The MTA is trying to loosen its prohibition on alcohol promoting, citing the significance of hundreds of thousands of {dollars} in income that such advertisements may create for the transit system.
The proposed change to the company’s promoting coverage, which the MTA board will vote on at its month-to-month assembly on Wednesday, would undo a few of the January 2018 ban on alcohol-related promotions — whereas additionally producing an estimated $7.5 to $10 million a yr in “supplemental” funds for transportation operations.
The coverage tweak would additionally put in place restrictions on when alcohol-related advertisements can seem in and round stations and on trains and buses.
“I think it’s a rotten shame and a step backward,” Daniel Dromm, a former Metropolis Councilmember who pushed for the ban when he represented Queens, instructed THE CITY. “We don’t need more alcohol advertising — they’ve survived this long without it and they’ll continue to survive without it.”
MTA board paperwork spell out the beneficial adjustments, which might permit advertisements to be displayed on digital screens in stations and on trains and buses — however not throughout “typical student commutation hours” of 6 to eight a.m. and a pair of to five p.m.
The advertisements may even be permitted inside main commuter rail hubs resembling Penn Station and Jamaica Station, in stations subsequent to massive venues the place alcohol is “lawfully sold” and on the wrapped shuttle trains that journey beneath forty second Road between Occasions Sq. and Grand Central Terminal.
MTA officers mentioned the prevailing model of the ban on advertisements for alcohol in addition to promotion of occasions sponsored by makers of alcoholic drinks is “overly broad” and locked the company out of hundreds of thousands of {dollars}.
On the time of the ban, the MTA mentioned alcohol advertisements had added $7.5 million to its backside line in 2014, the final yr for which these figures had been obtainable. The MTA additionally bans political-themed advertisements, any that promote “illegal goods, services or activities” and sexual content material.
Jessie Lazarus, chairperson of an MTA committee that evaluations potential advertisements within the transit system, mentioned the company has needed to reject many potential promotions because of the doable presence of alcohol in a picture.
“There is beautiful scenery and it features a glass,” mentioned Lazarus, the company’s deputy chief of business ventures. “Our question is, ‘Is that glass alcohol or not?’ We actually don’t know.”
Lazarus mentioned the MTA “sought guidance” from different methods, together with the Chicago Transit Authority, New Jersey Transit and the Washington Metropolitan Space Transit Authority, in hopes of discovering “the right balance” that will permit for some exceptions to the ban on booze advertisements.
Underneath the potential adjustments, the MTA will have the ability to settle for advertisements for occasions such because the Gov Ball musical competition. The three-day occasion, which befell earlier this month in Flushing Meadows Corona Park, has sponsors that embrace the vodka model Gray Goose, Stella Artois beer and Jim Beam bourbon.
The MTA displayed advertisements on the Occasions Sq. station, June 23, 2025. Credit score: Ben Fractenberg/THE CITY
In 2019, an government order from then-Mayor Invoice de Blasio banned all alcohol promoting on metropolis property, a restriction that continues to be in place.
The MTA has an annual working funds of almost $20 billion and the advert income is anticipated to supply a lift.
“It does help, it really does,” mentioned MTA board member Haeda Mihaltses, who cited how the company has been lacking out on cash from advertisements across the U.S. Open in Queens.
“Every time you step off the 7 train during the last two weeks of August and September, you’re flooded with Heineken green,” she mentioned, citing the official beer sponsor of the tennis event. “Yet, you don’t capture any of that revenue.”
The alcohol ban grew out of years of advocacy from organizations that cited research exhibiting that advertisements contribute to underage consuming and disproportionately goal Black and Hispanic communities.
“This impacts regular people in New York and their kids and their families,” mentioned Interfaith Public Well being Community convenor Robert Pezzolesi, who almost a decade in the past coordinated the Constructing Alcohol Advert-Free Marketing campaign that pushed for the ban. ”We’ve got individuals in my coalition whose religion communities have traditions to not drink alcohol and perhaps they don’t need to see their children uncovered to alcohol advertisements.”
MTA officers mentioned the digital screens in stations, trains and buses can be programmed in order that alcohol-related advertisements is not going to seem throughout peak commuting hours for metropolis schoolkids.
“Ensuring the timing of when ads are up is adhered to could be challenging, especially when it relates to typical student-commutation hours,” mentioned Lisa Daglian, government director of the Everlasting Residents Advisory Committee to the MTA. “We hope that someone is on top of holidays, half-days and the like.”
Dromm, the previous Queens councilmember, mentioned he’s skeptical that the restrictions will work as supposed.
“I don’t see any type of enforcement working with that type of provision,” he mentioned. “I think it’s just an excuse to be able to get the advertising dollar that they want — it’s the almighty dollar again.”
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