From the MPC Computers Bowl to the NFL divisional playoffs, college and professional loyalties among beer-drinking bar patrons are the emotional tractors that “bring in the corn,” as one sports-bar owner put it.
Not that tavern owners can just flip channels on the remote and sit back to count the money. You thought the sports-bar business was just paying the TV bills and keeping the beer cold?
Try making plasma screen swap-outs to the tune of $30,000. Or installing Wi-Fi to compete with the coffeehouses.
Or putting in wireless portable speakers that can pick up the sound from any of eight NFL games displayed around the bar. Or providing jacks for patrons who bring in their favorite headphones.
Perhaps in your day you hiked 10 miles uphill through snow to get to the sports bar, and cranked power for your high-def TVs with a butter churn. But times have changed.
“We have to give people a reason to get up off their surround-sound couch and get them away from their big-screen HDTVs, and get them in here,” said Chris Fuselier, owner of the Blake Street Tavern near Coors Field. “There’s a lot of competition for entertainment.”
Going to the Soundogs
Fuselier’s tavern is trying to draw customers with free “Soundogs,” wireless speakers the size of a softball. The bar broadcasts the audio from the game on the main big-screen TV around the room. Spectators who want a different game can leave a credit card as a security deposit, then can take the speaker to any table with a view of their favorite team. Fuselier spends about $1,700 a season for the full NFL game package, giving him up to eight games at a time to put on various screens.
Each TV has a number. Viewers punch the Soundog number associated with their particular TV game, and the audio comes out of the Soundog.
LoDo resident Mat Whited used a Soundog recently to hear and watch his Cincinnati Bengals beat the Cleveland Browns on a last-second field goal. Regional TV deals rarely put the Bengals on his home TV, so he goes to Blake Street Tavern to keep up.
“I like it; you don’t have to listen to the main game,” Whited said, as patrons around him urged on the Patriots, thrashing the Bills on the main screen.
Fuselier said he started with eight Soundogs at the beginning of the season, then quickly ordered another eight when they proved popular. He says his football business is up 25 percent over last year. The system works well outside of football too. On a slow sports night, he might put music on the main speaker system. Sports fanatics can still borrow the Soundogs to listen to a Nuggets or Avalanche game.
First-rate food is still a key ingredient to a long-running sports bar, said restaurant consultant Chris Weinberg, president of the North Carolina-based Barfly Group. Weinberg quoted a trade magazine’s motto: “It is more fun to eat in a great bar than to drink in a great restaurant.”
But top-shelf technology also counts, Weinberg added. “Staying on the cutting edge is important. If you are not prepared or willing to upgrade your equipment, be ready for a competitive new place to open and attack your business base,” he said.
John Ziegler, owner of the five Jackson’s sports bars, is in his 30th year of selling beer and football. He uses wireless portable speakers in his bars but is less effusive about new technology and its impact on the business.
Ziegler tends to observe the seasons instead, including his favorite, the current harvest time.
“I look forward to fall beginning in about July, and I look forward with sadness to February, starting in about September,” he said. The gap between the Super Bowl and March Madness in college basketball is one slow spot he dreads.
“The busiest days of all for us (are) the Saturday and Sunday when the divisional football playoffs are in both the NFC and AFC,” Ziegler said. “It’s definitely not the Super Bowl. The Super Bowl is the day for home parties.”
Some bars heavily scout the competition. Fuselier takes trips to Chicago, the bar capital of the U.S., and recently saw that even the worst Windy City dives had changed to expensive plasma screens. He plans to toss all his relatively new TVs for plasma in time for March Madness, a move that will cost more than $30,000.
High-five for Wi-Fi
Don’t be surprised if the sports freak next to you orders a laptop instead of a sarsaparilla. Wi-Fi is breaking into the sports-bar scene, for the ultimate geek weekend: Fantasy team owners can sit with a laptop and get to-the-second statistics on their chosen players, using a wireless speaker to flip back and forth between TV screens overhead.
“I’m averaging 15 to 20 users a day on the Wi-Fi,” said Fuselier. “I always wondered, where do the coffee-shop people go at night (when) they don’t want to drink coffee anymore?”
Wi-Fi can bring in more daily business patrons and boost the lunch hour, Weinberg noted. With a little sorting, bar owners can also use the information they get from Wi-Fi customers “to build a database for marketing use.”
There’s no predicting how patrons will use the technology once it’s online, he added. On slow sports nights, neighborhood people wander in and ask for a speaker and one TV switched to CNN.
“I have people who come in and want to watch the Weather Channel.”
Staff writer Michael Booth can be reached at 303-820-1686 or mbooth@denverpost.com.
