Over the last few years things have been changing rapidly in the gay bar business. Almost a dozen sports bars catering to a gay clientele have opened around the United States!
Their success is leading many a gay businessman and entrepreneurs to believe gay sports bars are the next big idea!
Crew in Chicago, Fritz in Boston, GYM Sports bar in Los Angeles, Score Bar in Columbus, Ohio, and Woof's in Madison, Wis.—which bears no official relation to Woofs in Atlanta. The sudden success has even surprised some proprietors. "Quite frankly, we had no idea that gay men and women really loved sports," says Jennifer Morales, the marketing director of Side-lines sports bar, outside Fort Lauderdale, which recently reopened after a $20,000 renovation.
The bars are profiting from a rare 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 (LGBT) 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 actually the perfect customers to catch a game on a Wednesday night.
Could the traditional American style sports bar for gay people make it big over in England to?
“They sure could, in England recently we’ve seen great moves in the attitudes of gay people in sport and into sport. There are more and more gay teams and leagues for a number of different sports, which show no sign of slowing” Says Jason Shaw, a blogger and gay commentator from Brighton. “The internet is alive with forums, blogs, groups dedicated to sport and the gay community. It’s about time, we threw off the stereotypical shackles that stipulate that just because we’re gay we cant like sport. Being gay is no barrier to liking sport, being good at sport and wanting to watch the big game in a specially dedicated by with other likeminded guys.”
“Bring it on!”
More on Sports Bars in the US here - BusinessWeek
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