Gameday Is Payday: The Madness And Math Behind 6-Figure Saturdays For College Bars

This article was written by Mark J. Burns and published on Sport & State, a new media company founded by Clay Travis that is built around sports, culture, original voices, and live conversation.
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Ask a bar owner in Tuscaloosa, Columbus, or Oxford about a college football Saturday, and there’s a common refrain in their answer and tone: it’s all freakin’ gas, baby, all the time.

“What we do here is a little bit like lighting a rocket and just holding on,” said Ryan Prodesky, Owner of The Swamp Restaurant in Gainesville. “You light the fuse and hold on for dear life because at some point, the waves just keep coming.”

“All of our planning and everything that we do, you hope that you got everything right, all of your logistics are correct, and your staffing is right. It’s 50% art and 50% science.”

Prodesky isn’t alone in his sentiment, with college bar owners and managers across the country also sharing how meaningful a College Football Saturday is toward their overall bottom line, even if those six to eight home weekends per season result in additional stress and a heightened level of anticipation for what’s to come on game day.

“We don’t break even until the first college football game of the year,” said Jason Nay, Owner and General Manager of Fred’s Bar & Grill in Baton Rouge, who spoke to me standing in a pile of orange pulp after his staff juiced 200 gallons, enough to make 5,000 screwdrivers for the Texas A&M home contest two weeks ago.

Sounds refreshing, eh?

Nay also expected to rip through 200 cases of Michelob Ultra — or around 5,000 beers — for the Aggie game alone.

Still, for all of the logistical challenges and constant scrutinization around staffing, security, food and drink orders, and pricing, especially those stinkin’ cover charges — which can range anywhere from $10 to $20 on the lower end to upwards of $60 or $80-plus depending on city and bar — there’s the eventual financial payoff.

And when the home team wins, well, that’s the cherry on top for everyone, particularly those signing employees’ paychecks.

“If the stars align and everything goes perfectly, you could do six figures in a day on the high end,” said Prodesky, who conservatively put that number 4x to 5x greater than a Saturday during a bye week.

He estimated a 50% to 75% revenue bump for a Saturday with Alabama, LSU, or Tennesseeon the home schedule compared to a lesser Southeastern Conference opponent or non-conference foe.

Added Nay of Fred’s: “One college football weekend in revenue is better than a whole month in the Spring.”

‘Somebody ruined our Christmas’

Ahead of Wisconsin’s recent home-and-home series with Alabama, which first began in Madison in 2024, bar owner Jordan Meier said fans reached out years — yes, plural — to secure a table reservation at The Kollege Klub, which also has a second location in Minneapolis.

Meier’s 50-person staff greeted over 4,000 customers on that mid-September day, effectively flipping the bar a whopping 10 times in the 400-person establishment amid the unfortunate 42-10 shellacking that the Tide laid on the Badgers at Camp Randall Stadium.

“That was a game changer for Madison,” said Meier, noting the bar’s 4x to 5x business spikecompared to a home game against a non-conference opponent. That includes revenue from traditional bar sales, pre-bookings for larger parties and groups, and LineLeap, a mobile app where can fans can purchase line skips to get in the bar quicker, he said.

Should I also mention The Kollege Klub stayed open for 20 hours, from 6 a.m. to 2 a.m. local time? Unsurprisingly, the nearly full day extravaganza marked the bar’s best day ever in its 73-year history.

“Everybody got their fill, whether it was here or one of the other 40 bars up and down in the area,” he laughed.

Marquee conference home games, or the occasional non-conference primetime affair, like Alabama, are naturally “massive” for The Kollege Klub and other bar businesses in college towns across America. So, when the Fighting Irish and Badgers opted for a neutral-site series versus a home-and-home schedule, that devastated Meier, who is a fourth-generation owner.

Who could blame ’em?

“When they took it away from Madison, it just was like somebody ruined our Christmas,” he said.

To pour more salt in the wound, Notre Dame pummeled Wisconsin 41-13 at Lambeau Field last month. A small silver lining remains, though — there’s still three home football games left on the Badgers’ calendar in 2026.

In other words, cha-ching.

What’s on tap

At The Horseshoe, no, it’s not what you’re thinking, owner John Massimiani isn’t a fan of noon kickoffs in Columbus.

Others interviewed expressed similar frustrations and disappointment toward the early start times, with some saying they wait on pins and needles for the media networks to reveal the upcoming week’s game schedule. You don’t say, huh?

An early kickoff traditionally means fewer customers pre- and postgame for everyone.

Did you see how I wrote traditionally? Well, when your No. 1 rival or top-tier non-conference opponent visits, that may certainly buck the status quo.

Massimiani said that for a home tilt with Michigan or Texas, he’d increase his bartender count from eight to upwards of 13 for the 400-person bar.

When the Wolverines travel to The Shoe, revenue can double versus when, let’s say, Illinoisor Purdue are visiting — sorry, I’m just the messenger, so save your pitchforks.

