A 1999 drunk-driving crash outside Giants Stadium, which left a little girl a quadriplegic and led to a $135-million judgment against stadium alcohol vendor Aramark, has driven home the need for stringent alcohol-service policies at stadiums across the nation, according to experts who spoke at the National Conference of State Liquor Authorities (NCSLA) annual meeting in Boston on June 7.

David Lanzaro, 34, plowed his pickup truck head-on into a car carrying Ronald and Fazila Verni and their daughter Antonia, 7, after leaving a Giants game where he dodged a rule limiting patrons to purchasing two beers at a time by tipping an Aramark vendor $10 to sell him six beers. Lanzaro's blood-alcohol limit was twice the legal limit at the time of the crash, which seriously injured Fazila Verni and left Antonia a quadriplegic.

In 2005, a New Jersey jury ordered Lanzaro and Aramark to pay the Vernis $60 million in compensatory damages, then slapped Aramark with an additional $75 million in punitive damages.

Stephen V. Miller, an attorney at Boston's McDermott, Quilty & Miller and a lobbyist for alcohol wholesalers, described the challenge for stadium operators and vendors. "You're throwing a party for 5,000 to 100,000 people who are excited to be there, pay a lot of money to be there, and expect to have a good time," he said.

Concessionaires are under business pressure to generate profits from alcohol sales, and team -- including college sports -- rely on the huge revenues generated by alcohol sponsorships and alcohol sales on game day. Miller noted, for example, that the University of Missouri makes $500,000 annually from alcohol sponsorship deals involving its sports teams, while Christopher Verros, vice president of concessionaire Boston Culinary Group, said NFL teams can rake in $600,000 in alcohol sales on any given Sunday.

Even before the Giants Stadium tragedy, which Miller called a 'horrific accident,' the NFL had banned beer sales after the third quarter of football games, and the Giants had adopted the two-drink maximum purchase policy. That helped both the league and the team escape liability in the Verni case, and many sports teams have gone even further to control alcohol-related problems in stadiums.

For example, the Kraft family, which owns the New England Patriots and Gillette Stadium, has revoked season's tickets held by fans who try to sneak alcohol into the stadium or get drunk and disorderly once inside. The management of the Boston Red Sox made physical changes to Fenway Park to reduce rowdiness in the ballpark's once "anything-goes" bleachers and increased training of ushers, vendors and security. Lucinda Treat, chief legal officer for the Red Sox, told NCSLA attendees that fans can call a hotline on their cellphone from their seats to report disruptive patrons and get a quick response from security. "We have a very low tolerance for fan incidents," she said, and the club also has taken away coveted season's tickets for violators of fan-behavior policies posted prominently throughout the park.

Tailgating and Other Challenges Persist

Miller and others pointed out, however, that challenges persist: a November 2005 Dateline NBC undercover report found that vendors at Miller Park (home of the Milwaukee Brewers) continued to serve alcohol to baseball fans who were visibly drunk. Verros said his firm has used the Dateline video to train its employees on what not to do. "We want to live to serve the next day," said Verros, who noted that the Boston Culinary Group now pays about $600,000 in liquor liability insurance -- up 20 percent over the past two years, even though it has faced no significant claims.

Verros said that tailgating continues to be a major headache for stadium officials, as well as issues like patdown and door policies regarding alcohol, cutoff times for alcohol sales, policies on dealing with drunken fans, and issues surrounding pricing, ID checks, and drink limits.

Treat said that one of the biggest changes the Red Sox made to control alcohol consumption was counterintuitive: the number of places to buy alcohol in Fenway Park was actually increased. "It reduced incidents," she said. "People no longer feel the need to go in packs and buy 20 beers at a time, because they know they can go between innings and get a beer quickly."

Still, experts said that while families may approve of the changed atmosphere at venues like Fenway, fans have accepted policies intended to limit alcohol sales somewhat grudgingly. Verros described fan compliance as a "constant battle," noting that it only takes a few troublemakers in a crowd of tens of thousands to cause serious problems. Soyini A. Wilson, a liquor-license administrator for stadium vendor Sodexho, Inc., said that alumni at college games are a particular challenge, because they often feel they have the right to drink at games.

An NCSLA audience member asked the concessionaires and stadium officials whether teams could better control alcohol sales by selling drink tickets at the gate, or address overconsumption at pre-game tailgate parties by giving problematic fans breath tests before letting them enter the stadium. Verros called the ideas interesting, but said such solutions would take a lot of cooperation from stadium management and also present serious logistical challenges.

The NCSLA panelists said that staff training and raising public awareness about alcohol policies were key to preventing alcohol-related problems in stadiums. Pointing to the Giants Stadium case, however, Treat noted: "No amount of training will stop someone from taking a bribe to sell you 8 beers at halftime."