Most Sports Bars Chase Big Screens and Cheap Beer — Here’s How One Owner’s Twist Is Filling Every Seat
How Brooks Schaden’s customer-focused strategy grew his sports bar fast and made every game memorable.
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Key Takeaways
- Rather than relying on standard restaurant promotions, Schaden uses brand and team partnerships to access built-in audiences.
- Away-game watch parties, mascots, announcers and team activations give fans a reason to show up beyond food and drink specials.
- His innovative approach challenges the status quo of traditional sports bars, making room for more community and collaboration.
Walk into Tom’s Watch Bar and it becomes obvious that this is more than a sports bar built around food and televisions.
It is a venue designed around fandom itself. The game is the reason people are there. Everything else is built to rise to that moment.
For Brooks Schaden, co-CEO and co-founder, the idea starts with a simple truth. Fans can watch anything anywhere now, but the games that matter are still communal. “The fundamental premise behind Tom’s Watch Bar is that sports are about community,” Schaden says. “People can watch whatever game they want on their phone, but they still want to get together for the games that matter.”
That belief shapes the space. Tom’s Watch Bar is designed less like a dining room and more like a shared viewing environment. Seating is open. Sightlines are wide. Guests lean, stand, move and interact the way fans do in stadiums. Traditional restaurant layouts fight that behavior. Tom’s Watch Bar embraces it. “You might have a table for four,” Schaden says, “but people are leaning against it like it’s a bar, talking to the table next to them.”
Technology supports the experience without calling attention to itself. With sports spread across cable, streaming platforms and pay-per-view, flexibility matters more than flash. Fans should never wonder if a game will be on. Schaden describes the goal simply: building a reputation where people “don’t even call, they just know.”
That confidence is operationally demanding. Sports-driven traffic ignores traditional restaurant dayparts, and timing errors are costly. “You can go from twenty people to a thousand really fast,” Schaden explains. Staffing, kitchens and service systems are built to flex around the games, not the clock.
What Tom’s Watch Bar ultimately offers is permission: to stay longer, care louder and experience sports the way fandom actually lives today.
Partnerships that scale
Tom’s Watch Bar does not treat partnerships as sponsorships. They are a growth strategy built around shared audiences and mutual credibility. For Schaden, collaboration has always been a way to accelerate awareness without relying on traditional restaurant marketing.
“Building strong partnerships, especially when we’re new and trying to get known, has been critical for us.”
That approach is clear in the brand’s national partnership with Flecha Azul Tequila, backed by Mark Wahlberg. The relationship goes beyond a menu placement. Tom’s Watch Bar gains visibility through Wahlberg’s massive following, while Flecha Azul becomes part of live sports moments across a growing national footprint. The partnership works because it meets fans where they already are, emotionally invested and fully engaged.
The alignment matters. Schaden looks for partners who share values and vision, not just reach.
“We can help them, and they can help us,” he says.
The same thinking drives Tom’s Watch Bar’s collaborations with professional teams and stadiums. The most valuable asset is not signage or impressions. It is access. Team email databases and fan channels deliver attention that restaurants rarely reach on their own.
“When teams send something out, people open it.”
Those partnerships come to life during away game watch parties that feel official rather than promotional. Tom’s Watch Bar works with teams to define specific dates, activations and expectations. The goal is to create a reason for fans to gather when they cannot be in the arena.
That is when the room changes. Mascots move through the space. Cheerleaders stop for photos. In-stadium announcers bring familiar voices into the building. Schaden laughs as he recalls one night when the mascot needed a handler just to make it across the room. “There were so many people trying to get a picture,” he says.
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At that point, the partnership stops feeling like marketing. It becomes part of the experience.
For Tom’s Watch Bar, collaboration is not an add-on. It is how the brand turns attention into momentum and fans into community.
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Key Takeaways
- Rather than relying on standard restaurant promotions, Schaden uses brand and team partnerships to access built-in audiences.
- Away-game watch parties, mascots, announcers and team activations give fans a reason to show up beyond food and drink specials.
- His innovative approach challenges the status quo of traditional sports bars, making room for more community and collaboration.
Walk into Tom’s Watch Bar and it becomes obvious that this is more than a sports bar built around food and televisions.
It is a venue designed around fandom itself. The game is the reason people are there. Everything else is built to rise to that moment.
