PE­TER CHRISTO­PHER

On Wednes­day, Ari­api­ta Av­enue seemed to be in a state of tran­scen­dence. For some, it might have felt like a glimpse in­to Buenos Aires or Rosario in Ar­genti­na, as many clad in blue and white flocked to bars along the stretch to watch and cel­e­brate Eng­land’s fall to an­oth­er Li­onel Mes­si-head­lined come­back.

For oth­ers, it may have brought back a feel­ing of vi­bran­cy along the Av­enue more com­mon­ly seen in years past than days re­cent.

Such is the mag­ic of the FI­FA World Cup.

Busi­ness own­ers around the coun­try are hope­ful, par­tic­u­lar­ly those op­er­at­ing bars and restau­rants, that the fi­nal gives an­oth­er sig­nif­i­cant push to­day.

On Thurs­day, just 24 hours af­ter the con­clu­sion of that semi­fi­nal, the Av­enue was a pale shad­ow of the day pri­or as es­tab­lish­ments had hand­fuls of cus­tomers.

Last Au­gust, the Busi­ness Guardian high­light­ed that the Av­enue had seen a falloff in ac­tiv­i­ty, with Umesh Meena, own­er and chef of the restau­rant Ely­si­um Bar and Lounge, stat­ing he was bat­tling crime and fear just as much as he was bat­tling the mar­ket pres­sures fac­ing restau­ra­teurs.

How­ev­er, Chad Ap­poo, man­ag­er of Sips on the Av­enue, said match­es had brought sig­nif­i­cant crowds back out, even on tra­di­tion­al­ly slow­er days.

“We’ve had in­creased ac­tiv­i­ties. Ob­vi­ous­ly, the World Cup had games every day for the first 27 days or what­ev­er the case was. So on our Mon­day nights, we’ve been filled here when peo­ple come to watch Colom­bia play or Mex­i­co play. So yeah, we’ve had a larg­er crowd through­out the en­tire tour­na­ment,” Ap­poo told the Busi­ness Guardian in a phone in­ter­view on Thurs­day.

How­ev­er, he was not yet in a po­si­tion to quan­ti­fy the fi­nan­cial im­pact.

The im­pact was not sole­ly along Ari­api­ta Av­enue.

Pres­i­dent of the Bar­keep­ers and Op­er­a­tors As­so­ci­a­tion Satesh Moonasar said the tour­na­ment had lived up to its rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing a ma­jor dri­ver of busi­ness at bars over the years.

“The World Cup is some­thing that bar own­ers look out for to every four years. Yes, there are oth­er sports over the four-year pe­ri­od, but there is noth­ing like a Foot­ball World Cup that brings every­one to­geth­er and brings every­body out to view games,” said Moonasar, the own­er of C1 Sports Bar and Lounge in Cou­va, when con­tact­ed.

Tom­my’s Brew­ing Com­pa­ny founder John Tan­nous con­firmed the tour­na­ment was al­so a boost for his busi­ness, which has three lo­ca­tions: Movi­etowne Port-of-Spain, East Gates Mall Trinci­ty and Brent­wood in Ch­agua­nas.

“Yes, we have seen an in­crease in pa­tron­age dur­ing the World Cup, par­tic­u­lar­ly for the ma­jor match­es. It has al­so in­tro­duced new guests to Tom­my’s and to lo­cal­ly brewed craft beer in a very re­laxed and ac­ces­si­ble set­ting,” he said, “The biggest im­pact has been the en­er­gy and sense of com­mu­ni­ty the tour­na­ment has cre­at­ed. At a time when so much en­ter­tain­ment is con­sumed in­di­vid­u­al­ly, the World Cup re­minds us of the val­ue of gath­er­ing in per­son. A good bar or tap­room is more than some­where to buy a drink- it is a so­cial space where peo­ple con­nect, cel­e­brate and share mem­o­rable ex­pe­ri­ences.”

The own­er of Nice Place Bar, Kevin Rag­bir, said the World Cup had a favourable im­pact on his busi­ness.

Last Sun­day, the Chase Vil­lage bar opened an ex­pand­ed out­door seat­ing area ahead of the World Cup semi­fi­nals and fi­nal.

Rag­bir said, “The FI­FA World Cup had a pos­i­tive im­pact on Nice Place Restau­rant and Bar by at­tract­ing more cus­tomers who came to watch the match­es in a live­ly and en­joy­able at­mos­phere. The tour­na­ment in­creased cus­tomer traf­fic, food and drink sales and gave us an op­por­tu­ni­ty to do more win-win part­ner­ships with our sup­pli­ers through the host­ing of mul­ti­ple watch par­ties, es­pe­cial­ly dur­ing ma­jor games.”

He added, “It al­so gave the busi­ness ad­di­tion­al ex­po­sure through cus­tomer rec­om­men­da­tions, so­cial me­dia posts, pro­mo­tions and shared match day ex­pe­ri­ences. As a re­sult, the World Cup helped strength­en the restau­rant’s rep­u­ta­tion as a pop­u­lar venue for sports, en­ter­tain­ment, food, drinks and so­cial gath­er­ings.”

Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer of Movi­eTowne, Am­ri­ta Ba­boolal, said the World Cup brought a busi­ness boost to both the com­pa­ny’s Port of Spain and San Fer­nan­do/C3 lo­ca­tions.

“The re­sponse to the FI­FA Club World Cup screen­ings at Movi­eTowne has been out­stand­ing. From the very first match, we have been de­light­ed by the tremen­dous sup­port from foot­ball fans across Trinidad and To­ba­go,” said Ba­boolal.

