Finding the Right Team for Your Sports Bar

By Nathan Hirsch & Symon Perriman

Welcome back to our second installment in FanWide’s Guide to Starting and Growing a Fan Club in your Sports Bar. Now that you have picked the best sports league to target for the upcoming season, the next step is finding the right sports team for your sports bar.

Sure, you are saying “I already have one in mind that I really want.” But just in case, we want to give you a checklist to make sure that it really is the right fit for your bar.

Which Sports Fan Clubs Need a Home?

First, find those untapped fan club opportunities in your city. Don’t be the hundredth bar to host the city’s local team (unless it is for the playoffs or a championship, then that’s understandable) beit-mirkahat.com. FanWide.com can help you see which fan clubs already exist in your area, match you with local fans who are looking for a new home, or set up an official fan club chapter at your bar for a professional league seeking fans.

JFK said it best: “Victory has a hundred fathers, but defeat is an orphan.” And sports teams bring out the same emotions from their fans. Team loyalty runs deep, and even if a team isn’t having a playoff-caliber season, they can still pack a bar if they have developed a strong fanbase. Once the team’s post-season chances become clear, there is often a drop-off in interest (if they do not qualify) or a spike in engagement (if they do). Hosting playoff games are great for operators as it provides more busy nights with passionate sports fans.

Start by looking at teams that have had historical success, performed well in recent seasons, and are expected to go deep into the playoffs. Examples include the NBA’s Golden State Warriors or NFL’s New England Patriots. This will have people flocking to your bar to watch the games.

Target League Winners

This brings up our first recommendation — pick winning teams to host!

If you do not stay current with sports, here are some ways to help you pick the hottest teams to host:

1. Use sports news sources like ESPN or Bleacher Report to see the current standings of any team.
2. You can also use sports betting odds or fantasy sports to assist you in projecting how successful a team will be, even several months before the season starts.

Keeping up with sports news can help you hear about superstar player addition (or subtraction) to a team which can sway fan interest. Let’s call this the “LeBron Effect” because of the impact he has on fan interest in every game he plays in.

Using NFL as an example, in the following graph you can see that there is a connection between the historically successful teams having the most fans and fan clubs spread around the country.

Source: FanWide

Think Home Away from Home

Source: Reddit

“Location, location, location” is the mantra of real estate, and you too should think about the same idea when it comes to the location of a team’s fan club your trying to court. If you are showing the game for a popular local team you will probably have a lot of interested patrons, but what makes you stand out from every other bar in the area?

To separate your establishment, find a fan club chapter that supports a remote team, and it can become your leading revenue day of the week.

One trend that FanWide noticed from working with thousands of fan clubs is that there are usually larger and more fan clubs closer to the team’s hometown than across the country. This makes sense because this is consistent with human migration patterns, as people are likely to move a few cities away rather than to the other side of the country.

For example, there are a lot more San Francisco 49ers fan clubs across the West Coast and New York Giants chapters along the East Coast because there are more fans in these areas. This is similar for college sports as a majority of SEC alumni associations are in the South and most Pac-12 fan clubs are on the West Coast. If you are based in a major city this is less of an issue because there will likely be fans of every team living or traveling there.

If you decide to host a team that is based in a different time zone, be aware of the time difference; it could mean that you are committing to get up early or show games very late. For example, it can be challenging as an East Coast bar hosting a Pac-12 football fan club since some of the games will not finish until 1am or later, interfering with your regular nightlife atmosphere. If you are on the West Coast, then be wary when selecting European sports which may feature games in the middle of the night, at times where alcohol service may be prohibited, which can hurt your profit margins.

Which Team Hits Your Sports Bar’s Vibes?

Another recommendation is to find a team that fits your venue’s vibe.

For instance, fans interested in watching a Borussia Dortmund or Bayern Munich match from the German Bundesliga soccer league, would enjoy being in a Germanic or Bavarian environment. A German beer hall would make a perfect setting for this, with a liter stein in one hand and a bratwurst in the other.

Or if you are an Irish Pub, then consider hosting the Boston Celtics, rugby or European soccer. Just be aware of your setting and pick a team that helps the synergy of the two, thus giving the fans a gameday experience like they were inside the team’s home stadium.

Review

Let’s quickly recount the main points here.

• First, aim to host the fan clubs of winning organizations as they bring out the crowds and losers don’t.
• Find teams that have not yet established a fan club in your city to differentiate yourself. You can use FanWide.com to help you find those untapped fan clubs in your city.
• If you are not in a major city, then know how close you are to the team which you are targeting, and try to focus more regionally than globally as its easier to host events that are broadcast from a similar time zone to you.
• Find teams that meet the theme of your sports bar.

Now that you have identified a team, stay tuned to learn how to start a new fan club chapter at your sports bar.