Featured events


7-9 September 2012
Brussels Games
Brussels

Brussels Gay Sports will offer a weekend of fun and fairplay in the capital of Europe, with volleyball, swimming, badminton, and tennis, as well as fitness and hiking.

Learn more HERE.
26-28 October 2012
QueergamesBern
Bern, Switzerland

The success of the first edition of the QueergamesBern proved the need for an LGBT multisport event in Switzerland. This year will be even bigger, with badminton, bowling, running, walking, floorball.

Learn more HERE.
17-20 January 2013
Sin City Shootout
Las Vegas
The 7th Sin City Shootout will feature softball, ice hockey, tennis, wrestling, basketball, dodgeball, bodybuilding and basketball.

Learn more HERE.

13-16 June 2013
IGLFA Euro Cup
Dublin
After this year's edition in Budapest at the EuroGames, the IGLFA Euro Cup heads to Dublin for 2013, hosted by the Dublin Devils and the Dublin Phoenix Tigers.

Learn more HERE.

Friday, January 14, 2011

Trend for gay sports bars develops

From Bloomberg news via Outsports:

From the outside, Boxers NYC looks like a sports bar in a suburban strip mall. Large windows reveal 14 flat-screen TVs, two pool tables and a dartboard. Inside, men in suits sit on vinyl-covered stools, fidget with their BlackBerrys and swill pints of beer -- served by bartenders dressed in their underwear. Boxers wasn’t named for practitioners of the sweet science, but for the style of skivvies.

Less than a year after opening in Manhattan’s Flatiron district, Boxers has become a pioneer of a gay sports bar trend. It has Lady Gaga blaring from its speakers and New York Knicks games on its TVs, Bloomberg Businessweek reports in its Jan. 17 issue.

“The sports theme allows people to be comfortable,” said Bob Fluet, a co-owner who met his business partner, Rob Hynds, in a gay softball league. The two realized that while the gay community had plenty of nightlife options, it lacked old- fashioned bars where guys could root for the home team. “I don’t want to go to some fancy lounge and drink martinis,” says Hynds. “Or end up at a leather bar.”

So far it’s working: Since Boxers opened in April 2010, sales are tracking 45 percent above their initial forecast, Hynds says.

In the past few years, almost a dozen sports bars catering to a gay clientele have opened around the country, including Crew in Chicago, Fritz in Boston and GYM Sportsbar in Los Angeles.

The sudden success has even surprised some proprietors. “Quite frankly, we had no idea that gay men and women really loved sports,” said Jennifer Morales, the marketing director of SideLines sports bar, outside Fort Lauderdale, Florida.

Keep reading HERE.

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