Wednesday, May 29, 2024
Column 664
Darts and BEER – Birds of a Feather
Today’s question is: how much is 35,447,466,667 and just what does this number have to do with the sport of darts?
Let’s examine the question. There are two parts.
How much is 35 billion?
Thirty-five billion is the approximate number of 12-ounce servings the world’s leading beer producer, Anheuser-Busch, churned out last year. That’s a 6-pack for every human being on the planet. That’s almost 64,000 cans of beer for every person living in the City of Boston.
Thirty-five billion beers weigh 4 times more than all the estimated 600,000 elephants remaining in the wilds of Africa. Thirty-five billion beers weigh as much as 38 Empire State Buildings. They weigh almost as much as 140,000 Boeing 747 aircraft.
Thirty-five billion beers would fill the Rose Bowl from turf to rim 39 times. Thirty-five billion beers would cover the famous one square mile area of the old City of London to a height of half a football field.
Consider this: about 1,000 gallons of water run through a garden hose in an hour. Anheuser-Busch produced enough brew last year to keep your garden watered with beer continuously for 379 years, until the year 2402. The average American family uses 100 gallons of water a day. Anheuser-Busch produced enough beer last year to run the faucets, showers, baths and toilets of the cities of Cambridge or Santa Barbara for more than 12 months.
If one were to take 35 billion cans of beer and line them up end-to-end, they would stretch to the moon and back 7 times. They would circle the earth at the equator over 150 times. They would stretch from New York’s JFK airport to London Heathrow, and back, more than 500 times.
If you were to try to count, at the rate of one number per second, from one to 35 billion, it would take you approximately 1,085 years to finish.
Yep, by any measure 35 billion is a whole lotta bottles of beer on the wall.
This brings us to the second part of today’s question: what has any of this nonsense got to do with the sport of darts?
The answer is simple…
Dart players drink a LOT of beer. Check.
One study in 2023 estimated that were someone to drink 7 days a week and 5-6 beers a day at around $24 for a 12-pack of domestic beer, they’d be spending around $120 on beer a week – or $480 a month and $5,760 a year. And this doesn’t account for beer consumed at bars and restaurants. And tournaments – over the years, there have been reports of tournaments running out of beer!
Dart players spend a LOT of money on beer (maybe not to the tune of 5-6 beers every day of the week – but a LOT). Check.
So… what’s the point?
The point is dart players drink so much beer that we don’t even keep track of it. We don’t really know how much we drink during league and at tournaments or what we spend. It’s just something we do, something that goes with the territory – birds of a feather.
What we DO know is it’s a LOT, too much. We just don’t want to think about it, quantify it. And we ain’t gonna stop.
That’s the point – don’t think about it, don’t even try to tally the tab.
Instead, just keep on guzzlin’ and mark your calendar for June 1 – just a couple of days from now – and register for Dartoid’s “Darts in Paradise” inaugural tournament and festival in Cancun, Mexico, in June 2025.
Why?
THE BEER IS FREE! Come get your share of 35 billion!
From the field,
Dartoid
