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Creating the Perfect College Basketball Menu Experience

Sponsored by the maker of Tyson Red Label® Wings Since its expansion to the field of 64 in 1985, the Men’s College Basketball Tournament has become one of the most popular and successful sporting events in the nation. Now with four additional play-in games, the 68 teams play a total of 67 games over the course of three weeks. The hype and fever surrounding the tournament is infectious, spreading to office pools, friendly wagers, and campus rallies throughout the country. For bars and restaurants, this can represent a steady stream of revenue in an otherwise slow time of year. Professional football has recently wrapped its season up, while professional basketball and hockey are playing out their final regular weeks before the playoffs begin. The excitement around the basketball tournament fills this gap and can bring in a slew of new [...]

By |2022-06-07T13:51:56-04:00February 13th, 2019|Guest Management, Sports Bar Management, Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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Beat the Slow Season with an Influencer Marketing Campaign

By Joseph Brady, Senior Director of Digital Marketing, Reliant Funding While the professionals all have an off-season, sports-themed restaurants and bars don’t have that same luxury. Bringing in cash flow year-round is not an easy task, but influencer marketing could be the key ingredient to help sports bar operators and owners beat event the slowest nights. At its core, successful sports bar marketing is all about reaching your audience through the right medium and creating a curiosity or awe factor. Influencer marketing is the new age amalgamation of celebrity endorsement with a content-driven marketing strategy which works best for the Millennial audience. It grabbed the spotlight in 2018 and we expect it to become more central to marketing efforts over the next few years. Here are a few tips in the influencer marketing front that can boost the popularity and [...]

By |2022-06-07T13:55:22-04:00February 11th, 2019|Sports Bar Marketing, Sports Bar Social Media|0 Comments
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How to Keep Business Booming on Off-Nights

Every sports bar experiences lulls, slow seasons, and dead nights. When your business model depends on basketball fans packing your bar, naturally your sales will be leaner on basketball-free nights. How do you occupy the building from July to October? How do football bars fill the till from Tuesday to Friday? While live sports will always dominate the Nielsen ratings, there are a few other programs that can hang with them. Reality television and many premium dramas have proven to be DVR-proof in an age where streaming and watching on one’s own time dominate viewing habits. The best part about these shows, as it pertains to us in the restaurant industry, is how well they lend themselves to communal watching. There are people out there who take their favorite shows as seriously as sports fans take their games. Take a [...]

By |2022-06-07T13:56:27-04:00January 23rd, 2019|Alternate Sports Programming, Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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Creating a Menu Worthy of the Bruins-Blackhawks NHL Winter Classic

For decades, January 1st belonged to the NCAA and the multitude of football bowl games played to ring in the year. Since 2008, however, the day has shared the spotlight with the NHL, as the league has taken the game of hockey back to its outdoor roots. With snowy, picturesque scenes reminiscent of frozen ponds, the annual Winter Classic shares a side of the game not normally seen by wider audiences. Though television numbers have been in decline since 2014, this year’s game will be the first time the game will be contested between two top-10 U.S. television markets since 2015. The Boston Bruins and Chicago Blackhawks will face off New Year’s Day on the hallowed field of Notre Dame University. Puck drop is slated for 1 PM, coinciding with the Fiesta Bowl and preceding the Rose Bowl and Sugar [...]

By |2022-06-07T14:00:28-04:00December 18th, 2018|Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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Bowl Your Guests Over for the End of College Football Season

With the calendar about to roll over, the number of days you have to boost your sales with hungry, thirsty football fans keeps growing smaller. Fortunately, the NCAA ends their season like a Fourth of July fireworks display -- with a spectacular grand finale. With 40 bowl games left on the slate, there are plenty of opportunities to close out this year on a high note and jump start your 2019. With all due respect to the Boca Raton Bowl, the Taxslayer Bowl, and the always delicious Idaho Potato Bowl, you should be focusing your efforts on the big games to get the biggest numbers. Unless, of course, you have some local interest in those bowl games. Here are a few pointers to tailor your service, with a special wing idea thrown in for each game. Saturday, December 29th, 2018 [...]

By |2022-06-07T14:01:43-04:00December 17th, 2018|Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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Understanding the Marketing Potential of eSports for Sports Bars

On paper, the concept may seem absurd. Who wants to watch somebody else play video games? Is there really a market of third siblings forced to spectate while their older siblings take turns with Mario and Luigi out there? To ask those questions in the first place is to fundamentally misunderstand the appeal of eSports. Nobody questions why millions of people tune into the NFL every Sunday afternoon or shell out hundreds of dollars for baseball tickets. The concepts of professional eSports and major league athletics are not as different as you might think. Sure, the gladiator aesthetic and the barbarism is virtually non-existent -- or is it existent, virtually? -- but at the end of the day, in both events, you have spectators observing someone else playing a game. There are flamboyant personalities, tense drama-inducing moments, and fanbases cheering [...]

