7 Tips You MUST Know For Running A Successful Sports Bar !

If you are a sports bar owner or are planning to open one soon, this blog can come in handy to you. Today I’ll be throwing light on some underrated strategies that can help you in attracting a maximum audience and running a successful sports bar.

18th December 2022, was a historic day for every sports fan. Yes! Argentina won the FIFA 2022 World Cup after 36 years. In fact, Lionel Messi lifting the FIFA World Cup Trophy became one of the legendary moments of 2022.

I was watching the match in a sports bar when that legendary moment came, and I was moved. Surprisingly, all the people present in the bar had almost similar reactions. Honestly speaking, the vibe that day at the sports bar can’t be explained in words.

Well, watching sports events in bars has taken off lately. In fact, its growing popularity amongst the millennials and GenZ led to an exponential growth of sports bars around the world.

Sports Bars in a Trend

These days, sports events have seen a spike in their viewership. That’s because the internet and social media increased the awareness among people regarding sports tournaments held across the globe.

As per a report shared by the Topend Sports,

Soccer has the highest fan following, which is approximately 3.5 billion people. It is followed by cricket with 2.5 billion and hockey with 1 billion fans.

Think about it, what would be a better weekend than enjoying a beer over the FIFA or ICC World Cup finals?

You would be surprised to know that,

Around 84% of adults stated that they enjoy alcohol while watching a sports event. Of that, 83% prefer hitting the bar in case of a live event.

— Statista

If you go by the statistics mentioned above, you can gauge the hidden business potential in operating a sports bar. In fact, as per a report published by Marketing Insights,

The sports bar market size is expected to accrue by a CAGR of 6.15% between 2022 and 2029.

So, it can be said that opening a sports bar is one of the fruitful investments these days. With that being said, let’s take a look at the tips to make it successful in the long run.

Tips for Running a Successful Sports Bar

Without further ado, let me address the elephant in the room. Yes, the strategies to run a successful sports bar.

Enhance your interiors

First, you need to focus on your interiors. Remember, you should have the proper set-up for people to enjoy sports matches.

For example, you need to have at least three screens playing the match in synchronisation. And most importantly, one screen needs to be affixed somewhere above the bar counter.

It’ll help you in two ways. First, the customers sitting at bar stools can enjoy the match too. Second, the rate of refills they order there would grow with the increasing intensity of the match.

When I say interiors, it means adding additional activities as well to capture the interest of customers. Meaning, you can install games like virtual bowling, the latest version of PS (PlayStation), pool table, or something else. You might wonder why?

Well, that’s because people can’t watch matches continuously for a long time. And having additional activities would keep them busy for a while.

PVR Blues is one of the perfect examples for this. They have games like virtual cricket and bowling in their premises. So, guests can grab a drink, head on to the play area with their friends for bowling, and watch the match at the same time.

Try to incorporate this idea at your sports bar as well.

Highlight your menu

One of the major problems that bars and restaurants don’t acknowledge is availability or shortage of menu. If you see, many of the F&B outlets have an average of 3 to 5 menu cards or one menu card per table at the best.

In either of the cases, it needs to be shared by two or more customers increasing the overall TAT (Turn Around Time). Not to mention, it creates a negative impact on your customer experience too.

Suppose you are watching a sports event in a bar and you need to order something. But you can’t do it as the menu is at another table or maybe because the waiters are busy attending to other customers. I’m sure it’ll irritate you and affect your experience.

So, how to solve this problem? Simple, try a digital menu. These days, you can deploy a QR code based menu at every table. Customers can simply scan the code, browse the menu, add dishes in the cart, and place the order.

In this way, you can reduce human intervention and improve your TAT.

Offers during matches

We all love discounts and offers, don’t we? The same concept applies for sports bars as well. However there’s a twist to it.

See, a sports tournament goes for a stipulated period. So, for that period you need to run specific offers.

For instance, if there’s a football match between Argentina and France airing from 20:00 to 23:00 hours today, you can create offers like:

Argentina Vs France: Match of the era. Enjoy the thrilling match at ……… Breweries. What’s exciting? Happy hours for everyone from 20:00 – 22:00. Book your slots now.
Unlimited beer, unlimited fun, unlimited excitement! Enjoy today’s match between Argentina and France over an unlimited beer at ………… Club. Book your seat at just $….. per person. Hurry! Seats are filling soon.

