From soccer and hockey to baseball and football, Tom’s Watch Bar is built on offering guests a wide variety of sports-viewing experiences.
The sports bars feature wall-to-wall TVs to give customers “the best seat in the house,” Tom Ryan, co-founder, board member and advisor to Tom’s Watch Bar, said during an interview at the ICR Conference in January.
“Our real focus is providing people with a really premium way to watch the sports they love,” Ryan said.
Tom’s format works well. It posted strong financial performance for 2024 — revenue grew 25% and contributed to a 33% bump in profitability; same-store sales and traffic both grew last year, according to a press release emailed to Restaurant Dive. Alcohol sales increased by 34%, driven by premium tequila items.
The chain is parlaying that success into rapid growth. It had 13 units open in January, but plans to open 20 within the next 24 months, more than doubling its store count. This year, Tom’s plans to open between seven and eight locations, according to a press release emailed to Restaurant Dive.
The sports bar industry is becoming a big business, too. Over the past five years, sports bars have had a compound annual growth rate of 2.3% in industry revenue, reaching $2.2 billion in 2024, according to IBIS World.
Several chains have been vying for a piece of this growth. Twin Peaks, which was spun off from Fat Brands into a public company, has a pipeline of over 100 units. Twin Peaks has average unit volumes of over $5 million and is targeting $6.5 million.
Buffalo Wild Wings has leaned into its off-premise-only model, which hit 100 units last year and makes up about one-third of the brand’s sales. Walk-On’s Sports Bistreaux is also focused on growth mode, with plans to open its first corporate-owned location in nearly 10 years in Atlanta later this year.
Tom’s Watch Bar’s financials remain strong. Net revenue rose 206% and unit-level EBITDA grew 230% over the past two years, said Shannon McNeil, co-CEO Tom’s Watch Bar, during an interview at the ICR Conference in January. After the end of 2025, it will be on a run rate of $100 million topline revenue, he said.
“We believe we’re anchored on something that has longevity and consistency and multi-generational impact,” Tom Ryan, co-founder, board member and advisor to Tom’s Watch Bar, said.
What makes Tom’s unique
The emerging chain’s real estate and labor strategy, which differ in approach from most traditional restaurants, help build profitability and employee retention.
The chain focuses on being near stadiums — it’s across the street from the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles and close to the Target Center in Minneapolis, McNeil said. The size of Tom’s Watch Bar locations can range from as little as 5,500 square feet to upwards of 20,000 square feet, such as its locations in Los Angeles, with 8,000 square feet around the sweet spot for the best ROI, McNeil said.
“Our strategy is to get around captured traffic,” McNeil said. He added, however, that the chain isn’t pursuing locations inside stadiums because such units would only be open for games, conventions or other events.
The brand also caters to alumni associations, business crowds and fans of combat sports like the Ultimate Fighting Championship.
“It just makes sense to be in that center of gravity around the stadium, but to be able to cater to all the sports independent of what's going on in the stadium,” Ryan said. “We take the pre- and post-game volume from those gladly.”
One advantage Tom’s Watch Bar has is that it serves guests. This makes for a better consumer experience compared to stadiums, where consumers generally have to leave their seats — and risk missing key plays — to get food and beverages, Ryan said. The experience also can be more social compared to sitting in a row at a game, he added.
“Sometimes the demand for tickets is so huge, compared to stadium capacity, that people just can’t get there,” he said. “So when you put all that together, we’re a great solution on behalf of the teams for their fan base.”
Tom’s also doesn’t use a general manager format typical to restaurants. Instead, they have operating partners who are part owners of their stores, similar to franchisees.
“Their P&L is their P&L to manage on their behalf and ours,” Ryan said.
Having operating partners instead of general managers leading the stores has helped keep turnover levels low, Ryan said. Additionally, servers benefit from high tips — as high as $1,000 on big game days.
“Our retention levels are really high, which ladders back into training expenses and operating expenses and all those things,” Ryan said. “I think the culture itself and our ability to retain great people who are happy doing what they are doing is part of the business model.”
Catering to an evolving sports fan base
From offering as many sports as possible to crafting standard and premium drinks, Tom’s caters to changing demographics of sports fans.
Half of Tom’s Watch Bar’s customers are women. Americans are also watching more sports than before, with the addition of soccer and new leagues and categories within various sports, Ryan said.
“We wallpaper our restaurants with TV screens. That allows us to do two things: engage that diversity of viewing at any given time and also make the promise to our customers that every seat is the best seat in the house,” Ryan said.
Tom’s Watch Bar offers traditional sports bar fare, including nachos, tacos, burgers and chicken wings. But the chain also sells more premium items, as well, such as sushi-grade ahi tuna towers, Asian pot stickers, hummus dip and cornbread pancakes with Nashville hot pickle brine and a prime rib French dip, Ryan said.
The concept sells a lot of craft, domestic and imported beer, but also serves craft cocktails and wine to appeal to a broader demographic. Its alcohol mix is about 55%, but can depend on the season, Ryan said.
Consumption rates are also typically higher with people staying longer to watch a game. Tom’s Watch Bar guests tend to each order one and a half dishes and four to five drinks, Ryan said. Comparatively, traditional restaurant guests eat one dish and have one to two drinks.
Tapping into technology to boost guest experience
Wait staff use handheld tablets, allowing the bar to get drinks out within about a minute. The kitchens are built on speed, as well, with food orders coming out after about eight minutes, McNeil said.
The chain is also looking at some artificial intelligence forecasting tools that will help it plan better for different local and regional games, McNeil said. It has partnered with HotSchedules, which offers an AI tool that can show an operator orders and sales from a past game and project operational needs for the following year. This will help inform food distributors of what the brand’s needs will be on certain game days, for example.
“I think our team has gotten over the last two years much better at doing predictive indexing around labor schedules and making sure food is there and drink is there,” Ryan said.
“Our servers never leave their stations because they’re equipped with headsets and pads and so they can basically stay in place and serve six to eight tables in their range,” Ryan said. If a patron is almost out of a drink, the wait staff can easily see that and offer a refill, for example.
“They have eyes on the customer to make sure that the occasion for them is catered to exactly what they’re looking for,” Ryan said.
Significant white space
Tom’s Watch Bar has significant growth potential, according to Ryan. The chain will open eight locations this year and another 12 next year.
“When you look at the opportunity, even in North America, including Canada, the [white] space there is [multiple] times more than we currently have, and will have at the end of 2026,” Ryan said. “We’ll probably get into a cadence — unless we do something radically different — to get to about 15 a year and just keep going.”
The company may also consider international expansion through joint ventures and through licensed agreements on a multi-site situation, but right now it remains focused on U.S. sports venues, Ryan said.
“For me, it’s about staying grounded and doing one great restaurant at a time,” McNeil said. “That’s what’s important.”