By |2022-06-08T09:05:48-04:00December 12th, 2018|Alternate Sports Programming, Online Sports, Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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How to Attract & Host Amazing Alumni Group Events

There’s a reason why seemingly every classic TV show from the 1980s has been rebooted in recent years. Nostalgia is a powerful drug. Whatever it is that forces us to see the past through rose-colored glasses, its effect is undeniable. And no reminiscence is stronger than that of those yearning for their college years. When adults get a chance to reunite and recreate their early 20s it can represent a windfall to your bottom line. How, then, do you get alumni groups in the door? The key is two-fold: connect with college alumni groups and host events – such as college sports “viewing parties” -- for those groups. Step #1: Connecting with Alumni Groups A proactive marketing and event planning manager is your point-person for this operation. They must be able to use their social media skills and networking contacts [...]

By |2022-06-08T09:06:39-04:00December 10th, 2018|Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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Team-Themed Chicken Wing Recipes to Attract NHL Fans

It’s autumn, which means one thing: football. Right? Wrong. If your marketing program is putting all of its eggs in the Saturday/Sunday basket then you’re likely missing out on a few market segments, including hockey fans. Having spent a number of years running some of Boston’s busiest sports bars, I can tell you that hockey fans are extremely loyal -- not only to their favorite teams but also to an establishment that goes out of their way to make them feel special. Sure, you can do big numbers with the football crowd, but that’s once or twice a week for four months. Hockey is every night of the year from October to June. One method that always ingratiated our restaurants to hockey fan clubs was to give them a little something specific to their team of choice. An easy way [...]

By |2022-06-08T09:11:04-04:00December 3rd, 2018|Guest Management, Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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Marketing the NHL’s ‘European Game of the Week’ to Fans

It would appear the NHL is taking a page out of the NHL and NBA playbooks by turning their eyes to Europe. The league announced that they are adjusting their schedule to more weekend mid-day games in order to attract more attention from across the pond. While that is good news for Europeans, what does it mean to you as a sports-themed operator? The answer is a quite a few things. To start it means you’ll have more varied content to show on weekends. A good mix of professional and college athletics is great news for attracting more folks during a tough-to-sell revenue period. It’s also a great excuse to deliver something to your much maligned NHL fans. No doubt the NHL is the last among equals in the North American pro sports ranks (all due respect to our Canadian [...]

By |2022-06-08T09:12:11-04:00November 20th, 2018|Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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3 Fun Ways to Drive Restaurant Sales During Football

You may have heard, but football ratings are way down. Since most of our subscribers rely on football to deliver relief from an all too slow summer, this is really bad news. Although, it doesn’t mean you don’t have weapons to combat the fading NFL ratings and their impact on your sales. Maybe it’s time to see the traffic softening as an opportunity to be more creative in your efforts and increase check averages. Sure there are fewer guests, but if you stabilize your traffic for football, you can then increase it by driving guest spending with smart programs. We know the season has already begun, but there is no time like the present to get rolling. So, here are three fun ways to drive sales during football and fight back against any reduction in traffic: Sell More Wings Sure [...]

By |2022-06-08T09:14:47-04:00September 24th, 2018|Sports Bar Marketing|0 Comments
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3 Winning Strategies for Sports Bars Marketing NCAA Football

Of the six major American sports, college football is by far the most overrated one for sports bars. Not because it doesn’t drive traffic -- it does! Not because there isn’t enough coverage -- there is! Not because there aren’t enough fans -- there are! No, college football is overrated because there isn’t much your guests can’t get at home on their own TVs. Now that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t try to leverage this business; you definitely should. The trick is to make sure your efforts aren’t on strategies that don’t deliver results. It all started 11 years ago when the Big Ten Network launched. As a result of their success, the PAC12 network, SEC Network and the ACC Network have all been born. Essentially, these proprietary networks exploded the number of games on easily accessible in-line channels. This caused [...]

By |2022-06-08T09:19:14-04:00July 27th, 2018|Sports Bar Marketing, Sports TV Schedule|0 Comments
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What You Can Learn About Social Media from Leagues & Teams

Since the social media was fully embraced by the sports industry, the management of sports teams, leagues, and associations began to use them as a tool to promote their growth and connection to the fans. And sports bars and sports-themed restaurants could take some cues. For example, a study conducted in 2017, Twitter partnered with NFL to do a live broadcast of 10 games for $10 million. Facebook also streamed 46 games from Mexico’s Liga MX soccer league in the same year. The use of social media by sports organizations is a crucial aspect of the marketing strategy geared towards enhanced productivity and more returns on investment. And while you’re not running a sports league team, you’re still running a sports organization polska-ed.com. Your roster is your staff and, like pro teams, you’re trying to generate interest in your organization [...]

By |2022-06-08T09:20:01-04:00July 24th, 2018|Sports Bar Marketing, Sports Bar Social Media|0 Comments
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