Badgers drop beer ads from broadcasts – will others soon follow suit?

Posted on Aug 27, 2009 by Mike Hlas.

Had the following news item occurred in, say Vermont or Oregon, we may not be paying any attention. But when it’s Wisconsin, it sends a statement.

The university has ended sponsorship agreements with MillerCoors and Anheuser-Busch InBev for advertising during Badgers sports broadcasts. The deals had brought the university about $425,000 per year.

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This is Wisconsin, where you can sense a different attitude about drinking the moment you cross from Marquette, Iowa over to Prairie du Chien, Wis. OK, that may be my imagination. But one of the most-enduring and best-known businesses in Prairie du Chien is Stark’s Sports Shop, where you can get a boat motor and a bottle of wine, or a rifle and a case of beer in one-stop shopping.

But I digress. Besides, every state has its serious problems involving alcohol use.

I’ve never forgotten the first night I was in Anchorage, Alaska, 14 years ago. I was in a place called the Polar Bar talking to the bartender. He said in winter, with little daylight, Alaskans drink heavily.

 I told him I believed Wisconsin had the highest alcohol consumption in the nation (whether true or not, who knows — probably not), and he got a little huffy, saying “We’re No. 1 per capita!”

This thing the U. of Wisconsin did, this was inevitable. What is also inevitable is that the many other major universities in the nation who have been taking the beer companies’ money, directly or indirectly, will stop doing it as well.

The University of Iowa – and I name it only because it’s the heartbeat of our sports coverage at the Gazette – has had Anheuser-Busch as a sponsor of its radio sportscasts for some time now. Surely, the “Budweiser Halftime Report” rings a bell to Hawkeye fans.

Learfield Sports manages Iowa, Iowa State and Northern Iowa sports radio broadcasts, as well as those of dozens of other schools. The business relationship between Learfield and Anheuser-Busch dates to the 1970s.

According to a 2004 SportsBusiness Journal survey, 70 percent of the NCAA’s Division I-A programs had deals with beer companies, either directly or through their rights holders. That probably hasn’t changed a great deal since then.

So this Wisconsin thing is a big deal. The school’s athletic program will have to figure out how to compensate for that $425,000, no small task these days.

But like I said … inevitable.