These are just examples. You can take a cue from them and create some exciting offers to attract your customers.

Improve your online presence

Now that you are ready with a digital menu and intriguing offers, it’s time to work on promoting it. For that, first you need to improve your online presence.

When I say online presence, it includes channels like your sports bar’s website, social media accounts (Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc.). If you haven’t created your profile on these channels, you need to do it right now.

If you think why I am emphasizing on it, here are some interesting facts shared by Robben Media,

Online marketing influences more than over 1 billion visits to F&B outlets.
Around 49% of people use Facebook to search for a restaurant or bar near them.
Approx 93% of Instagram users said that the visual appearance of food and drinks influence their purchasing decisions.
Over 75% of Instagram users visit the F&B outlets’ websites (if they exist) to reserve a table or check the menu and reviews.

After reading these statistics, you’ll agree with me that having a solid online presence and promoting your offers is one of the keys to running a successful sports bar.

Provide free Wi-Fi

It might seem irrelevant to you, but providing free Wi-Fi can actually benefit you in the long run. Let me tell you how.

Using Wi-Fi for marketing is one of the effective strategies that is in trend these days. All you have to do is provide free Wi-Fi to customers with one time registration. Meaning, the guest needs to sign up with their social media accounts or contact info for accessing Wi-Fi.

Once done, you have their data, you can use it for email, WhatsApp, SMS, and other digital marketing strategies. You can also send personalised offers to your customers on their social media accounts.

In fact, there’s a blog by Orderific on the benefits of having a W-Fi in an F&B outlet. Do give it a read.

Marketing, marketing, and marketing!

“Running a business without marketing is killing it.”

— Paul Cookson

That’s true indeed. Without marketing, your business wouldn’t thrive for a long time. And I’m not just talking about digital marketing. There are various traditional ways of marketing such as print media, radio broadcasts, flyers, etc. which can bring significant results.

Before you proceed with marketing of your sports bar, ensure that the content you put in your campaigns should be engaging and on to the point. Also ensure that you target the right audience or else the entire efforts would be futile.

Promote sports spirit

Last but not the least, try promoting sports spirit at your bar. Meaning, you can sponsor a local team or create a local sports tournament to garner audiences’ attention.

Gone are the days when sports used to be just a guy thing. Currently, women’s sports are getting equal attention as men’s sports.

As per the infographics shared by Statista,

Around 78% of viewers watch women’s sports more than men’s.

So, it’s time for you to showcase the sports spirit in your bar and host match nights for sports from across the globe without differentiating between countries, genders, and races.

How Orderific can Help You?

Orderific is a unique digital menu which is revolutionizing the F&B industry. With Orderific, you can create a digital menu which is easily customizable and can be shared as a QR code with customers.

The customers can scan the QR code, add the product in the basket, make on the spot payment, and the order is placed. The order is directly shared as KOT to the kitchen department thereby reducing your TAT.

In addition to this, it offers your features like:

Designing your own QR code
Upselling with smart suggestions (Thanks to AI)
Building your website
Creating and promoting offers
Develop loyalty programs
Keep a track of deliveries
Manage rating and reviews
Zero transaction fees with integrated payment methods
Automated inventory tracking

These features are just to name a few. There are various other tasks where Orderific can prove beneficial to you. And the best part is that you get a free trial!

So, wait no more! Start your free trial today.

Conclusion

Sports are not just physical activities anymore. It has become an emotion and definitely a source of entertainment for every person across the globe.

With the craze about the recent FIFA World Cup, you can see that people are inclining rapidly towards sports. This is the right opportunity for sports bar owners to pull their socks to step up their game.

As I said earlier, beer and sports on weekends is a perfect plan. And if you have something better than this, I am all ears.

But for now, you need to focus on growing your sports bar business. To do that, you need to follow the steps I’ve mentioned in this blog.

Do let me know how they worked for you in the comments. Till then, happy learning.