Atlanta Sports Bars Split After a Host-City World Cup

Atlanta sports bars spent the World Cup competing with a free outdoor festival that drew more than 500,000 people. Mercedes-Benz Stadium staged eight matches. The rooms that held a crowd were the ones that picked a side of that flood.

A March survey of food-first sports bars around metro Atlanta treated kitchens as the difference. Kitchens still mattered. So did whether you sat beside the stadium, beside a square with giant screens, or a long drive north in Milton.

The Fan Fest Sold Burgers Too

The Atlanta World Cup Host Committee closed the city’s run on July 16 after a July 15 semifinal between Argentina and England. It counted 544,516 fans across eight matches at Mercedes-Benz Stadium, and more than 500,000 visitors at the FIFA Fan Festival in Centennial Olympic Park over 19 days, averaging more than 27,000 guests a day.

That park was not a quiet overflow lawn. It ran live broadcasts, concerts, and its own food and drink. Figures shared by the Georgia World Congress Center Authority put Fan Fest food and beverage net at $2.46 million. General admission-plus tickets ran $45 to $65.

Inside the stadium, Mercedes-Benz kept Fan First pricing: $2 sodas, $2 hot dogs, $3 bottles of water, and $5 cheeseburgers. A cheap official meal is a direct rival to a sports-bar kitchen two blocks away.

ATLANTA’S HOST-CITY TALLY

• Match crowd: 544,516 people went through Mercedes-Benz Stadium for eight World Cup games.
• Park festival: More than 500,000 visitors used the Fan Fest across 19 days.
• Local parties: Local groups hosted more than 150 community events and watch parties.
• Transit load: MARTA carried more than 2.5 million riders, close to a 200 percent increase from regular ridership.

The Atlanta Convention and Visitors Bureau estimated 442,000 hotel room nights from June 13 to July 16. England supporters, in town for a semifinal, filled downtown rooms in a way locals could hear on the till. The mass product was still free or cheap standing room under a screen, not a two-hour wait for fish and chips.

A Second Brewhouse, Blocks From the Stadium

The Brewhouse Cafe has been the city’s soccer bar since 1997, at 401 Moreland Avenue NE in Little Five Points. Men in Blazers named it America’s best soccer bar in March 2025 after more than 23,000 votes, with more than 1,600 bars receiving at least one. Owner Humberto Bermudez tied that vote to the room he already ran.

The success is we are Atlanta United’s No. 1 pub partner and the TVs, the sounds, the ambience, people from all over the world here in Atlanta come and watch their teams.

Humberto Bermudez, co-owner, The Brewhouse Cafe

Roger Bennett, who runs Men in Blazers, called the result little surprise in a city that can feel like the beating heart of the American game when the stadium is full. He had already been in the Little Five Points room. The World Cup asked a harder question: would that culture travel two miles west?

Little Five Points Held the Regulars

The original cafe kept the scarves, the patio, and the early kickoff brunch. Atlanta United opened its summer circuit there on June 12 with Canada against Bosnia and Herzegovina at 3 p.m., then the United States against Paraguay at 9 p.m., with club players Miguel Almirón and Matías Galarza in the Paraguay side. Bermudez told visitors he wanted a high-energy room of locals and travelers. Both of his locations later took a clear bump from watch-party nights.

South Downtown Took the Stadium Walk

The second room is now open at 91 Broad Street. The bar’s own copy places it just blocks from Mercedes-Benz Stadium and State Farm Arena, built for fans who watch live, then walk down the street to keep arguing. Atlanta United staged Czechia against South Africa there at noon on June 18. After Spain beat Argentina in the July 19 final, Atlanta soccer host Jason Longshore closed his tournament show from that South Downtown floor.

That is the second-order move the March list only hinted at. Brewhouse did not try to beat the Fan Fest. It opened a tap on the walk home from the stadium and left the old room for people who never wanted downtown.

Where Atlanta United Sent the Watch Parties

Atlanta United published an official summer watch-party schedule and sent flags, giveaways, and a traveling crowd to its pub partners. Seating was first come, first served. Parties started an hour before kickoff. On June 25, every partner pub was on the list for the United States against Türkiye.

UNITED’S SUMMER PUB STOPS

• June 12: Brewhouse Cafe in Little Five Points hosts Canada-Bosnia, then USA-Paraguay.
• June 18: The South Downtown Brewhouse takes Czechia against South Africa at noon.
• June 25: All official pubs show USA against Türkiye at 10 p.m.
• July 18: Park Tavern draws the third-place match, with the final assigned to CHIRINGA the next day.

Park Tavern, at 500 10th Street NE on Piedmont Park, is one of those official partners. It lists over 25 high-definition screens inside and on the patio, United giveaways twice a season, and a granite building that used to be the park’s horse stables. On July 19 the city also put a free final watch party on that same park, with food vendors and a Ludacris set after the whistle. A park bar with a club calendar still had to live next to a free stage on the grass.

Der Biergarten, SweetWater, Fado, El Tesoro, and The Tavern at Live! took other dates. If you were not on that circuit, you programmed yourself.