“Through­out the tour­na­ment, we have wel­comed a wide cross-sec­tion of pa­trons, in­clud­ing fam­i­lies, groups of friends, busi­ness pro­fes­sion­als, am­bas­sadors, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, mem­bers of the diplo­mat­ic com­mu­ni­ty, law en­force­ment of­fi­cers and many oth­ers. It has been en­cour­ag­ing to see peo­ple from all walks of life com­ing to­geth­er to share their pas­sion for foot­ball in a safe, com­fort­able and fam­i­ly-friend­ly en­vi­ron­ment,” said Ba­boolal.

She con­tin­ued, “The screen­ings have al­so had a pos­i­tive im­pact across the Movi­eTowne com­plex. We have seen in­creased foot traf­fic through­out the tour­na­ment, with many pa­trons ar­riv­ing ear­ly to dine at our restau­rants, shop at our re­tail out­lets or sim­ply spend time en­joy­ing the des­ti­na­tion be­fore and af­ter each match. This has cre­at­ed a vi­brant at­mos­phere across both our Port of Spain and C3 Cen­tre lo­ca­tions and pro­vid­ed a wel­come boost to many of our ten­ants, un­der­scor­ing the val­ue that live sport­ing events bring to the wider Movi­eTowne ex­pe­ri­ence.”

The Rush ef­fect

For the first time in decades, no lo­cal free-to-air chan­nel se­cured rights to broad­cast the World Cup in Trinidad and To­ba­go. This meant that many with­out ca­ble or an in­ter­net con­nec­tion to view the games would have had lit­tle choice but to go out to watch these match­es. How­ev­er, Rush and var­i­ous lo­cal copy­right agen­cies have al­so at­tempt­ed to clamp down on il­le­gal or unau­tho­rised pub­lic view­ings of the World Cup.

Movi­etowne, a com­pa­ny un­der the Daichin Group of Com­pa­nies, was an­nounced as a part­ner of Rush be­fore the tour­na­ment start­ed, while C1, Nice Place, Sips, and Tom­my’s are list­ed as au­tho­rised lo­ca­tions to view the game.

Ryan Chin, di­rec­tor at Dachin and the man­ag­er of var­i­ous restau­rants un­der the com­pa­ny’s um­brel­la, such as Jaxx and Rizzioni’s, said while there was def­i­nite­ly more traf­fic, there was al­so un­cer­tain­ty among some cus­tomers as to where they could or could not watch match­es.

“You can see that there was def­i­nite­ly in­creased traf­fic. It would vary from dif­fer­ent lo­ca­tions. It just there’s so many dif­fer­ent places and of­fer­ings around,” Chin said, adding, “I can speak on the restau­rant side, where hon­est­ly the top­ic for every­body has been the ques­tion of who can see the game and who can’t see the game? Who’s al­lowed to view the game and there’s still a lit­tle bit of, as I said, trans­paren­cy need­ed, and a lot of ques­tions are still to be an­swered and asked.”

Chin how­ev­er, was grate­ful for the in­creased busi­ness dur­ing a time when restau­rants were still reel­ing.

Ap­poo how­ev­er, be­lieved Rush’s hold on lo­cal rights was not the on­ly rea­son peo­ple came out to his es­tab­lish­ment and oth­er bars.

“I know that there are lots of per­sons who don’t have ac­cess to the ca­ble, who maybe don’t have sub­scrip­tions for Rush, who maybe do have a fire stick to the stream il­le­gal­ly and what not, “ he said, “but I just want the record to show that our crowd that we have had are peo­ple who do have ac­cess to watch it at home, but they just en­joy be­ing in a a part- type at­mos­phere to throw the ban­ter and the jump up and ring a bell and make noise.”

“So, it’s not that peo­ple couldn’t watch it at home. They just en­joy be­ing in a bar watch­ing it with oth­er peo­ple,” said Ap­poo.

Moonasar agreed as he point­ed out that many peo­ple planned com­mu­nal events at bars with the World Cup as an at­trac­tion.

Fi­nal push

All busi­ness op­er­a­tors in­ter­viewed ei­ther con­firmed or had ad­ver­tised plans for the third place play off on Sat­ur­day be­tween France & Eng­land, and the show­piece event be­tween Ar­genti­na and Spain on Sun­day.

“As we look ahead to the third-place play­off and Sun­day’s high­ly an­tic­i­pat­ed fi­nal, ex­cite­ment con­tin­ues to build. Tick­ets are al­ready on sale, and de­mand has been ex­cep­tion­al­ly strong since we an­nounced avail­abil­i­ty on so­cial me­dia. We ex­pect a mas­sive turnout and en­cour­age every­one plan­ning to at­tend to pur­chase their tick­ets ear­ly to avoid dis­ap­point­ment,” said Ba­boolal, who added that Movi­etowne was look­ing for­ward to fu­ture sport­ing events such as the up­com­ing CPL.

Ap­poo con­firmed he had cor­po­rate part­ner­ships in place for the fi­nal.

“For the fi­nal, we have Slam do­ing a live stream from here. We al­so have Am­plia do­ing some pro­mo­tions, and Sun­shine Snack is do­ing some pro­mo­tions. We have a live rhythm sec­tion,” said Ap­poo, who hoped that the event would con­tin­ue to raise the pa­tron­age at Sips, which on­ly cel­e­brat­ed a year of op­er­a­tions in May.

“We make one year, so we are hop­ing to make two, three, four, five and six. If we make one year, we’re go­ing strong,” said Ap­poo.

Tan­nous al­so con­firmed that Tom­my’s had part­nered with Rush to have view­ing par­ties for the fi­nal.