61.0°,
Mostly Cloudy Dreaming of a green Super Bowl
Sports bars cash in on Jets' playoff run
Sports bar owner Ben Fraiser thanks his God that New York has two professional football teams: If the Giants aren’t making a run at the Super Bowl, then —at least these days — the new-look Jets just may be. “That’s one of the great things about New York, if you don’t have one team, then hopefully you have the other,” said Fraiser, who co-owns the Beach House on West Beech Street. “Maybe next year it’ll be the Giants again.”
While eleven years have elapsed since the Jets last played in an AFC championship game, it’s the second time in two years that Long Beach bars are raking in the bigger bucks on a local football team headed into the most highly-rated single sporting events each year.
After the Giants upset the undefeated New England Patriot in Super Bowl XLII, in Feb. 2008, the Jets on Sunday will line up against the Indianapolis Colts in the championship game with a chance to play in Super Bowl XLIV in Miami on Feb. 7.
This year, the business script remains the same for sports bar owners: the deeper a New York team goes into the playoffs, the more fans come in to watch the games and enjoy their buffalo wings, sliders and beers. Fraiser estimates that sales receipts have skyrocketed 75 percent when the Jets and Giants play in the post season.
“There’s got to be a word stronger than crazy, stronger than bananas,” Fraiser said when trying to describe the scene at the Beach House last Sunday when the crowd cheered on the Jets to their 17-14 triumph over the San Diego Chargers. “It was such a great vibe.”
Bar-goers reserved all the tables at the Beach House before the game, and the day after they were doing the same for Sunday’s match up. Fraiser is preparing with extra staff.
Both he and Tom Corning, who has owned Minnesota’s on West Beech Street since 1994, find that during the playoffs more patrons come in well before the game starts and celebrate a win past midnight. “It creates a great buzz around town,” said Corning, who estimates his business has more than doubled during the playoffs.
Corning has reason to anticipate an overflow of patrons on Sunday. His biggest crowd ever was the Jets’ last AFC championship appearance in Denver in 1999.
