Which US Cities Have the Most Sports Bars Per Resident?
The countdown to Super Bowl Sunday is underway, and whether you’re a diehard fan of one of the teams, your average sports lover, or just someone who cares about the commercials and the halftime show, it’s undeniably one of the best TV nights of the year.
Well over 100 million people will be tuning in to watch the big game, and of those, tens of millions of Americans will flock to their local sports bars to enjoy the action with their friends.
Of course, most of those sports bars will be packed shoulder-to-shoulder with fans cheering and hanging on to every play. So, if you want to get a good spot, you’ll probably want to arrive well in advance of kickoff time.
That got us thinking — which cities across the country offer the biggest selection of sports bars per capita?
In other words, which cities will give football fans the best chance of being able to find a great local sports bar where they can enjoy the big game?
We turned to the data analytics team at Mindnet Analytics to find out. We looked at the 300 most populous cities and towns across the country to figure out which ones have the biggest selection of sports bars in proportion to their number of residents. After crunching the numbers by looking at each city’s total number of sports bars (according to Yelp data) compared to their total population, here’s what we found.
Interactive Map by City & State
Using the interactive map below, you can see the number of sports bars per 100,000 residents in 300 cities and towns across the US.
Note: Mobile users may want to flip their device to display horizontally for a better experience.
How to Use the Interactive Map Tool
The above map is fully interactive and easy to use.
If you want to see the data for your area, you can either manually zoom in on your city or use the search feature in the upper right-hand corner to type in your town.
From there, just click on the nearest dot on the map and you’ll see data on that area’s number of sports bars per 100,000 residents.
A quick note for mobile users — you’ll probably find the map tool looks and works better if you flip your device to display horizontally.
20 Cities with the Most Sports Bars Per Resident
| City | State | Sports Bars per 100k residents |
| Fort Lauderdale | Florida | 22 |
| Huntington Beach | California | 15.52 |
| Tempe | Arizona | 14.61 |
| Sioux Falls | South Dakota | 13.8 |
| Topeka | Kansas | 13.73 |
| Henderson | Nevada | 13.23 |
| Myrtle Beach | South Carolina | 13.16 |
| Arlington | Texas | 12.84 |
| Cedar Rapids | Iowa | 12.72 |
| Fargo | North Dakota | 12.65 |
| Peoria | Arizona | 12.2 |
| Green Bay | Wisconsin | 12.12 |
| Lincoln | Nebraska | 12.11 |
| Glendale | Arizona | 11.99 |
| Lakewood | Colorado | 11.56 |
| Wilmington | North Carolina | 11.53 |
| Tacoma | Washington | 11.12 |
| Overland Park | Kansas | 10.86 |
| Murfreesboro | Tennessee | 10.64 |
| Vancouver | Washington | 10.39 |
20 Cities with the Fewest Sports Bars Per Resident
| City | State | Sports Bars per 100k residents |
| Concord | California | 0.9 |
| Bel Air South | Maryland | 0.9 |
| Miami | Florida | 0.86 |
| Bonita Springs | Florida | 0.86 |
| Indio | California | 0.82 |
| Ogden | Utah | 0.81 |
| Anchorage | Alaska | 0.8 |
| Boston | Massachusetts | 0.78 |
| Mauldin | South Carolina | 0.67 |
| Hartford | Connecticut | 0.65 |
| Riverside | California | 0.62 |
| St. Louis | Missouri | 0.61 |
| Spring Valley | Nevada | 0.46 |
| Navarre | Florida | 0.45 |
| Aguadilla | Puerto Rico | 0.38 |
| Los Angeles | California | 0.35 |
| New Haven | Connecticut | 0.35 |
| Round Lake Beach | Illinois | 0.35 |
| Bridgeport | Connecticut | 0.32 |
| Provo | Utah | 0.18 |
Methodology
We used the Yelp API to download records of all of the sports bars located in all US cities with populations of at least 50,000 residents. To identify the latitude-longitude centroids of each city, we used the US Cities database. We identified bars as “sports bars” by using the internal Yelp category “sportsbar”. For each city, we downloaded records of all sports bars within a 25-mile radius using the business search endpoint.
Some data cleaning was necessary to ensure valid results. Namely, we had to remove duplicate records of sports bars that were returned if they were within 25 miles of multiple cities. We addressed this by only keeping records of bars where the name of the city we searched on was present in the address of the sports bar.
To calculate the number of sports bars per 100,000 residents we divided the total count of sports bars we found for each city by the population of that city divided by 100,000.
Other Useful Resources
Don’t feel like going out to a sports bar to watch the big game? Check out these guides we’ve put together for legally watching your favorite sports without cable:
