TABC Busts Our Balls – Tournament Cancelled

Friday, August 21st, 2009

If you haven’t heard already, TABC has shut the tournament down. Unfortunately, the legal department in Austin gave us bad info when we consulted with them about the tournament. They assured us that there was nothing that prohibited such a tournament in the TABC regulations. Unfortunately, the local TABC officer felt differently. We weren’t there but according to Lee Harveys, TABC threatened to arrest everyone involved if the tournament moved forward.... Yes, we did say arrest...like to go jail, eat bad food, wear orange kind of arrest. Its kind of funny if you think about it. We are in the middle of the GREAT RECESSION and TABC wants to arrest people for playing beer pong. In all seriousness, if the TABC officer disagrees with the TABC legal department and thus considers a beer pong tournament to be against the rules, that’s fine. Life doesn’t go as planned and we could be ok with that. We could always play with water in the cups. We do have a ton of great prizes for the winners.... Nope, that doesn’t work either. Prizes for the winners of “water pong” tournaments are also illegal. That, according to the TABC, is gambling. I don’t know how giving a team of two players a beer pong table (either professional or for the pool plus a little cash) for throwing balls in cups of water is illegal but it is. In the end, what’s the point. Who wants to come down to Lee Harveys and hang out in 100 degree Texas heat to throw balls into cups of water for no prizes. We know we don’t so the tournament is cancelled.

We will be eating all the costs of the tournament and boycotting all TABC regulated establishments for at least 3 days as a form of protest. Don’t worry. We will be refunding everyone’s money that pre-registered. It will probably take us a few days to work through them all. Our dream is dead. Yeah TABC.