Denver bar beat every World Cup host city’s bars as most-visited in nation

If you had to guess which American city had the busiest World Cup bar in the entire country, you’d probably say New York, or Miami or maybe one of the 16 cities actually hosting matches. You would be wrong. It’s Denver. The city that didn’t have a single World Cup game.

Number 38 — a sprawling bar in Denver’s RiNo Arts District — was named the No. 1 most-visited bar in the nation during the World Cup in June, based on Lyft rideshare data, according to the company’s monthly trend report. The ranking covers the stretch that included the U.S. National Team’s run through Group D and Mexico’s push into the round of 16, and it puts a Denver bar ahead of every sports bar in every actual host city in the country.

Even the bar’s cofounder couldn’t believe it. “If you had told me we would be the most visited Lyft bar in the United States, I would’ve been like, ‘Yeah, no, you’re off your rockers,'” Spencer Fronk told Westword. “Maybe top 25, I could get behind that.” Number 38 was built for exactly this kind of moment — the place has 10 indoor TVs, two outdoor TVs and a 220-inch outdoor LED wall — but Fronk said the World Cup energy went beyond anything he expected, filling the massive outdoor space for every match.

The timing matters, too. Fronk pointed out that Denver’s bar and restaurant industry has been struggling with closures, and the World Cup provided what he called “that breath of fresh air and energy to our team, this industry, this city.” It’s also not the only time Colorado has stunned the soccer world lately. The NWSL’s brand-new Denver Summit FC set the league’s single-game attendance record at its inaugural home game back in March.

For a state that’s historically been about the Broncos, the Nuggets and arguing about the Rockies, Colorado is quietly becoming one of the biggest soccer markets in the country.