Bully's Sports Bar & Grill and Flowing Tide Pub are closed as part of the state's mandatory closure of nonessential businesses. The closure comes during a time when their businesses would be flooded with basketball fans for the annual NCAA Tournament. March Madness is canceled because of the COVID-19 outbreak. So not only are they closed, but they are missing an would-be opportunity to bring in some extra business.

"It's so busy during March Madness when you've got four, five, six games going on at one time and people are yelling," Brian Clary, Director of Operations and Marketing for Bully's Sports Bar & Grill said. "They're all wearing their team's colors and everything. So it's huge."

The first week of the tournament is especially exciting for fans, and the sports bars. The teams play 32 games in two days.

"Those are two of our busiest days of the year with the opening brackets and it's just crazy," Justin Moscove, Partner at Flowing Tide Pub said. "Those are two days people take off work to come down here."

Instead, the bars are closed. Nobody can come into in to watch sports, drink or eat. Bar stools and chairs are stacked on top of the tables.

"These tables should be filled with people and because of this, you know, we're obviously empty, and yeah, it's a big hit for us," Clary said.

"As you can see, there's no one in here and this is usually one of our busier times of the year, so it's pretty depressing," Moscove said.

Six of the seven Bully's restaurants are still open for curbside takeout. Flowing Tide planned on opening its seventh location Friday but that's delayed. Three of its other locations are also serving curbside takeout.

"Before this, to go business was one to two percent of our revenue," Moscove said. "Now it's 10 percent of our revenue."

They say they are not doing it for their businesses. They want to help their employees but they have already had to lay off most of their workers.

"We're obviously bringing them back but they're all on unemployment and we're trying to keep as many as we can to still have jobs," Moscove said.

"It's about our community," Clary said. "We're here to take care of people. We're trying our hardest to keep people employed with jobs and we're doing everything we can."

Every casino and sports book is also closed in the state of Nevada. Those would also be bustling with basketball fans. Many of them place bets on single games and parlays throughout the day.

"First week is the greatest thing of all-time," Nick Bogdanovich, Director of Trading for William Hill U.S. said. "Masses flock here and it's just nonstop action from nine in the morning until 11 at night."

Bogdanovich says up until the COVID-19, William Hill was seeing record numbers of sports betting. He says it is likely that this year's tournament would have broken betting records on March Madness. The fact that it is canceled makes it sting just a little more. The tournament doesn't just help the sports books, but the entire hotel properties. Some people even travel from other states to watch the first four days of March Madness.

"Every bit as big as the super bowl if not bigger, so yeah, it's a punch in the gut but we'll get through it," Bogdanovich said.

William Hill is still offering sports betting on its app. The only sports available right now are in other countries. Bogdanovich says soccer leagues are the most popular for betting but they also have some other sports around the world for people to bet on.

"We wrote our first Sumo bet in the state of Nevada today," Bogdanovich said. "So yeah, Belarus soccer is going, Australia rules football."

These businesses may be suffering for the time being but they say they are doing what they can to help their employees and each other. Bully's and Flowing Tide are working together to help each other out. After all, they share the same community, customers and even employees.

"The guy from Bully's called me and he's like 'Well, if you give them two shifts, I'll give them three shifts,' just to kind of help them out," Moscove said.

"We obviously have our competition out there but there is no competition right now," Clary said. "We're northern Nevada. We're working together."

Nevada's nonessential business closure ends in mid-April. Clary says Bully's is planning a grand reopening party on April 16. In the meantime, they are hoping what they are doing works, and helps slow down and stop the spread of the virus.

 

 

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