Sports bar owner Quinn Allen testified before Ohio state senators last month on a challenge his business faces. Not inflation. Or chicken wing shortages.
He was there to talk about Peacock.
At Allen’s Columbus-area establishments, showing Ohio State football games can boost sales by up to $20,000, he told lawmakers. But when Buckeyes games moved to streaming under the Big Ten’s new media rights deals, Allen was caught off-guard.
Sports-rights fragmentation frustrates plenty of fans. Still, in most cases, a Google search (and possibly a new subscription) can get a viewer back to the action. Streaming sports in commercial settings, however, is often far more complicated.
“It’s a very unreliable system, and it’s hard to feel like you’re not getting scammed,” Allen testified.
The key thing to know—a factor several of the Ohio legislators seemed to struggle with—is that leagues sell two kinds of rights: the ability to telecast a given game for at-home consumers, and the license to distribute events in public venues, stretching from mom-and-pop sports bars to national hotel chains.
During the broadcast/cable/satellite era, this wasn’t that complicated. Games generally aired on the same channel in each domain, only commercial operators paid for higher-priced business packages from TV distributors such as Comcast or DirecTV.
Then came streaming.
UFC jumped to Paramount+, Formula 1 moved to Apple TV, YouTube aired its first exclusive NFL game and Netflix won the rights to MLB’s Opening Night affair—all in recent months. But that was only on the consumer side.
Bar owners were left to sort out what each move meant for them.
“You contact them, and it’s everyone going, ‘Gosh I don’t know,’” said Tom’s Watch Bar co-CEO Brooks Schaden, who oversees 19 locations nationwide. “They refer you to this person, to this person.”
UFC is still using a pay-per-view model in bars for its biggest fights, with third-party Joe Hand Promotions selling each event for hundreds of dollars per venue or as part of a subscription, with pricing based on restaurant occupancy. Apple TV’s sports are being carried on channels within certain DirecTV business packages, as well as via EverPass, a business-focused streaming startup. EverPass has the rights to distribute all of the NFL’s digital-only broadcasts, including the YouTube game, building on its Sunday Ticket deal.
As for Netflix’s Giants-Yankees broadcasts? For that, well, you’ll have to stay tuned. As of last week, MLB was still finalizing its commercial distribution plans. The game is on Wednesday.
Bar managers have become accustomed to last-minute announcements about where to find games, how much they’ll need to pay for them, and sometimes what equipment they’ll need shipped in. For smaller events, it can be impossible to even find an answer, leaving barkeeps in a legal gray area.
The Last Mile
William O’Sullivan, the owner of O’Briens Irish Pub in Santa Monica, Calif., credits his years of experience—and previous time working for a phone company back in Ireland—with helping him navigate the current morass. Ahead of Ireland’s March 26 World Cup Qualifier, O’Sullivan tracked down the intermediary who was able to sell him (for more than $1,000) access to a professional Fubo account that will let him legally stream the game.
“Everybody is focused on the consumer space, that’s where the bigger value is, that’s where the bigger dollars are,” DirecTV COO Mike Wittrock said. “B2B is kind of an afterthought, that’s been part of the problem here. The good news is, for our customers … we ask about it. We don’t forget about it.”
DirecTV retains a roughly two-thirds market share in the bar and restaurant sector, Wittrock said, having helped pioneer the category since launching NFL Sunday Ticket in 1994. Its packages today include content that streams in homes across Apple TV, ESPN+, Paramount+ and Prime Video. MLB, NBA and NHL out-of-market packages are also available via satellite.
After YouTube took over the consumer Sunday Ticket business in 2023, the NFL and RedBird Capital formed EverPass Media, which would hold the commercial distribution rights for the package. EverPass now has a subscription offering of its own, bundling the aforementioned streamers’ content as well as Peacock and Victory+ games. Last week, EverPass began telling customers that it would be the sole distributor of NFL Sunday Ticket, following a three-year deal with DirecTV.
“We want to aggregate all of the content that we possibly can and get it out to our customers in an easier way,” EverPass chief marketing officer Bryan Icenhower said. The company also offers ways for restaurants to generate more revenue from each of their TVs.
The roots of Philadelphia-based Joe Hand Promotions, a live-sports media distributor, stretch back more than 50 years, to when Joe Hand Sr. would buy projector screens, hang them in arenas and sell tickets at the door to watch fight broadcasts.
“Now, the business is really not all that different,” Joe Hand VP of content and partnerships Tim McManus said. “Whatever our customers tell us they want to get (sporting events) on, we’re going to work to put them there.”
Today JHP distributes about 2,000 broadcasts annually via satellite and streaming. Sometimes, distributors work directly with a league to determine commercial plans. Other times networks hold the keys. Joe Hand helped ESPN launch a business-focused product after the debut of ESPN+, and in 2024, it set a combat sports record when 6,200 commercial establishments signed up to show Netflix’s Mike Tyson vs. Jake Paul event.
Bars now have more sports to offer, with something streaming basically 24/7. That means fewer games being followed by grisly local news. And in some ways, getting multiple streamers’ content via one provider makes watching games easier for business owners than it is for the rest of us at home.
