It hasn’t been easy to be a Cleveland Browns fan. The team went winless over the entire 2017 season, and only managed to win one lone game in 2016. If the Browns win a game in 2018, it will feel so, so good for all the fans who have endured some of the worst football anyone’s ever seen.
Winning is its own reward, but Bud Light wants to give beleaguered Browns fans something else should their team happen to win a game in 2018.
Victory fridges! According to Cleveland.com, ten full-sized refrigerators, each filled with 200 aluminum bottles of Bud Light, will be shipped to locations around Cleveland, including several at FirstEnergy Stadium. They’ll be locked until the moment the Browns officially win a game. When that moment comes — you can say “if that moment comes” if you’re superstitious — a wireless signal will be sent to all the fridges, unlocking them and unleashing their beery goodness upon happy, thirsty Browns fans.
Bud Light isn’t revealing the specific locations of the fridges yet, since Ohio law prohibits this kind of pre-promotion. And in case you’re wondering if the fridges in FirstEnergy Stadium will open when (if) the Browns win, they will. While the NFL mandates that beer sales be stopped after the third quarter, these fridges are in the clear since the beer is being given away and not sold. Clever!
Do “victory fridges” seem slightly sarcastic? Sure. Do they seem like an over-celebration for accomplishing a feat that most teams do at least twice a season? Definitely. But that’s not quite the point anymore. Don’t Browns fans deserve *something* for enduring one win over two seasons? Even if it’s just Bud Light?
Of course, there is a downside. If the Browns have yet another winless season, fans will spend all those games staring longingly at the beer locked away in those fridges, never to be released.
It’s been 599 days since the Browns last win. Hopefully fans won’t have to wait too much longer for another one — if only so they can get some free beer.