Grant Park’s Late Kitchen and a Jerk Sandwich

Grant Park sat off the stadium spine and still ate. The Beverly, the project of restaurateur Mario Johnson and chef Dudley Isidore since 2019, sells Caribbean-American plates the March list already flagged: rasta pasta, jerk chicken sandwiches, tropical cocktails, jerk egg rolls, pineapple barbecue wings, and about 20 beers on tap. It is a food room that happens to have screens, which is a different bet from a soccer pub that happens to fry tenders.

Manny’s at Grant Park is the other neighborhood answer. It is a low-key pub with rotating drafts, wine, and cheap cocktails, and it runs a late kitchen until 1 a.m. On World Cup mornings it opened early for people in club shirts who wanted a pint before kickoff. Halfway Crooks in nearby Summerhill did the same. Those rooms did not need a Fan Fest gate. They needed regulars who refused to stand in a park.

Neither Grant Park kitchen was on United’s printed summer grid the way Brewhouse and Park Tavern were. They still sat close enough to the city’s soccer belt, Little Five Points to the park, to catch people who wanted a plate and a stool.

Decatur Ran a 34-Day Outdoor Screen

East of downtown, Decatur built its own festival. WatchFest ran 34 days of free daily outdoor match showings from June 11 through July 19, with 60-plus matches on three screens on Decatur Square, live music most days, food trucks, and indoor WatchSpots in local pubs. Big Boi played the June 11 kickoff. The War and Treaty played June 25. The Indigo Girls closed the July 19 final. Admission to the screens was free.

That square sits on top of the Decatur MARTA station. The Po’Boy Shop and Basement Bar, the food-first Decatur room on the March list, sells more than 20 po’boys on Leidenheimer bread from New Orleans, with an underground bar under the counter-service shop. A 34-day outdoor screen on the square is both a gift and a rival: it puts thousands of fans in walking range, and it feeds them from trucks.

Lee Fewell, manager and bartender at Brick Store Pub on the square, said the garden filled and the bar hit full capacity on match days. The United States’ first game was the biggest day in the pub’s 29 years. Across the square, Siam Thai sold out of beer and restocked at a supermarket. Decatur’s open-container zones let that spill move. A basement po’boy bar in that weather is not fighting Mercedes-Benz Stadium. It is fighting a free lawn with a stage.

What a Milton Italian Beef Offered

Bobby G’s Chicago Eatery & Sports Bar in Milton never sat in that flood. It sells Italian beef, Chicago-style pizza, and hot dogs, with dart boards and a wall of screens, and it plays to Atlanta and Chicago teams on GA Highway 9. For a family that did not want downtown security lines, that was the point. For a traveler with a semifinal ticket, it was a different metro.

Skol Brewing Co. went the other way. The Nordic-themed downtown room in the 200 Peachtree Street building pours its own beer with cheese curds and smoked wings, and it already knew how to throw a sports night. It sat in the hotel-and-MARTA crush, close enough to steal a pre-match hour, far enough from Little Five Points to miss the scarf crowd.

Woofs Sports Bar, at 494 Plasters Avenue NE since 2002, is still Atlanta’s gay sports bar, with a patio, pool, darts, and a Cuban sandwich that regulars order on purpose. Televisions cover the walls. It was never going to be the England supporters’ downtown headquarters, and it did not need to be. A World Cup is a month. A neighborhood sports bar is a weeknight habit.

THE MARCH LIST, AFTER THE CUP

The split is geographic, and it is also about who owns the night when the park screens go dark. Downtown sold volume. The neighborhood rooms sold repeat business. Milton sold distance on purpose.

The Women’s Bar That Outlasted July

Jolene Jolene was the bonus on that March list, still moving from pop-ups at Pullman Yards toward a permanent Kirkwood room in the old Argonaut space. Founder Chelsea Fishman dated the idea to the 2023 Women’s World Cup in Sydney. She opened in time for the men’s tournament anyway, with a soft launch in May 2026, weekend hours first, then a full calendar at 1963 Hosea L. Williams Drive SE.

What if there was a space where women’s sports were the default? Where the sound was up, the energy was high, and the community was loud, proud, and connected?

Chelsea Fishman, founder, Jolene Jolene

Her about page still frames the bar as the place where women’s sports were the default, with Atlanta teams of both genders on the rest of the slate, kids allowed, and a dog-friendly patio. Manager Catalina Diaz has called Kirkwood close-knit and said the room wants to keep giving back to the people who got it open. The Kickstarter for the last of the build sat at a $50,000 goal.

The men’s World Cup ended on July 19. On Sept. 27, Dream fans packed the same room for Game 1 of a WNBA first-round series against the Washington Mystics. Atlanta won 92-77. Bar manager Britney Carr said the crowd pulled her into the game. The host-city outdoor machine had been packed up for two months. The women’s bar that used the summer as a launch window still had a night that looked like a final.

South Downtown’s Brewhouse is still a short walk from the stadium. Park Tavern still looks at the grass where the city put a free screen. The Fan Fest’s $2.46 million in food and drink is in the authority’s books. The rooms that treated July as a one-month land grab already lost the argument. The ones that treated it as a second door, or as a reason to finally open, still have the keys.