Ranked: The Countries That Drink the Most Beer (Per Person)

How MLB’s Ballparks Compare by Age

Baseball venerates its old ballparks, even as it has replaced almost all of them. Fenway Park and Wrigley Field have both hosted Major League Baseball for more than a century, while most of today’s venues arrived decades later.

The list comes from MLB, which dates each park to its first regular-season major league game.

How MLB Determines a Ballpark’s Age

MLB ranks each ballpark by the year it hosted its first regular-season major league game, rather than simply when the building was constructed.

For Wrigley Field, those dates are the same. It opened in 1914 as Weeghman Park, home of the Chicago Whales of the Federal League, two years before the Cubs moved in.

Tropicana Field and Sutter Health Park are different. Tropicana Field was built in 1990 but did not host its first MLB game until the Rays debuted in 1998. Sutter Health Park opened as a minor league ballpark in 2000 but did not host MLB until the Athletics arrived in 2025.

The table ranks all 30 active ballparks, 29 in the United States and one in Canada, from oldest to newest. Parks share a rank when they have the same opening year.

The median ballpark opened in 2000, making it 26 years old in 2026. Three active parks opened that year: Daikin Park in Houston, Comerica Park in Detroit, and Oracle Park in San Francisco.

Only Five Ballparks Are Over 40 Years Old

Fenway Park has hosted major league baseball for 114 years and Wrigley Field for 112. Behind them are Dodger Stadium at 64 years, Angel Stadium at 60, and Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City at 53. No other active MLB ballpark is 40 years old.

The gap between the top two and the rest is striking. Wrigley is 48 years older than Dodger Stadium, a span longer than the entire lifetime of every park built after 1985. Shea Stadium makes the contrast even clearer: it opened in 1964, half a century after Wrigley, and was demolished in 2009 to be replaced by Citi Field.

The teams playing in MLB’s two oldest ballparks are also among its most valuable. CNBC valued the Cubs at $5.25 billion and the Red Sox at $5 billion in March 2026, ranking them third and fourth in MLB. Only the Yankees and Dodgers ranked higher, and both also appear among the 20 most valuable sports franchises in the world.

Most MLB Ballparks Opened From 1990 to 2009

Nineteen of the league’s 30 active ballparks, or 63%, opened between 1990 and 2009. Seven debuted in the 1990s and another 12 in the 2000s, beginning with Rate Field on Chicago’s South Side in 1991 and ending with Citi Field and Yankee Stadium in 2009.

Oriole Park at Camden Yards, which opened in 1992, helped set the template for many of the parks that followed. By 2009, the two-decade construction wave had reshaped most of MLB’s ballpark landscape.

Just Four New MLB Ballparks Since 2010

Only four purpose-built major league ballparks have opened since 2010: Target Field in Minneapolis in 2010, loanDepot park in Miami in 2012, Truist Park in Atlanta in 2017, and Globe Life Field in Arlington in 2020.

Sutter Health Park is a different case. The regular home of the Triple-A Sacramento River Cats, it began hosting the Athletics in 2025 as their temporary home. The A’s are scheduled to play there through 2027, with an option to remain for 2028 if their new Las Vegas ballpark is not ready.

That makes Sutter Health Park the newest venue in the ranking by first MLB game, but not by construction date. The ballpark opened in 2000 as Raley Field, 25 years before the Athletics arrived.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

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How Old Do You Have to Be to Buy Beer?

Around the world, the legal age for buying a beer ranges from 13 to 25, with significant differences between countries.

This graphic uses the latest available country-level data from the WHO Global Information System on Alcohol and Health (GISAH). It specifically measures minimum ages for off-premise beer sales, such as purchases from stores, rather than drinking or being served alcohol in bars and restaurants.

18 Is the Global Norm

The table below shows the latest available WHO minimum age for purchasing beer off-premise by country.

Age 18 dominates the map. By comparison, 19 countries set the threshold at 21, 13 use age 16, and seven use age 20. Eritrea stands out with the highest listed minimum at 25.

Minimum-age laws are one tool governments use to limit alcohol access among young people. DrinkIQ notes that adolescence is an important period of brain and physical development, while countries balance these concerns against differing cultural attitudes toward alcohol.

Europe is particularly notable for lower purchase ages. Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Luxembourg, Switzerland, and several other countries set the threshold at 16. The region also has a deeply established beer culture and includes many of the world’s biggest beer-drinking countries.

From No Minimum to Complete Prohibition

The opposite ends of the spectrum require some nuance. The WHO data lists 14 countries as having no legal minimum for off-premise beer purchases. This designation does not necessarily mean alcohol is freely available, as other national or local restrictions may still apply.

Meanwhile, Afghanistan, Iran, Kuwait, Libya, the Maldives, Mauritania, and Sudan are recorded as having total bans on beer sales. Saudi Arabia is classified separately as banned with restrictions. Alcohol rules can include exceptions based on location, residency, or other circumstances, illustrating why a simple purchase-age figure cannot capture every country’s regulatory system.

The U.S. is also unusual among major advanced economies, with a minimum purchase age of 21. The beer market itself remains highly globalized, however, with many of the largest beer brewers selling across countries with very different rules.

Learn More on the Voronoi App

For another look at the beer industry, see How Beer Logos Have Changed With the Times on the Voronoi app.