Texas Rangers among league leaders in cheap beer

Christy Hernandez takes a generous first sip of her beer before a Texas Rangers-New York Yankees game, and exhales, refreshed, as carbonation and citrus hit her lips.

It’s a 23-ounce Blood and Honey made by Granbury’s Revolver Brewing Co. The wheat and barley ale with blood orange zest is a popular craft beer, but it’s a whopping $13.50, served in a 23-ounce souvenir plastic growler.

“A hot dog and two of these for $32?” she said, gesturing with her beer. “It’s kind of expensive, but it’s worth it. You’re at the ballpark.”

Like most professional sports fans, Hernandez, a Grand Prairie resident who works at Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Co., has developed a tolerance for high-dollar concessions. While the prices may seem outrageous at times, the Texas Rangers actually offer some of the best bargains in Major League Baseball when it comes to beer.

The cheapest brew offered at Globe Life Park in Arlington is a 16-ounce draft — the customer’s choice of either Budweiser, Bud Light, Michelob Ultra or ZiegenBock — for $5. At 31 cents per ounce, that’s the third-cheapest beer available at big-league ballparks nationwide, according to the Fan Cost Index released annually by the industry publication Team Marketing Report.

In other words, at least the beer is relatively cheap at Globe Life Park, where the Rangers have the worst home record of any team in baseball.

Taking care of the fans

It’s no accident that the Rangers’ prices stack up well nationally, said Casey Rapp, operations manager for Delaware North, the company that oversees Globe Life Park concessions.

The company makes a specific effort to offer a small beer and a hot dog for $10, he said. The price point is an internal marker of sorts, to ensure that no matter what else happens with ever-rising gourmet concession prices there is still at least a semblance of a value menu for cost-conscious customers.

“If you’re a dad coming out here and taking the kids to a game, or you’re out here on a date or whatever, you can come out here with $10 and have a decent hot dog and a beer,” Rapp said.

At 31 cents per ounce, the cost of the Rangers’ cheapest beers — all products of ballpark sponsor Anheuser-Busch — are less than half the price of the league leader. The most expensive suds are at Boston’s Fenway Park, where a 12-ounce beer is $7.75, or 65 cents per ounce.

The league average is 40 cents per ounce. The only clubs that can offer brewskies for less than the Rangers are the Arizona Diamondbacks and Los Angeles Angels, who sell small beers for 29 cents per ounce and 28 cents per ounce, respectively.

But Rapp said he believes the Rangers make the cheap beer available to more fans, whereas other clubs limit the sales of the cheapest beers to just a handful of stands, many of them placed away from the heaviest pedestrian flow. At the Arlington ballpark, the $5 beer is available at almost every permanent concession stand, he said.

Putting ‘cheap’ in perspective

Even the bargain price of 31 cents per ounce is way more than a customer can expect to pay for beer at a grocery store. At a Kroger in far north Fort Worth, for example, a six-pack of Bud Light was for sale this week for $6.99, which amounts to 9.7 cents per ounce — less than a third the cost of the same beverage at the ballpark.

Even a six-pack of Revolver Blood and Honey was $10.69 at Kroger, only 14.8 cents per ounce.

Fans say they generally expect to pay more for alcohol while they’re out on the town. On a recent evening as the Rangers prepared to host the New York Yankees, an evening of people-watching in the lower level concourse showed that relatively few fans opted for the $5 beers.

For the most part, the fans who chose the Anheuser-Busch products went with a $9 draft beer served in a souvenir cup. And those who chose imported, craft or other “high-end” beers from other producers typically paid $9 to $13.50. There was even a Rogue maple-bacon craft beer sold for $12 at the popular new Just Bacon along the lower level third base concourse.

Zach Sines, a 25-year-old salesman from Dallas, bought two $9 Bud Lights in a 24-ounce souvenir cup.

“I got these tickets for free, so I’m putting it [his money] all toward the beer prices,” he quipped. “I’d like it to go a little farther, but I do have to drive home.”

This story was originally published July 31, 2015 at 8:00 AM with the headline "Texas Rangers among league leaders in cheap beer."