Can We Assess Blood Alcohol Levels of Attendees Leaving Professional Sporting Events?

Abstract

We measured blood alcohol content (BAC) levels of attendees at professional sporting events and assessed the factors associated with higher BACs. We conducted BAC tests of 362 adult attendees following 13 baseball games and three football games. We ran multivariate analyses to obtain factors associated with the risk of having a higher BAC. In this assessment, 40% of the participants had a positive BAC, ranging from 0.005 to 0.217. Those who reported tailgating before the event had 14 times the odds of having a BAC > 0.08 and those under age 35 had nearly 8 times the odds of having a BAC > 0.08 (both compared to a zero BAC). Attendees of Monday night football games were more likely to have positive BACs compared to attendees at all other games. We found that it is feasible to assess BAC levels of attendees at professional sporting events. Our findings suggest that a significant number of attendees at professional sporting events may have elevated BAC levels, particularly young adults and those who participated in tailgating activities. Further research using a representative sample is warranted to confirm the findings from this preliminary study.