![\"Number](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FOS_Fan-Fest_Splitscreen-01.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAhead of the first World Cup matches in June, Tom\u2019s Watch Bar Inglewood reached out to several international fan groups in the area. The 10,000-square-foot sports bar, directly across the street from Los Angeles Stadium, wanted to host an informal kickoff party on one of their behalfs.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Bosnia and Herzegovina supporters accepted the invitation, informing the bar that they expected a few hundred fans to show up. The estimate did not prove accurate.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThree thousand people ended up coming,\u201d says Brooks Schaden, co-CEO of Tom\u2019s, which has 17 other large-scale locations across the country. \u201cThey were spilling into the street. Police had to come out and help contain things.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was an early glimpse of the month and a half to follow.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The World Cup\u2019s first full week became the highest-grossing in the company\u2019s 12-year existence, and business continues humming. The Inglewood location brought in more than $160,000 in a single day when the U.S. men\u2019s national team played Australia on June 19; its flagship Denver venue \u201cdid roughly $100,000 a day, like five days in a row\u201d later in the month, per Schaden.<\/p>\n
Mega sports bar owners and operators across the country tell Front Office Sports a similar story: Their spaces\u2014built to accommodate hundreds or even thousands\u2014have spent nearly every open minute of the past six weeks at capacity, often with lines snaking out the door. They all describe the stretch as the busiest and most exhausting in their histories\u2014but also the most rewarding and, simply, fun.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Marathon and a Sprint<\/p>\n
\u201cThe 48-team format essentially doubled the amount of action, which made for some very long days for us\u2014especially early on,\u201d says Shane Higgins, GM of Brit\u2019s Pub, a 1,600-person, indoor-outdoor spot in Minneapolis. The venue has shattered sales record after sales record during the tournament: \u201cWe\u2019d fill up for one game and then immediately be at capacity again an hour later for the next.\u201d<\/p>\n
To satisfy the sustained demand, most operators have adopted some version of the following strategy: Prepare as much as possible, then improvise as needed.<\/p>\n
Some of the adjustments are simple, like placing bulk product orders and overstaffing\u2014Higgins says Brit\u2019s Pub roughly tripled its head count for the occasion. But operators have gotten creative, too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Number Thirty Eight<\/p>\n
Brit\u2019s Pub and Number Thirty Eight, another 1,000-plus-capacity, partially open-air venue in Denver, each built several temporary auxiliary bars around their properties to keep drink lines manageable. According to cofounder Spencer Fronk, Number Thirty Eight\u2014which has been operating on a \u201cone-in, one-out basis\u201d most days\u2014also hired \u201cdrink hawkers like you\u2019d see at a baseball game\u201d to roam its grounds, and it switched standard beer orders from drafts to cans. Both moves dramatically reduce serving time.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Each bar is ad-libbing in its own way. Some managers, like Nate Kazaitis of Franklin Hall, a 500-person watering hole in Washington, D.C., have been doing supplemental alcohol runs at spirits warehouses. (\u201cI\u2019ve got a ton of photos of my Jeep from the last month just loaded down with kegs and cases,\u201d he says.) Others have rented out space at nearby storage facilities to ensure additional inventory is always close at hand.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Regardless of approach, the sprint has required near-constant contact with distributors. Fronk and Schaden tell FOS their respective bars have been placing food, beverage, and dining supply orders daily instead of the standard weekly cadence\u2014sometimes even multiple times per day.<\/p>\n
A Different Kind of Crowd\u00a0<\/p>\n
The extra elbow grease is yielding more than just eye-popping cash flow. The real joy, operators say, has been seeing their establishments become bastions of real-life connection.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cMy bar typically attracts a lot of Brads and Chads, if you know what I mean,\u201d Kazaitis tells FOS. \u201cBut the tournament has brought people in from all walks of life to hang out and enjoy themselves. We\u2019ve gotten a whole lot of first-timers. They\u2019re all bumping into each other, making eye contact, and finding common threads.\u201d Soccer has even inspired D.C.\u2019s power players to mingle with the general public, he adds; Franklin Hall has regularly hosted ambassadors and their embassy staff.<\/p>\n
![\"Brit's](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/FOS_Fan-Fest_Inline-02-e1784223797544.jpg\")
<\/p>\n
Brit\u2019s Pub<\/p>\n
Fronk paints a nearly identical picture of his Denver bar: \u201cEveryone is on their feet and totally engaged with the atmosphere and the games. Nobody\u2019s face is down on their phone.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Like with Bosnia and Herzegovina at Tom\u2019s Watch Bar, fans of smaller countries that made first-time or otherwise rare appearances in the expanded World Cup are driving some of the largest and liveliest scenes, even well after their teams\u2019 eliminations.\u00a0<\/p>\n
However, operators consistently call out one country\u2019s fan base as the most fun\u2014and spend-happy\u2014of them all: Mexico. \u201cThey bring the energy and they really like their Modelo,\u201d Higgins says of El Tri devotees. (They really like their gear, too. Team Mexico\u2019s green home kit is Adidas\u2019s best selling<\/a> of the tournament by a wide margin.)<\/p>\n The Final Push<\/p>\n While this World Cup\u2019s defining characteristic has been its ability to deliver unprecedented engagement<\/a> day after day, some still stand out. Proprietors point to June 19 (USMNT-Australia), July 1 (UMSNT\u2013Bosnia and Herzegovina), and July 5 (England-Mexico) as a few of their most demanding days.\u00a0<\/p>\n Data provided to FOS by Lyft tells a similar story; trips to bars nationwide were roughly 50% above average on June 19, peaking between 1 p.m. and 2 p.m. E.T. just before kickoff of the USMNT-Australia match. On July 1, rides to bars were 34% higher than typical levels. Brit\u2019s Pub, Number Thirty Eight, and Franklin Hall were all included in the rideshare company\u2019s June trend report as some of the most-frequented bars<\/a> for World Cup watching across the country.\u00a0<\/p>\n The USMNT\u2019s knockout on July 6 has seldom slowed crowds, which has operators optimistic that first-timers and casual fans will keep coming back after the tournament ends.\u00a0<\/p>\n The more immediate concern, though, is simply catching their breath. July 8 was the first day without World Cup matches since the tournament began June 11, and it became an unofficial recess of sorts across the hospitality industry, with several venues saying they closed early\u2014or entirely.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n Sunday\u2019s final between heavyweights Argentina and Spain is the last hurdle before a true respite. The breather is still temporary, though: College football and the NFL\u2019s return in late August will again bring big crowds and big revenue.<\/p>\n But for all the exhaustion, the stretch has also been invigorating. \u201cWe opened up in October 2020 during the height of COVID,\u201d says Fronk of Number Thirty Eight. \u201cTo see our vision\u2014a place for large groups of different backgrounds to come together\u2014now at its peak five years down the line, it\u2019s just been incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Ahead of the first World Cup matches in June, Tom\u2019s Watch Bar Inglewood reached out to several international…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":809690,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[440],"tags":[49,48,561,82],"class_list":["post-809689","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-soccer","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-soccer","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809689","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=809689"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/809689\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/809690"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=809689"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=809689"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=809689"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}