Minnesota sports bars are in the same bind as a lot of their customers: the games are scattered everywhere, and keeping up means juggling more services, more contracts and more late-night problem solving.
For fans trying to follow the Twins, Wild, Vikings, Timberwolves, Lynx, Frost and United, the list of places to watch keeps getting longer. In the past year alone, the Wild, Twins and Timberwolves each launched standalone streaming services, adding another layer to an already messy setup.
At Graze Food Hall in Minneapolis’ North Loop, director of operations Molly Herrmann said the rhythm changes constantly.
"It's easier to choose à la carte, but it's something that kind of changes every year almost," she told FOX 9.
Over at the Rabbit Hole nearby, co-owner Jay Ettinger said the uncertainty has become part of the routine.
"I was talking with one of my competitors the other day, and we used to call our neighbors down the street if we ran out of ice or $5 bills. Now we call each other to find out what channel games are on," Ettinger said.
For bars and restaurants, the cost climbs fast. A single fan might spend $50-100 a month on subscriptions, but that number balloons once a business starts trying to satisfy a room full of people with different teams and different expectations.
Ettinger said he spends "easily a couple of hundreds [of dollars] a month" to show all the games patrons want.
"And with the football package that we have through DIRECTV, which was kind of a last-minute deal itself until a few weeks before the season … it's tens of thousands of dollars a year," he says.
Jim Fehrenkamp, co-owner of Mac's Industrial Sports Bar in northeast Minneapolis, said the math gets ugly in a hurry.
"It makes it insanely expensive to navigate, and it switches all the time," Fehrenkamp said. He estimates the bar spends more than $3,000 each month on streaming platforms combined.
"We used to just get the NFL Ticket, and that solved the NFL season for us. But now it's Netflix on Thursdays or [Amazon] Prime on Thursday.
It's constant, and even colleges are now getting their own streaming services," he says. "I have 16 TVs, and DIRECTV charges you per box.
You got to make your regular customers happy, but if you have three people coming in and getting a couple of orders of wings and three or four beers each - is that enough to warrant spending that much money?"
Even when the subscriptions are in place, the system still leaves owners chasing updates, switching inputs and dealing with customers who want a game that may be buried on yet another platform.
"Them waiting to do this stuff [announce streaming partners] at the start of the season, like the Wild and the Wolves this year, it's like an athlete waiting until right before the start of season to have ACL surgery," says Fehrenkamp. "People get pissed off at you while they're sitting there, trying to watch the game with their jersey of their favorite team."
Ettinger said the day-to-day management can get intense, especially with so many TVs and so many requests.
"We've got eight DIRECTV boxes. We've got about 62 TVs … It's a lot of communication, a lot of management, a lot of late-night calls because people are requesting things, and they can't find it," Ettinger says. "Right now, it's a bit of a challenge."
Some providers have tried to bundle more games and streams together, including Comcast and DIRECTV. Still, bar owners say the irony is hard to miss: streaming was supposed to simplify choice, and now they’re looking for the kind of all-in-one setup cable used to provide.
"We have come full circle, because what streaming offered was to pick and choose what you want, but you can't do that anymore," says Herrmann. "So now it comes back to a cable package is basically what you're paying for."
Fehrenkamp said business-specific options would go a long way.
"'Here is your one-time fee, it's going to be crazy expensive anyway, but at least you're not putzing around and changing inputs'," he says. "I wish there was an easier way to navigate each season."
Ettinger said owners are still trying to keep pace with a fan base that expects games on big screens and expects them now.
"We're certainly living in an on-demand generation right now in the world, and people are expecting us to get [games] on our 55-, 65-, and 85-inch TVs. We're doing our best to accommodate everyone, but it would be great if we could find it all on one platform.
That would be the simplest route," says Ettinger. "I don't see that happening in the near future.
I think down the road it will happen, but I think in the next year or two, we're going to continue this scramble."
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