BACKGROUND: We measured blood alcohol content (BAC) levels of attendees at professional sporting events and assessed the factors associated with higher BACs.
METHODS: We conducted BAC tests of 362 adult attendees following 13 baseball games and three American football games. We ran multivariate analyses to obtain factors associated with the risk of having a higher BAC.
RESULTS: In this assessment, 40% of the participants had a positive BAC, ranging from 0.005 to 0.217. Those who reported tailgating before the event had 14 times the odds of having a BAC > 0.08 and those under age 35 had nearly 8 times the odds of having a BAC > 0.08 (both compared to a zero BAC). Attendees of Monday night football games were more likely to have positive BACs compared to attendees at all other games.
CONCLUSIONS: We found that it is feasible to assess BAC levels of attendees at professional sporting events. Our findings suggest that a significant number of attendees at professional sporting events may have elevated BAC levels, particularly young adults and those who participated in tailgating activities. Further research using a representative sample is warranted to confirm the findings from this preliminary study.