Gay Sports Bars Proliferate as Growth in Disposable Income Fuels Profits
From the outside, Boxers NYC looks like a sports bar in a suburban strip mall. Large windows reveal 14 flat-screen TVs, two pool tables and a dartboard. Inside, men in suits sit on vinyl-covered stools, fidget with their BlackBerrys and swill pints of beer -- served by bartenders dressed in their underwear. Boxers wasn’t named for practitioners of the sweet science, but for the style of skivvies.
Less than a year after opening in Manhattan’s Flatiron district, Boxers has become a pioneer of a gay sports bar trend. It has Lady Gaga blaring from its speakers and New York Knicks games on its TVs, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Jan. 17 issue.
“The sports theme allows people to be comfortable,” said Bob Fluet, a co-owner who met his business partner, Rob Hynds, in a gay softball league. The two realized that while the gay community had plenty of nightlife options, it lacked old- fashioned bars where guys could root for the home team. “I don’t want to go to some fancy lounge and drink martinis,” says Hynds. “Or end up at a leather bar.”
So far it’s working: Since Boxers opened in April 2010, sales are tracking 45 percent above their initial forecast, Hynds says.
In the past few years, almost a dozen sports bars catering to a gay clientele have opened around the country, including Crew in Chicago, Fritz in Boston and GYM Sportsbar in Los Angeles.
The sudden success has even surprised some proprietors. “Quite frankly, we had no idea that gay men and women really loved sports,” said Jennifer Morales, the marketing director of SideLines sports bar, outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida.
More Spending Money
The bars are profiting from a demographic group with a growing amount of disposable income. Market research firm Witeck-Combs Communications puts the buying power of the adult lesbian-gay-bisexual-transgender population at $743 billion, up from $732 billion in 2009. With large populations in metropolitan areas and more households without children, gay sports fans are the perfect customers to catch a game on a Wednesday night.
The trailblazer, Nellie’s Sports Bar, opened on U Street in Washington, D.C., in 2007. It has a mix of team pennants and pictures of Abercrombie & Fitch models.
Traffic has increased 30 percent each year, says owner Douglas Warren Schantz. “You can’t just open a stereotypical gay bar and expect that one set of people,” Schantz said. “That group’s already been targeted.”
No Karaoke
The key for each bar has been striking the right balance to appeal to both gay and straight fans. “Since we’re a gay bar, people call asking about karaoke, live bands, and drag,” explains Morales of SideLines. “I just scream, ‘No! No! No!’ We’ve filled a niche where we’re all about sports.”
She also insists that SideLines has avoided another stereotype of gay bars: It has trained its staff to be extra friendly, replacing the haughty attitude some workers may have developed at more glamorous nightclubs. Appealing to one kind of clientele without alienating the other is complicated. “I feel like this is the Olive Garden of gay bars,” says Kevin Teague, a 34-year-old architect who recently visited Boxers for an after-work meeting. “It’s a nondescript bar for nondescript gays.”
Less than a year after opening Boxers, Fluet and Hynds are scouting for a second location. “There should be a bar like this in every American city,” Fluet said. “If someone won’t open it quickly enough, we will.”
To contact the reporter on this story: Kurt Soller at Kurt.Dickson.Soller@gmail.com
To contact the editor responsible for this story: Jon Kelly at jkelly101@bloomberg.net