. So enjoy, Falcons fans. You must be better drinkers than us.