It’s still more expensive, though.
At one of NYC’s largest sports bars, Stout’s Penn Station location, programming 40+ TVs across 16,000 square feet cost close to $10,000 a year about five years ago, according to part-owner Noelle Mooney. “I would guess that it’s at least 10 to 15 times more” expensive now, she added.
Really!?
“Really,” she said.
Back then, DirecTV and cable channels plus the out-of-market packages and the occasional pay-per-view was sufficient, if pricey. Now that’s just the start, though other operators said they’re hoping to keep content spend roughly flat by being more selective about what they buy and stiffer in negotiations.
The Last Meter
Bars now often subscribe to multiple packages to provide the plethora of games that patrons expect to be available when they walk in.
“It’s one of our selling propositions that people just know we’re going to figure out how to have it on,” Schaden said, “versus you have to go sign up for 12 different services or figure it out at home on your own.”
Still, managers might be stumped by a request to put on high school hoops or a sailing competition. In theory, proprietors could connect their personal accounts to TVs to access anything available online, but doing so would violate the terms of most services—and potentially expose them to five-figure fines.
Owners cited undercover consumers known to visit establishments in search of those airing content without licenses. Joe Hand reportedly enlists up to 1,000 investigators on a major fight night. In part, the distributors say, doing so protects the bars who are paying to show games. Many a Reddit thread and law firm blog post have popped up to answer questions about how proprietors ought to respond to lawsuits.
O’Sullivan said he received a legal notice after broadcasting an Italy vs. Israel soccer match last year. He didn’t have the rights for the main broadcast, but as he explained in response, he was legally showing a Spanish-language version of the event that he did have the rights to air. “It’s a minefield,” he said.
Occasionally, he’ll see an ad for an event at another local bar and call to ask whether they’d correctly acquired the proper license. “Sometimes they receive it well,” he said. “Sometimes they think, ‘You’re just making sure I don’t get any business.’”
Behind the scenes, stacks of boxes and wires, inputs and outputs, help route the various incoming feeds to TVs. And that’s before considering how managers adjust sound settings throughout the day—or how they serve fans who’d actually like this game on the display over there instead. Savi IQ has won customers including Tom’s Watch Bar and Buffalo Wild Wings by offering an all-in-one audio/video management platform that integrates different feeds and even offers an onsite AI chatbot that promises to switch channels on demand.
In Philadelphia, PJW Restaurant Group locations have moved beyond remotes, using screens to pre-schedule TVs or flip between programs. “I’ve learned more about switcher-scalers and head-units and what is needed than I ever wanted to know,” VP of strategic growth Jake Karley said. Asked how he ended up with that responsibility, PJW CEO Jessica Breslow joked that Karley drew the short straw.
O’Sullivan keeps his Apple TV boxes, EverPass set, DirecTV receiver, and the knob-pocked board connecting them, along with more than a dozen cables, behind the bar, not far from the receipt printer—and the tequila.
The Last Straw
UFC events became a key part of O’Sullivan’s business over the last four years, he said, as he bought pay-per-view events, marketed to local fans, and developed a community of regulars. There’s a Conor McGregor mural on the side of his building. But now fights are available at home on Paramount+, so he’s opted not to continue buying the commercial pay-per-views. For committed venues, Joe Hand sells a UFC bundle subscription including marquee numbered events as well as smaller MMA, jiu-jitsu, boxing and Power Slap contests, giving bar owners more content to work with.
At first glance, consumer-facing streamers have little incentive to simplify out-of-home access. They’ve paid millions for rights, after all, often with the primary goal of getting customers to sign up directly for their service.
But commercial distributors contend there are still benefits of putting the game on in bars. Doing so can boost ratings and thus help sell ads. There’s also the promotional factor of having the game on—or even having a poster for it up at the local tavern. And the sports themselves surely benefit from the extra exposure, particularly in cases where fan communities can blossom time zones away from where events are held.
Bar owners sound eager for someone to put all the pieces together. They’re willing to pay, recognizing that live sports continue to drive business. Bar spending increased 4% year-over-year this January, according to Bank of America data. Lively watch parties still offer something that can’t be replicated at home, even as gargantuan TVs become living room staples. Women’s sports-focused watering holes represent a particularly fast-growing segment, buoyed by increased airtime for women’s leagues—assuming the commercial broadcast licensing for those contests can be tracked down. Allen, meanwhile, will do whatever it takes to keep showing the Buckeyes.
Proprietors would probably even pay extra for the convenience of a single, straightforward system. Installing new routers and server racks to handle more streams would be fine (if the tech proves reliable at scale), they say. So would sticking with satellite.
“Sell your packages to a provider, and we’ll willingly pay for them,” Mooney said. “But to have to have so many different providers and ways of showing and streaming and making sure that you’re ahead of the game at all times with that, it’s a big challenge.”
Maybe commercial and residential sports offerings aren’t that different, after all. At the bar, at least there’s someone to commiserate with.