Tim Shaffer for The New York Times
A beer pong tournament this month at Finnegan’s Wake, a bar in Philadelphia. Some bars have beer pong leagues and keep baseball-like statistics.
Beer pong - the next marketing craze. These places are getting people to pay for the privilege of doing something they can already do for free. Now that's what made America great!
The bar is packed, the floor is wet, and dozens of glassy-eyed young people are squeezed around tables trying to lob Ping-Pong balls into cups of beer.
It is the final round of a beer pong championship, sponsored by a maker of portable beer pong tables, and all across the bar, as one team scores points, the other happily guzzles beer.
"It's awesome," said Chris Shannon, 22, a senior at Drexel University here. "If you win, you win. If you lose, you drink. There's no negative."
[...]
Urban Outfitters stocks a popular beer pong kit called Bombed and boxed sets of rules for other games. In January, thousands of players are expected at the first World Series of Beer Pong, sponsored by a beer pong accessories company and held on the outskirts of - where else? - Las Vegas.
This past summer, Anheuser-Busch unveiled a game it calls Bud Pong. The company, which makes Budweiser, is promoting Bud Pong tournaments and providing Bud Pong tables, balls and glasses to distributors in 47 markets, including college towns like Oswego, N.Y., and Clemson, S.C.
[...]
The recent tournament in Philadelphia was sponsored by Bing Bong, a company that sells portable beer pong tables for $150. In the past year, Bing Bong has sold more than 2,000.
"It was something a lot of people needed," said Tom Schmidt, the 27-year-old chief executive. He added that he wanted to turn the game into a socially acceptable barroom sport, like darts.
Oh , wait! How about BEER DARTS? Not only does it encourage binge drinking, but you can toss sharp pointy things at your friends, too.
Is there a plaintiff's lawyer in the house?
As Young Adults Drink to Win, Marketers Join In - New York Times
