Coliseum aims to be a good sport
With its Sports Café opening at 6am during the World Cup, Coliseum Group will be banking on England's success. Mark Stretton reports.
While the nation frets over a broken bone in the left foot of the England football captain, there is one company that is positively salivating over the prospect of 28 consecutive days of unadulterated football fever.
The Sports Café has secured 6am opening for every day of the World Cup finals at its flagship outlet in London's West End. Whether David Beckham is fit in time for England's opening foray against Sweden or not, the global spectacle promises to be a glorious triumph for the leisure group, according to finance director Rodger Sargent.
But swapping his accountant's cap for the bobble hat of the England fan, Rodger is upbeat about the national team's prospects. "If we come second in the group then we will probably play France. If we beat them then we can go all the way," he said. But then they sound like pretty big "ifs" to even the least sceptical of England supporters.
While the Sports Café in Haymarket will show games featuring all 32 of the competing teams, a run of form from the England team would be the equivalent of striking gold for parent company Coliseum. "This will be the biggest global media event the world has ever seen," said Rodger. "If England do well the entire nation will grind to a halt."
Rodger knows a thing or two about striking gold. Before setting up Coliseum, he and his business partner Chris Akers founded Sports Internet Group.
The company was set up at the height of the dotcom boom as a £2.5m cash-shell to buy sports-based internet and technology businesses, and later sold to BSkyB for £301m.
Although Rodger, 30, hit the jackpot with Sports Internet Group, he quickly looked for a new venture and, with Chris Akers, set up cash-shell Coliseum Group to acquire bars and restaurants. Rodger says the name Coliseum was not the result of millions spent with consultants, but inspired by the film Gladiator.
They quickly found what they were looking for. "I used to come to the Sports Café as a punter because it was simply a great place to watch live sport." he said.
"It wasn't until I did some research that I realised there were only two units in the UK. It was such a polished concept that I assumed it must be part of an all-conquering chain."
The duo approached Canadian Bill Balkou, the founder of the Sports Café concept. Bill originally launched the idea in North America in partnership with Labatts, the brewer.
Before Sports Café, Bill worked for a number of blue-chip US restaurant groups including Taco Bell and Kentucky Fried Chicken - his brief was to find, design and set-up outlets on behalf of these companies. He had opened over 300 restaurants.
He later took his Sports Café concept to South Africa and sold a Sports Café franchise to a Lebanese entrepreneur before coming to London. Although Bill still owns the Sports Café trademark, the two UK outlets were his sole focus.
He did not jump straight away when approached by Coliseum. "Me and my business partner Bradley Kinsella were making a very comfortable living and initially thought we were happy as we were," said Bill.
"I wasn't sure that I wanted to get involved in roll-outs again. It had to be with the right bunch of guys."
"I think Bill had been approached on a number of occasions and was quite wary," added Rodger.
After a period of negotiations, the deal for Coliseum to buy Sports Café was announced in December - Sports Café would be the single growth driver in the Coliseum portfolio, and Bill was appointed to chief executive.
The company has a second Sports Café in Birmingham and two further sites, in Manchester and Newcastle, are at various stages of development. The company aims to have 20 Sports Cafés up and running by the end of 2003.
The company has raised £7m to fund that expansion. Bill will hand-pick each venue himself. "The area is vital," he said. "but inside its relatively easy - really it's a cookie-cutter brand - the sport is what changes.
"After the World Cup there will be Wimbledon, then rugby and pool championships and so on."
Each Café costs around £1m and, with debt arrangements, the company can finance its initial target of 20. Sales forecasts are based on current trading - Haymarket does about £67,000-a-week and Birmingham, £51,000. Each venue must be at least 14,000sq ft.
Bill says his customer target is everyone who has ever watched sport. "We are bringing something different to the table," he said.
"The thing with sport is you get a guy who wears a Rolex sharing a beer with the guy who wears a Timex. The social barriers just drop away." The Sports Café chief says 50 per cent of his customers are female.
Inside, there is everything you would expect to find in such a bar - signed shirts and sporting memorabilia hanging from every wall, American-style slide-in dining booths, long-bars lined with fixed stools, and a plethora of branded promotional displays.
Sports Café is not just about watching sport on the infinite number of screens through the venue. "Firstly we're about sport," said Bill. "Secondly we're a restaurant and thirdly a bar."
The company has installed pool tables, dance floors, and back-of-venue bars in a bid to keep customers in, once the action is over.
Both Bill and Rodger are confident the Sports Café roll-out will fly. "It feels like we are betting on a race," explained Bill, "and we already know what's going to happen."
"Excuse the cliché, but this is bricks and mortar - a proper business," said Rodger. "There's nothing like walking into a Sports Café and seeing 1,000 people jumping up and down.
"We genuinely believe we have a brand that is equal to or better than anything on the UK market. The strategy is very simple - we are going to roll-out the concept into the cities that have sufficient populations."
Glasgow, Leeds, Liverpool and Sheffield are all on the shopping list. "Those towns really pick themselves. In getting to the first 20 we are doing the easy bit," added Rodger.
But if rolling-out sports bars was so easy why hasn't anyone made a decent fist of it before? "Bill thoroughly understands this business - he has terrific operational expertise," said Rodger. "Others, like Allied Domecq with 'Football Football', tried to copy the concept and failed. You can spend millions on market reports but its not until you get out in the trenches that you understand what's happening."
Rodger says that if you can't get to the games themselves, the atmosphere at Sports Café will be almost as good. "When Beckham scored that last minute free-kick against Greece to take us to the World Cup I thought the roof was going to come off. And the 5-1 win against Germany was electric."
Now there is just the small matter of 10 days before the global celebration of the beautiful game begins.
The majority of businesses in the pub industry are set to reap the benefits the football festival may bring and leading the way will be Bill, Rodger and Sports Café.
Pictured: directors Bill Balkou, Ian Lenagan and Rodger Sargent plan to open 20 Sports Cafés by December 2003
Related stories:
Sports Café eyes European expansion (13 May 2002)
