Elle Meyer

ACC548

Dr. Robinson

22 February 2023

Alcohol at University of Kentucky Sports

For this week’s article, I read “UK to begin selling alcohol at baseball, softball games”

written by Chris Fisher. This article talks about how the University of Kentucky Athletics has

decided to initiate a ‘pilot program’ to begin selling alcoholic beverages at baseball and softball

games (Fisher, 2023). During the upcoming spring season, UK will have alcoholic beverages for

sale, including beer and seltzer products, limited to two items per transaction (Fisher, 2023).

Chris said the program will include an ID check at each product location, as well as sales ending

at the top of the seventh inning for baseball games and top of the fifth inning for softball games.

The university has made it a priority to create and maintain a positive impact for their student

athletes and their fans (Fisher, 2023). Decisions about the future are in speculation, and

dependent on how the program influences the spring baseball and softball seasons.

Further in the article, Chris Fisher has taken the time to answer some questions that have

been causing some concern. One question that is relevant to this week’s reading of business

decisions to either sell or process further was, “When will you decide about expanding sales to

football games and what factors will be involved in that decision?” (Fisher, 2023). The decision-

making process for the University of Kentucky is like the process management can use when

deciding to sell a product or process further. Based on the article, the joint costs would be the

materials needed to sell alcoholic beverages at both baseball and softball games. The split off

point would be the sales and costs allocated to both the baseball and softball departments,
separately. The ‘process further’ decision comes into play when the University athletics

department must decide whether they want to further process their alcoholic beverage sales to be

incorporated at football games. Our reading outlined the criteria for a decision like this to be

made, if incremental revenues exceed incremental costs, then we can process further (Rajan,

Horngren, Datar, et al, 2021).

The University of Kentucky has expressed how they plan to study information available

form this pilot program and use the relevant data to decide implementation for the upcoming

football season (Fisher, 2023). Management accountants can estimate the number of fans

expected to attend football games based on the fans that have attended baseball games since the

inception of the alcoholic beverage program. As we expect the number of fans in attendance to

increase, we can expect the costs will increase as well to buy further alcoholic supplies, as

football stadiums, on average, have a higher capacity. Based on estimated capacity, management

accountants can then determine how much incremental costs will need to be incurred and

compare them to the estimated incremental revenues. After this data has been assessed, the

University of Kentucky Athletics department can decide if it is beneficial to further expand

selling alcohol at football games come next fall.

Overall, the specifics of the example of selling alcohol in another sports department is not

the exact same as other products. However, the decision process looks at the same concepts,

whether the incremental revenues from selling alcohol at an additional location exceed the costs

of selling at the new location. This data can be determined following the close of sales of the

spring season, as well as using estimated attendance rates to allocate costs appropriately.
 Works Cited

Datar, Srikant M., and Madhav Rajan. Horngren’s Cost Accounting: A Managerial Emphasis.

17th ed. Pearson Education, 2021.

Fisher, C. (2023). UK to begin selling alcohol at baseball, softball games. CatsPause. Retrieved

February 18, 2023, from https://247sports.com/college/kentucky/Article/uk-athletics-

alcohol-sales--204902585/