Thirsty Colts fans: Got $$? To push beverage sales, new stadium to have just 36 water fountains.
This is just about the most cynical thing I’ve heard in quite some time. As if attending your average NFL game isn’t enough of an exercise in separating a fan from his or her hard-earned cash, the maroons building the new playpen for the Indiana Colts seem to be stooping to new lows in order to perform an even more thorough walletectomy on those who pass through the turnstiles.
What’s next? Including a clause in the ticket-purchase agreement that prevents fans from eating prior to attending a Colts’ game? Why not station an usher armed with a vacuum clleaner hose at each entrance and require fans to present their wallets for a close-up inspection by the aforementioned hose? At what point do fans stand up and say “ENOUGH!!”?
Thirsty fans at the new Indiana Stadium will want to wrap their hands around some good cold cash.
The Downtown Indianapolis stadium will help steer visitors toward the beer, soda and bottled water sold at concession stands by providing about half as many drinking fountains as required by state building codes.
Though 70 drinking fountains in the new stadium would be needed to meet code, state fire and building officials are allowing the project to include 36 drinking fountains for the more than 63,000 fans and staff.
Stadium officials didn’t even want to put in that many.
Their original petition asked for two drinking fountains each on the terrace, club and street concourses.
Construction has just begun on the $500 million stadium, which will be home to the Indianapolis Colts at the start of the 2008 football season.
“The Indiana Stadium has an economic interest in providing beverages for sale,” stadium officials wrote to the state when they asked for permission to reduce the number of drinking fountains.
But the Indiana Fire Prevention and Building Safety Commission rejected such a drastic reduction in drinking fountains at its meeting last month and insisted on at least 36.
The commission is a bipartisan group of fire and construction experts who help make sure buildings are safe — that there are enough exits, sprinklers and smoke alarms. They also oversee the number of bathrooms and drinking fountains in buildings.
“The Indiana Stadium has an economic interest in providing beverages for sale.” Indeed. I understand that a stadium is a huge financial undertaking, and that making said stadium financially viable is no easy task. Having said that, though, at what point do fans wake up to the fact that they are being treated like cattle with wallets, and that professional sports franchises will stoop to virtually any depths if it will make them a few extra bucks.
Hey, why not pay toilets? Sell cheap beer, and then charged $25 for a trip to the head…hey, you’ll get ‘em coming AND going…no pun intended. I mean, really, they’ve already come up with the idea of Personal Seat Licenses, which is a gimmick that doesn’t even get you a seat at a game. A PSL merely is a payment to guarantee you the RIGHT to spend yet more money to purchase a seat at a game. WTF? Is this a great country, or what??
We just LOVE capitalism, don’t we? And it would appear that the troglodytes building Indiana Stadium understand the importance of separating fans from as much of their money as possible. I can hardly wait for the next larcenous scheme to be hatched by The Indiana Stadium and Convention Building Authority. Some of these folks must have been pickpockets or carnival barkers in a former life….