For bigger college football home weekends, Massimiani estimated generating $50,000 to $75,000 in sales in a single day — that upper band might even stretch to $80,000 depending on weather, game time, and opponent.

You know, the three key factors that can take a bar owner’s payday from good to really good to great.

When asked what’s the popular drink of choice for today’s 21-year-old college student, Massimiani mentioned Super Lyte.

Don’t worry. I had to Google it, too.

It’s a vodka-based canned cocktail popular with Gen Z, who has tossed other ready-to-drink options like High Noon and White Claw to the wayside for the new boozy beverage — at least at the country music-themed bar in Columbus.

Massimiani recalled serving 800 cans of one Super Lyte flavor alone during the Buckeyes’stunning road loss to the Longhorns in mid-September. Such is the current reality for the bar veteran, who has worked for 30-plus years in the business but still needs to stay current with what fans want to consume on Saturdays.

Bar owners, like Nick Snead of Tuscaloosa’s Innisfree Irish Pub, similarly place their drink orders with both home and away fans in mind.

If Texas or A&M is playing at Bryant-Denny Stadium, then more Shiner Bock beer and Tito’s Vodka needs to be in stock. When Wisconsin visited Tuscaloosa in 2025, Snead ensured he didn’t run out of Busch Light — it’s also a beer beloved by the Badgers, I learned.

Meanwhile, Michelob Golden Draft is a preferred adult beverage for the Golden Gophers’ faithful, while Spotted Cow, a craft beer, is a fan-favorite with Badgers fans.

Among conference schools, the current consensus is that Michelob Ultra replaced Bud Light as college students’ favorite beer post-coronavirus pandemic. The list goes on and on for how to cater to fans’ refreshment needs on game day.

General Manager Blake Dougherty, who oversees Rafters Music and Food and The Old Henry in Oxford, said that for an SEC home game, he will order around 160 to 180 cases each of Coors Light, Miller Lite, and Michelob Ultra, all of which have 24 units to a case. That inventory will be used for both bars.

Some quick back-of-napkin math, and you get plus or minus 4,000 individual beers — I like even numbers — per brand.

Plus, Dougherty orders similar amounts in High Noon and Surfside, as well as 40 cases of vodka. I repeat, this is for every single SEC home game.

After speaking with nearly 10 bar owners across the country, the motto is fairly simple on game day — you better be prepared to hydrate your college football clientele or they will certainly head elsewhere.

“Away fans’ money spends just like everyone else’s,” Snead said, “so we’d rather them come in, have a good time, and tell of their other friends who are coming into town.”

Roger that.

A shot of revenue

Are you familiar with a Grimace Bomb? Yeah, me neither.

Apparently, the Innisfree Irish Pub sold 5,000 orders of this special concoction — which features a half glass of blue Red Bull, with whipped vodka and RumChata in a separate shot glass — during Florida State week starting Sept. 14.

Seminoles fans left the Alabama bar with its third-highest revenue week in nearly 30 football seasons.

“We were pretty happy with that,” said the bar co-owner Snead, adding that “Auburn and LSU are the two big ones that really bring the hammer down consistently,” in addition to Tennessee, A&M, Ole Miss, and Georgia.

So, pretty much nearly half the conference is counted as a big-time weekend. Got it. In some ways, that became a standard response from the half dozen or so bars I spoke to across the South.

For this Midwestener, is this what the phrase, ‘It Just Means More’ translates to in the SEC?

Anyways, down in South Carolina, Jared Douglas, Co-owner and General Manager of Tiger Town Tavern, explained that the Clemson game day staff can increase from 50 people to approximately 70, especially when a well-traveled college football fan base like LSU is in town.

On Aug. 30, 2025, the SEC Tigers traveled to the other Death Valley, breaking an all-time record for the downtown college bar as it generated over $100,000 in revenue alone that Saturday, according to Douglas. It was a milestone years in the making for the nearly 50-year-old establishment.

“It’s hard to grasp,” Douglas said, “because we inched close to that number in years past, but that was a nice thing to finally see.”

Believe it.

College Football Saturdays, and frankly the whole week leading up to a home game, is arguably the time of most anticipation for any bar owner in a college football town.

In some ways, their livelihoods depend on decisions made by school presidents and athletic directors as well as TV executives.

A great schedule, combined with a successful football program, is a perfect formula for a jam-packed bar scene throughout the fall, complete with, sometimes, record-breaking sales numbers.

And every owner has a preferred away team if they could choose — just ask them.

As a Wolverine, it pained me to repeatedly hear O-H-I-O and the Fighting Irish as two of owners’ dream schools, but, hey, business is business. I get it. It ain’t personal.

“I’d love to get a home-and-home with Georgia, but that’s a pipe dream,” said The Swamp’s Prodesky.

“Ohio State would probably be number one on my list of teams. It would be absolute pandemonium here.”

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