March Sadness: No basketball games. No customers. Sports bars taking ‘big hits’
No Frills Grill & Sports Bar in southwest Arlington was ready for March Madness.
A banner hung on its front patio that read “March Madness Lives Here,” promoting one of the great sporting events in our country.
Last year, college basketball fans packed the place, leaving work early and posting up to watch the 16 men’s games played on both Thursday and Friday.
This year, though, no fans attended. Nobody took off work. There were no games to watch.
The NCAA shut down March Madness last week amid the coronavirus pandemic. That was a substantial blow to sports bars across the country, but it became an even greater hardship when Tarrant County on Thursday ordered restaurants and bars to close for one week for all but to-go orders.
“It’s very frustrating,” said Tony Crittenden, the 59-year-old manager of No Frills. “It’s not just March Madness being shut down. Baseball shut down. Basketball shut down. It’s a big hit.
“I just hope we can get through this as quick as possible. They say it’s seven days and hopefully that’s it. I think we’ll be OK. If it goes much longer, it may hurt.”
Sports bars throughout the area are suffering substantial losses and uncertain futures. Buffalo Bros, which has locations by TCU and Sundance Square, had to put 90% of its staff on furlough and is running to-go orders with a skeleton crew.
So is Bobby V’s Sports Gallery Cafe in Arlington.
Across the street from No Frills, McCullar’s Irish Pub, had a sign on its front door that simply read: “Sorry. We are only open for take-out orders. Bar and dining room closed.”
An employee, who didn’t identify themselves, only said: “This is our livelihood. Of course we’re scared and nervous.”
March Madness is usually one of the busiest times of years for sports bars. WalletHub projects that sports bars see its chicken wing sales increase by 23%, pizza sales increase by 19% and beer sales increase by 19% throughout the tournament.
For Crittenden, those numbers sound accurate as far as No Frills is concerned.
“Maybe even a little more,” he said. “It’s across the board. Our alcohol sales are higher, our food sales are higher, everything is higher compared to normal. It’s a big hit for the company and a big hit for the employees who counted on extra money to pay their bills.”
Bobby V’s is facing the same uncertain future. Owner Dennis Stanczak is doing his best to weather the storm for now, but acknowledged he had significantly less staff working Thursday than he typically would on the opening of March Madness.
Stanczak had just one cook and one server compared to at least four cooks, a number of servers and bartenders in years past. “We generally have a full bar right now with the games on and a half-full restaurant,” said Stanczak, who has owned the bar for 11 years.
“The TVs would be blaring every game that’s out there. It’s quite a bit different now with no sports on TV for the last week or so. We get a sports guide that’s usually two pages long and the other day there was three items on it.
“March Madness not happening is just devastating for the sports bar industry. Then that followed with the closure of restaurants … you add those two together and it’s going to be hard for a lot of people to stay afloat. The whole service industry is getting devastated.”
Stanczak called the state’s comptroller’s office to see if it would delay the sales tax payments due on Friday and was told no. Stanczak knows bars and restaurants aren’t entitled to the sales tax money, which they collected from customers, but was hopeful some sort of measure could be taken to help soften the initial impact felt by the county’s order that was issued Wednesday night.
“I’m very nervous,” Stanczak said. “I’m just hoping the city government and the state government can come up with some type of relief to keep us from possibly going bankrupt. To-go orders aren’t going to cut it.”
Stanczak said he received one to-go order for lunch by noon on Thursday. To-go orders were slow at No Frills, too, with most people calling to see if the bar was open for patrons even in limited capacity, not to place food orders.
A few sports bars downtown had a decent to-go order day. Buffalo Bros in Sundance Square had a number of orders around lunchtime, and Hooters had a few people picking up food.
But it’s impossible for any of them to replicate the dine-in sales.
“To be completely honest, this is really tough,” said Kristi Setzer, general manager of Buffalo Bros. “We’re as open as we possibly can be in a legal sense. Between both locations, we’re at skeleton crew. It’s a little shocking that we had to furlough 90% of our employees.
“We’re still trying to get the reality of it all. But we appreciate the love and support we’ve gotten at both locations with a lot of regulars coming in and ordering take out.”
Sports bars are brainstorming different ideas of how to generate sales revenue during this time, whether it’s offering some sort of delivery service or pursuing other avenues.
But the sad reality is they could be forced to simply shut down if the sales aren’t justifying staying open until the order is lifted.
“It’s uncharted territory, so we’re winging it right now,” Stanczak said. “I have to have enough sales to support the cook I have here and the food costs and all of that. It’ll be a determination based on the next few days whether we even do take-out.”
Delivering alcohol?
To try and help, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott recently waived a law that allows restaurants to deliver alcoholic beverages with food purchases.
It sounds good and reads nicely on headlines, but several within the industry don’t see it making much of an impact. Most of the sports bars the Star-Telegram visited on Thursday didn’t have any customers asking about alcoholic drinks being delivered.
As Stanczak said, “I’d be OK selling a closed bottle of beer, but no way would I be comfortable with selling a mixed drink. That’s an open container. I don’t want to put anyone in that position. It’s not worth it.”
Setzer said a few customers at Buffalo Bros ordered alcoholic drinks with their delivery order, but it’s not going to offset the loss of dine-in revenue.
At the end of the day, the local bar owners encouraged citizens to order to-go and help the service industry as much as possible in this time.
“The best we can do is put word out on social media and encourage people to show Buffalo Bros some love,” Setzer said.
Added Stanczak: “I’d tell people to order from a mom-and-pop, regardless of which one it is. These independents are the ones most likely to flounder.”
By the numbers
Here’s a look at how much money is usually generated by March Madness (courtesy of WalletHub):
19% more pizza orders during tournament
19% more beer sales during tournament
23% more chicken wing orders during tournament
2.3 billion chicken wing portions consumed by fans during tournament
$2 million estimated price for a 30-second TV ad during championship game
$106 million projected financial impact for Atlanta, which was scheduled to host the Final Four
149 million brackets filled out for the 2019 tournament (By comparison, there were 129 million votes in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.)
$8.5 billion estimated amount wagered on March Madness in 2019
This story was originally published March 20, 2020 at 5:00 AM.
