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Thursday, August 04, 2011

What People Buy at a Timbers Game

Last night, I enjoyed watching the Portland Timbers dismantle the vaunted offense of the David Beckham/Landon Donovan LA Galaxy with 18,000 of my close friends. I could go on and on about the game--my man Jorge "Lightning" Perlaza showing his speed on the game's second goal, for instance--but this is a post about beer.

I'm always interested in not only what beers are on offer at sporting events, but what sells (of course, it's a business so there's lots of overlap). The Widmer Brothers and Budweiser share honors as sponsors, and at the first game, I was surprised to see beer guys walking through the crowd with what appeared to be full buckets of Bud. Closer inspection revealed that there were a few Widmers in the mix.

Last night, it was the opposite. I struck up a conversation with the vendor, who had two Buds and maybe a case of Widmer. How much Bud do you sell, I asked. "Bud? Here? You gotta be kidding."

The crowd has spoken: don't try to sell Bud at a Timbers game. Almost makes you get a little misty, doesn't it?

6 comments:

  1. There's also the Beer Here stand behind Section 108. Ninkasi, Ft. George, and Bridgeport are all available there, along with some crappy imports like Stella.

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  2. Craft beer is slowly but surely creeping into sporting events... I know I'm responsible for a few of my friends to never spend money on cheap beer cause now they know what beer should really taste like...

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  3. Yeah I work beer carts at Timbers games, most of which have two options- a random Widmer or Bud Light. I can tell you most nights if we are selling anything other than Hefeweizen, we do about 2x the amount of Widmer as Bud.

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  4. If I'm coming to a Timbers game, they better have barley wine or something strong. This IS soccer, after all.

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  5. Leave it up to Portland to try too hard at all things all the time.

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  6. Out in Des Moine, Iowa a Court Ave. Brewing Co. Has been breaking sales records since they teamed up with the local minor league team. Things, they are changing.

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