ATC ends roving beer sales at Sugar Bowl, other college sports events

If you're used to going to a college sporting event and buying a beer from a beverage hawker, we have some bad news: the Louisiana Office of Alcohol and Tobacco Control is ordering universities and sporting event hosts that employ roving beer sellers to cease the practice.

According to the head of ATC, it's an old policy that's seeing renewed enforcement.

"I'm not necessarily sure I would call it a crackdown other than an attempt to be consistent around the state," ATC Commissioner Ernest Legier said.

Legier says he and his agency are enforcing the law as it is written.

"For an independent concessionaire, it simply allows for the sale of alcohol products, which, again, is a regulated product, within the concession areas," Legier said, noting that state law does not necessarily mention the practice of hawking. "The agency has historically applied the rules of hawking or the idea that someone is walking around selling beer. We've done that in very limited circumstances, and certainly, as a public policy (or) public safety issue, (we) would be more restrictive in venues where there are likely to be more underaged individuals as you would assume there would be at a college venue, which is why you can go and grab a beer at the Superdome at a Saints game, but it has never been allowed or been in accordance with ATC and state policy to allow that practice at a college venue."

Legier says although underaged people attend New Orleans Saints games and other professional sporting events at major stadiums and arenas in Louisiana, comparing those events to college sports is akin to "comparing apples and oranges."

"There are larger concentrations of under-21 individuals attending (college) games," Legier said. "The main reason for our regulatory existence is to ensure that regulated products don't fall in the hands of underaged individuals."

Legier says roving beer sellers will still be allowed at professional sporting events in the Superdome and other major venues in the state. However, hawkers will not be allowed at any college sporting events held in those venues, including the Sugar Bowl and the New Orleans Bowl.

LSU does not allow beer hawkers because the practice is banned by Southeastern Conference policy. Legier shot down the notion floated on online college sports message boards that LSU officials pressured ATC into enforcing this rule.

"That is absolutely not the case," Legier said. "Anyone in the business of selling any commodity ultimately is interested in their bottom line and interested in making more money, and I get that. ATC and this administration has always supported business, but not when it flies in the face of good sound public safety policy."

To bolster his point, Legier noted that his agency has rejected some of the ideas LSU has brought to it with regards to expanding the university's ability to sell alcohol at sporting events.

"I understand that they're the flagship university and they're the biggest program, and I can understand how there may be a perception that somehow they are influencing policy, but that would be an incorrect perception," Legier said. "LSU does not direct the actions of the ATC, especially when we are working very diligently to apply the same rules in every situation to the same parties regardless if you're number one in attendance or number 10 in attendance."

According to Legier, if lawmakers wrote a specific law allowing beer hawkers at college sporting events, ATC would comply with that law.

"If you talk to any legislator or any permit holder that has had to occasion to meet with me, they will tell you that at the end of the day, I'm just about about what the law says and what make sense," Legier said. "If the law is changed to allow broader access to some of the regulated items that we're looking out for on a day-to-day basis, I'm happy to follow the specificness of the law and the intent of the legislature and the governor who would ultimately sign that legislation in to law."