The Brief
- Seattle has been ranked the top World Cup host city for bar crawls, and local pubs are seeing huge crowds of soccer fans.
- Some bars say demand has been so intense that they nearly ran out of beer and had to make emergency restocking trips.
- Business owners say storage space and keeping drinks cold—not finding beer—have become the biggest challenges during the tournament.
SEATTLE, Wash. – Seattle is topping a new list of World Cup host cities, but this time, it’s for its legendary bar crawls. As soccer fans flood the city, local business owners are feeling the beautiful madness of the tournament—and scrambling to keep up with demand.
A recent study ranked Seattle as the top World Cup host city for a bar crawl, as the city boasts nearly eight bars per square mile and praising their relative affordability.
But for business owners, that high ranking comes with a lot of heavy lifting. At the Kangaroo and Kiwi pub in Ballard, owner Bradley Howe says thirsty fans nearly emptied his entire inventory of beer. Australian fans, in particular, have earned a global reputation for drinking host cities dry—a feat they previously accomplished in Vancouver and are now repeating in the Emerald City.
“It’s been incredible, but this is what you live for when you open a bar,” Howe said. “You want craziness, you want people, you want fun, you want all the madness.”
Making the Costco Dash
Big picture view:…