Texas Tech’s Fan-Friendly Concession Pricing Leads to High Demand at Games

This past Saturday's Texas Tech basketball games gave fans their first, erhm, taste of new fan-friendly concession pricing and the opportunity to purchase alcohol at the game instead of illicitly chugging in the parking lot prior:

Fans will be able to purchase a hot dog (previously $5), Nacho Grande (previously $8.50) and 46oz popcorn (previously $5) for $2 each.  In addition, 20oz bottled water (previously $4), 16oz soft drinks, and candy (previously $4) can be purchased for $3 per item.

In addition, all guests of the legal drinking age attending Red Raider and Lady Raider games in United Supermarkets Arena will be offered the opportunity to purchase a variety of beer and wine.

Fans responded by flooding the concession lines and basically buying the place dry, according to two of my friends that saw things first hand. Of course when anything is both new and popular, there will be a few kinks to work out at the beginning:

Overall it was good to see so many buying concessions, but that is where the problem started, there were so many people buying concessions that the lines were incredibly long/ Each concession only had 2 registers open, so lines. We got in line about about 5 minutes into the first half, and by the time we got our concessions we have got back with 2 minutes left in the 1/2. After being in line for about 8 minutes, a concession worker walked through the line to tell us that they were out of Nachos and pickles[...] It was nice to see big families able to buy 8 hotdogs at a time and those seemed to be in ready supply. -C. Covarrubio

Signage seemed to be an issue as well, luckily its easily solvable:

They need bigger signs of what has what. I stood in the taco concession stand only to learn that they weren’t selling tacos. Only the specials. -A. Zapata

So a word to the wise, if you plan on treating yourself to snacks at the game, go early- or take a friend who doesn't mind missing part of the game to help you get your grub on.