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.
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