Ahead of the first World Cup matches in June, Tom’s Watch Bar Inglewood reached out to several international fan groups in the area. The 10,000-square-foot sports bar, directly across the street from Los Angeles Stadium, wanted to host an informal kickoff party on one of their behalfs.
Bosnia and Herzegovina supporters accepted the invitation, informing the bar that they expected a few hundred fans to show up. The estimate did not prove accurate.
“Three thousand people ended up coming,” says Brooks Schaden, co-CEO of Tom’s, which has 17 other large-scale locations across the country. “They were spilling into the street. Police had to come out and help contain things.”
It was an early glimpse of the month and a half to follow.
The World Cup’s first full week became the highest-grossing in the company’s 12-year existence, and business continues humming. The Inglewood location brought in more than $160,000 in a single day when the U.S. men’s national team played Australia on June 19; its flagship Denver venue “did roughly $100,000 a day, like five days in a row” later in the month, per Schaden.
