[LINK] "Gay Sports Bars Tap a Growing Market"

[rfmcdonald]

The subject of Kurt Soller's article at Bloomberg BusinessWeek is actually starting to interest me.

From the outside, Boxers NYC looks like the kind of sports bar you might find in a suburban strip mall. Large windows reveal 14 flat-screen TVs, two pool tables, and a dartboard. Inside, men in suits sit atop vinyl-covered stools, fidget with their BlackBerrys, and swill pints of beer—served by bartenders dressed in their underwear. After all, Boxers wasn't named for the sweet science, but for the style of skivvies its clients prefer.

Less than a year after opening in Manhattan's Flatiron district, Boxers has become a pioneer of the gay sports bar movement. Equal parts generic pub and gay boîte, it has Lady Gaga on its speakers and Knicks games on its TVs. "The sports theme allows people to be comfortable," says 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 an old-fashioned watering hole 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, Hynds says, sales are tracking 45 percent above their initial forecast.

In the past few years, nearly a dozen sports bars catering to a gay clientele have opened around the country, including Crew in Chicago, Fritz in Boston, GYM Sportsbar 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 SideLines 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.</blockquote Go, read.