> Homegrown brands, though, couldn’t boast glamorous European roots. So instead, they made Americans afraid of the tap. One ad from Royal Spring Water claimed that “tap water is poison.” Another, from Calistoga Mountain Spring Water, asked: “How can you be sure your water is safe? ... Unfortunately, you can’t.” Fiji Water infuriated Ohio with the tagline “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.” The insinuation, of course, was that there was something wrong with local water.
If people don't trust public city water to drink, but do trust private bottled water, then more profits for those companies. (Or if the new Central Florida University stadium was built without fountains, forcing people to buy $3 bottled water instead, then profit! ... Until the water ran out and "60 attendees were treated for heat-related issues; 18 were hospitalized for heat exhaustion".)
Not having access to potable water inside a public area like that seems nearly criminal. I wonder if they faced legal action, as I assume they had a policy of no outside drinks or beverages.
> When the stadium was designed, the building codes called for either drinking fountains or "bottled water coolers." But the sole source of water for fans attending last Saturday's inaugural game was from vendors.
> "Selling bottled water out of a concession stand is not what the code meant," said Gregg Gress of the International Code Council in Washington, D.C. Water coolers "were supposed to be the equivalent of a drinking fountain."
...
> The 2001 plumbing code under which UCF's stadium was designed gave builders the option of installing water fountains or "bottled water coolers."
> But several officials who are closely involved with building codes told the Orlando Sentinel that bottled-water coolers referred to refrigerated units fed by large plastic jugs, commonly found in offices.
> The code, they said, was not meant to include refrigerators containing individual bottles of water for sale, such as those that vendors used at the stadium last Saturday.
It then says that the university "was not subject to review by another government agency. That's because the university, like school districts, has the authority to issue its own permits and can decide whether it meets most building standards."
as well as pointing to a few previous cases:
> In 2003, the new stadium for the NFL's Philadelphia Eagles opened without water fountains for the general public in what was called an oversight. In 1962, Dodger Stadium architects in Los Angeles forgot to install drinking fountains, though some suspected the team's owner wanted to boost beer and soda sales.
In general there was a lot of astonishment over the lack of water fountains.
Oh, and no, you can't bring in your own drinks. They might contain alcohol, so beer sales would go down ... err, I mean that people might get drunk and rowdy or violent.
The biggest competitor to pop/soda is water. When I was a kid, almost no one drank bottled water, and there were a lot more public water fountains. It should be no surprise that companies entered that marketplace a few decades back, and water fountains started to disappear. See http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/why-thinking-public... or http://www.post-gazette.com/opinion/2015/08/30/Respecting-pu... . Quoting from the latter:
> Homegrown brands, though, couldn’t boast glamorous European roots. So instead, they made Americans afraid of the tap. One ad from Royal Spring Water claimed that “tap water is poison.” Another, from Calistoga Mountain Spring Water, asked: “How can you be sure your water is safe? ... Unfortunately, you can’t.” Fiji Water infuriated Ohio with the tagline “The label says Fiji because it’s not bottled in Cleveland.” The insinuation, of course, was that there was something wrong with local water.
If people don't trust public city water to drink, but do trust private bottled water, then more profits for those companies. (Or if the new Central Florida University stadium was built without fountains, forcing people to buy $3 bottled water instead, then profit! ... Until the water ran out and "60 attendees were treated for heat-related issues; 18 were hospitalized for heat exhaustion".)