The University of Texas has begun running Meta (Instagram, Facebook) advertisements for its upcoming home swimming & diving meet against SEC foes the University of Tennessee on Friday.
The meet kicks off at 5:15PM with a Paris 2024 Olympian autograph session starting an hour before the meet.
In spite of admission being free, Texas, which is a commercial juggernaut and often on the bleeding edge of the industry of college athletics, has found value in paying to promote the show-stopping top 10-caliber meet on Friday evening. Both the football and volleyball teams are playing away games next weekend against Ole Miss in Mississippi.
One of the primary reasons why this makes sense for the University of Texas is that they sell beer at their home meets.
Alcohol, and specifically beer, has been a staple of the economics of sports since The American Association started selling it at professional games in 1882. In 1976, Colorado State became an early adopter of selling alcohol at its football games. In 2019, the SEC lifted its ban on alcohol sales at football stadiums, and from there, the flood gates are open.
An AP survey in 2023 found that 80% of Power 5 schools allowed alcohol sales at their football stadiums. Wisconsin, one of the few holdouts at that time, started alcohol sales at basketball and hockey games, and a year later added it for football, selling millions-of-dollars per season.
While swim meets at the 2,600 seat Lee & Joe Jamail Texas Swim Center is unlikely to rival the estimated $545,000-per-game in alcohol sales at Texas home games, they don’t need to in order to have an impact on the swimming program’s budget.
Texas has been selling beer at their swim meets for a while. At the January 2025 Eddie Reese Showdown, there were long lines for beer, promoting the same Lappy Hour that is being used in ads for the Tennessee meet.
While college dual meets may not be ready for high ticket prices to drive substantial revenue just yet, figuring out other ways to monetize the meets can add to program budgets. There’s also a feedback loop: like it or not, a little liquid lubrication can inject some energy into infamously-drab swimming audiences, which makes the meets more fun for everyone – the athletes, the drinkers, and the non-drinkers (to a limit).
And then that energy and fun means more donations from alums, and on it goes. In essence, it’s ‘good for the brand’ to flex that you have the might to fill up even a swim meet.
The University of Texas is disrupting college sports at every level. From dumping obscene amounts of NIL money into every sport to running paid advertisements for lower-revenue events. They rarely lose at the general game of college athletics. If they see value in it, than there is a pretty good chance that there is value in it.
And that, maybe, is a little relief on the pressure cooker that swimming is facing in the United States right now, with dozens of levers squeezing the sport we love from every angle.
Or maybe they see value in building enthusiasm for the sport. There’s a lot going on in Austin. Just because they’re a blueblood in the sport, doesn’t mean automatic great crowds. Doubt it’s about beer sales. Lol.
Can’t wait for the drunken, shirtless brawls that will inevitably happen go viral on all social media platforms! Just the black eye, pun intended, that our sport needs. Bottoms up!
They also bought Chris Guiliano LMAOOOOOO
And he still got better, isn’t that crazy
I would too if my previous program was notre dame
But it wasn’t….
Beer was a huge part of our swim meets back in college years ago, so I guess we were ahead of the curve. I always had a tough time seeing the lap counter though
You had me at LappyHour! 🙂
This seems like a good step to bring interest to college swimming. Let’s see how it works!
Beer must help, but they need to go big on gambling on races, with odds up on dynamic scoreboards in the pool and an online component also. Like horse racing only with swimmers. Big, disruptive $$ opportunity
Hire this man
you’re telling me i could get paid to tank the mile?
We need an article on this concept. This could save the sport of swimming and that is not an understatement.
A mobile app for college dual meets where there is living betting on the athletes. Students would fort relationships with the swimmers at their school and they won $4000 because they made a 14 leg parlay at a dual meet about the winner of every event.
This would be an incredible cultural upending to the sport. The asymmetric way that information flows in the sport would mean that no sportsbook on earth would touch it.
Ole Miss is playing at Oklahoma this weekend, Texas is playing at Mississippi State.