Beer Pipeline Protests Ahead Of World Cup.

Posted by Jonathan in STADIUM on 04-06-10    No Comments


With all due respect to Tiger and the iPad, here’s a real sports tech story: Hot and cold running beer. Pipelines — like legitimate oil and natural industry quality pipes, pumps, ducting and support technology — are beginning to spring up in soccer stadiums around the world.

And fans are calling for more hot running beer rather than less.

The Veltins-Arena, located in the German town of Gelsenkirchen, started the trend with a 5 kilometer beer line that runs from downtown breweries directly to stadium concessions. The “web-stimate” (that’s the sum of the nonsense that passes for facts here on the Web) is that 60,000 some-odd spectators consume something on the order of 2,500 kg of sausages, 7,000 pretzels, 1,000 m2 of pizza and 55,000 litres of beer per matchday. Assuming that is even half correct, that’s a lot to eat for a 90 minute game. And the world seems ready for more foamic infrastructure: L Magazine reported that students in Gothenberg, Sweden stagged a protest in January for a similar beer line run directly to their student union. And there are reports of Russians wanting to install a similar system in a Moscow stadium.

No word yet on how World Cup officials will be modifying their stadiums to meet this growing need for free flowing foam..



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