{"id":2020,"date":"2025-07-17T05:58:08","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T05:58:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/2020\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T05:58:08","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T05:58:08","slug":"love-island-watch-parties-are-boosting-sports-bars-and-giving-gen-z-a-reason-to-go-out","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Love Island watch parties are boosting sports bars \u2013 and giving Gen Z a reason to go out"},"content":{"rendered":"

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A group of friends at a watch party for Love Island USA at the Fox & Fiddle in Toronto on Sunday. The viewing parties are not just good for business \u2013 they\u2019re also helping to heal Gen Z’s loneliness epidemic.EDUARDO LIMA\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

Shouts of amusement and shock, roaring applause and the occasional \u201caww\u201d could be heard from inside the Fox & Fiddle pub\u2019s location in Toronto\u2018s east end. These aren\u2019t the sounds of fans watching a Blue Jays game. This is a crowd gathered for the Season 7 finale of the reality dating show Love Island USA. <\/p>\n

The bar was decked out in pink balloons, plastic tropical flowers and other beach-like decorations evoking the vibe of the famous villa where the islanders lived during the course of the show. Fans at the bar were all rooting for a specific couple to win Love Island USA\u2019s US$100,000 cash prize and, of course, true love. <\/p>\n

During the summer months, professional hockey, basketball and football games that normally pack bars tend to cool down for the off-season. The general manager of Fox & Fiddle\u2019s Danforth Avenue location, Nishan Ram, says holding watch parties for Love Island USA boosted revenue for the bar by 28 per cent compared with the week before. It plans to play host to more gatherings for other reality shows, such as The Bachelor and Real Housewives, in the future. <\/p>\n

Not only are these watch parties good for business \u2013 they\u2019re also helping to foster community among Gen Z<\/a>.<\/p>\n

The cohort born between the mid-1990s and early 2010s has been called the loneliest generation<\/a>, and in an effort to get away from the screens and back out into the world after COVID lockdowns, turning something seemingly mundane \u2013 like watching TV \u2013 into an opportunity for face-to-face connection is something many young people value these days. <\/p>\n

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Love Island fans at the Fox & Fiddle on Sunday.EDUARDO LIMA\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it\u2019s a social outing during the week that I can tick off that I want to do with my friends,\u201d Jasmine Houston said, snacking on nachos while waiting for the episode to start. \u201cI\u2019m excited to relate to the reactions from other people because me and my friends don\u2019t have the same opinions, so I\u2019m ready to hear my backup cheerleaders supporting me.\u201d <\/p>\n

Much like a televised professional sports game, these reality shows \u2013 especially finale episodes \u2013 are too important to miss for fans. \u201cI think it\u2019s a great way to create a community just the same way that sports bars do when they have games on,\u201d says Fi Pasion, who attended the event alone and is visiting from California. \u201cThis is something that girls get to bond over, like I just met these girls,\u201d she says, gesturing to her new friends.<\/p>\n

This Love Island USA viewing party in Toronto\u2019s east end is among many that took place across Canada, including Central Social Hall in Edmonton and Greta Bar in Vancouver. Fox and John, in Toronto\u2019s Liberty Village neighbourhood, was one of several bars in the Greater Toronto Area that hosted watch parties for the show. <\/p>\n

Open this photo in gallery:<\/a><\/p>\n

Fi Pasion at the Fox & Fiddle. She attended the event alone and is visiting from California.EDUARDO LIMA\/The Globe and Mail<\/p>\n

\u201cFor us, it was something we were new to, because we are kind of a sports bar, so when we did take it on, we didn\u2019t really expect much,\u201d says Pira Sivanathan, Fox and John\u2019s regional manager at the Liberty Village location, which started screening Love Island USA episodes in the middle of the season. <\/p>\n

The first time the bar hosted a watch party, they filled up 150 seats out of their capacity of 300 seats, and during the finale, Mr. Sivanathan says the venue was 90-per-cent full. \u201cWe\u2019ve done viewing parties before. It was kind of one and done, but we were able to see that there was more traction and demand for it. Absolutely, we do think it\u2019s a good opportunity for us to generate additional revenue.\u201d<\/p>\n

But nights like these are not just about Love Island USA. For some, this experience is redefining the meaning of a homebody\u2019s night out. <\/p>\n

\u201cAfter episodes, we\u2019d call each other and give a quick debrief, and we thought it\u2019d be fun to come to a bar with other people and have live reactions to what\u2019s going on in one of our favourite shows,\u201d said Oyinda Oke, who was in attendance at Fox & Fiddle.<\/p>\n

How Gen Z, the so-called \u2018loneliest generation,\u2019 got its groove back<\/a><\/p>\n

On the other side of the country, one Vancouver-based content creator plans to open a bar dedicated to nights like this, where people who enjoy pop-culture moments like red carpets, awards shows and reality TV can congregate over shared interests. <\/p>\n

\u201cMe and my sister and my friends would watch Taylor Swift\u2019s The Era\u2019s Tour or reality shows or award shows at home, and I\u2019ve always thought, \u2018Why don\u2019t we have something where we could go to the bars to watch this like the men with sports bars?\u2019\u201d says 26-year-old Kelsey Exley.<\/p>\n

Ms. Exley is in the process of finding a location for her new bar, Basic Public House, but, in the meantime, she says she will host pop-up events for the remainder of the summer, including an MTV Video Music Awards watch party. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Open this photo in gallery: A group of friends at a watch party for Love Island USA at…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":2021,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[49,48,75,2741,348],"class_list":["post-2020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-entertainment","tag-pf-ca","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2020"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2020\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2021"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}