Ft. Worth restaurateur on carrying NBA, NFL & other sports: ‘It’s highway robbery’
As a successful business owner who operates multiple restaurants and sports bars in Fort Worth, Jon Bonnell is hardly immune from the pain and frustration that sports fans now experience when they want to watch a game.
- They increasingly don’t know what channel the game is actually on. NBC, ABC, NBC, Fox, CBS ESPN, ESPN +, Peacock, Prime, Netflix, CBS, TBS, TNT and the list is 74,491 miles long of channels that potentially could be carrying the game you want to watch.
- They don’t know if they actually have that channel, even though their TV bill is pushing well over $150 a month.
- They utter curse words when they see they have to pay extra to watch it.
“Do not get me started on this,” Bonnell said on Monday morning in a phone interview. “It’s highway robbery, and I don’t see a way around it.”
The NBA’s new 11-year TV contract that started this season places premium dates on exclusive streaming platforms, Amazon Prime and Peacock. The first-world frustration of trying to jump from one channel to a streaming app to find the games hit its latest summit on Sunday night when Game 7 of the Eastern Conference semifinals between the Pistons and Cavaliers was on the Jeff Bezos Network.
Bonnell has seen an increase in the customer who comes to one of his restaurants specifically because they don’t have “that channel” at home and automatically expects his establishment to carry it. As sports leagues have expanded from four channels to an endless array of options that now includes streaming apps, bars and restaurants are forced to make a hard choice that will cost them either money up front, or customers lost/alienated.
The new sports bar experience
For decades, patrons sit at the bar and ask the server to “change the channel” to a game of choice. The bartender is now more apt to say, “Sorry, we don’t have that here.”
In the case of Rex’s Bar & Grill in Fort Worth, they have the game, but it’s available on one or two of the establishment’s 60-plus monitors. So the person may have to move from the general dining area to the bar to see that one screen.
Of Bonnell’s restaurants, Buffalo Bros. is a dedicated sports bar. The rest — Waters, Jon’s Grille and Bonnell’s — may feature a TV or two, but they are not establishments whose identity and hook is “the game” and specific games may not be available.
“We had a deal at Buffalo Bros. that we will have every fight, every UFC, every boxing match, and every sporting event, and we are not going to charge cover; and it costs a ton of money,” Bonnell said. “Now we’re in this Catch-22, because now there is so much streaming, people at home don’t have access to the games the way they used to, so they’re going to the bars to watch those games.”
The catch is that if you are a bar/restaurant that wants to carry the games, the provider charges more.
Bonnell estimates that it costs $7,500 per month to put the games on the TV monitors at one of his three Buffalo Bros. locations in the greater Fort Worth area. And that is before he is hit with the newly adjusted price tag that will come with carrying NFL games this season.
That process involves a professional who vets the establishment, and determines a dollar amount based on hours of operation and potential occupancy.
If it costs the average fan approximately $1,500 a season to have access to all have the NFL’s regular-season, and postseason, televised games, that price goes to Pluto for a bar owner.
“We are all getting killed on this,” Bonnell said. “At a Buffalo Bros, it’s worth it because that has been our concept from the beginning. A place like Jon’s Grille, we are not paying nearly as much, but we don’t get everything.”
And, if you try to carry the game through an illegal method, local private investigators are hired to patrol places to catch them in the act, which results in a large fine.
Before you go, call ahead
During the heyday of the pay-per-view boxing match, specifically Mike Tyson’s era on HBO, people would call a bar to see if the fight was going to be carried. Now, a person may have to call a bar or restaurant to see if they are going to have a specific NBA playoff game, or the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Rex’s Bar & Grill will be one of those places, because it paid the price to have DirecTV.
Sports leagues and their broadcast partners have seen that the single most valuable asset in media is live programming, and they are all squeezing customers and fans who have yet to cry “Uncle.” They keep adding to their monthly TV bill because their desire to have access to the games is greater than their discipline to say no more.
Some of the pain and frustration is associated with a new way to consume live entertainment that is slower, slightly unfamiliar, and clunky. We are in the first quarter of that evolution, and sports leagues are taking the low-risk view that consumers will drift into streaming; the technology will improve to the point where jumping from one streaming app to the next is as easy as changing the channel.
The rest of the pain and frustration is that, whether you’re a bar owner or just a football fan, it’s just so damn expensive.
This story was originally published May 19, 2026 at 5:30 AM with the headline "Ft. Worth restaurateur on carrying NBA, NFL & other sports: ‘It’s highway robbery’."
