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January 19, 2011
8 per cent of fans at sports games are drunk: study
CTV
Speaking of drinking, here's some sobering news for people who live near Bruce Ratner's Barclays Center, which, thanks to New York State's override of local zoning rules, will sit directly across the street from a residential neighborhood.
A new study says eight per cent of professional sports fans who agreed to be surveyed were legally drunk when leaving the stadium after a game.
The study, published online in the journal Alcoholism: Clinical & Experimental Research, found about 60 per cent of fans surveyed had blew a zero on a breathalyzer, 40 per cent tested positive for alcohol in their blood. In total, 8.4 per cent were legally drunk, with a blood alcohol level higher than .08.
However, the lead author of the study admits the sample size was small, as few fans wanted to blow on a breathalyzer after the game.
"Getting fans to submit to a breath test and participate in a brief survey following a football or baseball game is not an easy task," Darin Erickson of the University of Minnesota said in a statement.
Presumably, many refuseniks were too drunk to understand what they were being asked to do.
"That's a lot of drunken individuals who could be involved in traffic crashes, assaults, vandalism, crime and other injuries," Erickson said.
...A 1992 Canadian study had similar results.
Posted by eric at January 19, 2011 5:09 PM