Before NFL kickoff: a bar's checklist for football season

The NFL’s Kickoff Weekend runs September 9 to 10 and 13 to 14 this year, and college football Saturdays are already under way. For a sports bar, and for plenty of taprooms with a screen or two, the next five months are decided now: by who shows up in the map for “where to watch the game”, by which room looks like the right crowd, and by whether the people who came for the opener come back for week two.

A week out is late for a full plan, but not for the parts that matter most. Here is the checklist we are working through with bar owners this week, roughly in order of how much difference each item makes.

The season you are planning for

The calendar is fixed and public. After kickoff, the NFL’s important-dates page lists Wild Card Weekend for January 16 to 18, and Super Bowl LXI at SoFi Stadium in Inglewood on February 14. That date matters: next year’s Super Bowl lands on Valentine’s Day, so the watch party and the date night will compete for the same evening, and the decision about which crowd your room is for that night is worth making early.

The size of the prize is real. The National Retail Federation’s survey for this year’s Super Bowl found a record 213.1 million adults planned to tune in, and 18.2 million planned to watch at a bar or restaurant.

The other side is a market that is not growing. Gallup’s latest poll, published August 20, found that 54% of adults drink, a record low for the second year in a row, and that 17% have substituted nonalcoholic drinks for alcohol. Among drinkers who use those alternatives, 38% say they drink more of them than they used to. A game-day crowd is a group, and groups go where everyone at the table can order.

There is a seasonal pull to plan around too. The Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau’s monthly beer data for 2024 shows brewery shipments of about 13.04 million barrels in August, 11.45 million in October and 10.38 million in November. Those are shipments rather than pints poured, but the direction is the one most bar owners feel: football is what holds the fall up as patio weather fades.

Fix the map before the first game

Most game-day decisions start with a search on a phone an hour before kickoff.

• Hours. Check that Sunday opening times match the early games, and add special hours now for Monday and Thursday nights if you open late or stay open later. A wrong “closed” in the map loses the group before anyone reads further.
• Photos. Add recent photos of the screens, the sound setup and a full room on a game day. The question being asked is “what is it like in there on Sunday”, and a photo of an empty bar at 3 pm answers it badly.
• Events posts. Google’s Business Profile help describes Events posts with a title, start and end dates and times. Post the opener as an event, then set up the season’s regular slots: the Sunday games, Monday night, the local college team’s Saturdays.
• Attributes and menu. Mark what applies, from outdoor seating to the screens, and keep the food menu current. Game-day food is a reason to pick one bar over another.

Keep drink prices off the profile

This is the mistake we see most in September. Google’s Maps content policy says uploaded content may not feature offers for products subject to local legal regulation, alcohol named among them, and may not show deals, coupons or pricing for them. A “$3 domestics during the game” Offer post breaks that rule. The watch party itself is fine.

One detail catches owners out. Google says that for single-location food and drink businesses, posts about events, deals or specials from Facebook and Instagram may show automatically on the mobile profile. If your Instagram is full of drink-price graphics, some of them may end up on Google. Lead your social with the game, the food and the room, and keep drink pricing to the menu and wherever your state allows it.

State rules sit on top. Texas, for example, says happy hour prices must end at 11 p.m. and bans two-for-one drink sales at on-premise retailers. Read your own state agency’s guidance before printing game-day specials.

Book paid social now, and check the new Google policy

If you plan to put money behind the season, start this week. Pick the games your crowd cares about, promote each as an event to people within a short trip of the room, and set every audience to legal drinking age. Meta has its own alcohol ad policy; read the current version before the first paid post.

If you run Google search ads, note the date. Search Engine Roundtable reported on August 28 that Google will update its alcohol advertising policy on September 30. Anyone with live alcohol campaigns should reread the policy that week and check every ad and landing page against the new wording.

Make week two happen

The opener is easy. The fourth Sunday is where a season is won.

• Capture the crowd. An opt-in sign-up at the bar for a game-day text or email, with a clear way to opt out. Use it for the week’s schedule, not for drink prices.
• Give a reason to return. A regulars’ table for the local team, a themed food menu for rivalry weeks, a food special that changes weekly. Keep anything involving drinks inside your state’s rules.
• Ask for reviews the same way every time. A neutral request after the visit, no free drink attached, and a reply to every review within a day or two.
• Look after the table that is not drinking. A real nonalcoholic list, shown on the menu and in a post or two, is how the designated driver stops being the reason a group goes elsewhere.

What to do this month

• Correct Sunday, Monday and Thursday hours on the profile before September 9.
• Post the opener and every regular game slot as Google Events posts, with recent photos of the screens and a full room.
• Remove drink-price graphics from the profile and from the Instagram posts most likely to surface there.
• Book event-based paid social for the first four weeks, with audiences set to legal drinking age.
• Put September 30 on the calendar to reread Google’s alcohol ad policy if you run search ads.
• Decide now what your room is for on February 14.

Football season rewards the bar that looks ready before the first snap and keeps looking ready in week ten. Our page on marketing for bars, breweries and taprooms sets out the full plan, and our Google Business Profile work covers the hours, photos and Events posts that game-day searches run on.