How Long Acre Tavern Is Built to Handle Soccer's Biggest Moments
By — Front Office Sports
Posted — June 12, 2026
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Tom McCarthy and Kieron Slattery have been airing soccer games in New York bars for 30 years, first at the now-closed Nevada Smith's in the East Village and at Smithfield Hall on the West Side. Each one was built around the same sport, for the same kind of fan. When they opened Long Acre Tavern in Times Square, they weren't starting over. They were arriving.
"Having a bar in Times Square is like the jewel in the crown," McCarthy said. "You're in the center of the world. Every day you meet somebody new."
The bar takes its name from history. Long Acre was the original name of Times Square before Mayor George B. McClellan rechristened it in 1904 when The New York Times relocated its offices uptown. The space itself had previously been a Turkish bar called Dervish that had been sitting vacant in recent years. McCarthy and Slattery took it over after the landlord, a regular at one of their other spots, asked if they'd consider taking a chance on it. After a nearly year-longbuildout, they opened just six months before the pandemic shut everything down.
"St. Patrick's Day was going to be our big payday to pay all the bills," McCarthy said. "And then we got closed down for two years."
They rebuilt. And the location they rebuilt into turns out to be one of the most naturally positioned soccer bars on the planet. Times Square already draws millions of international tourists every year, a significant portion of them from Europe and Latin America, the same regions where soccer is a way of life. McCarthy put European and American flags outside specifically for them, a signal to anyone walking past that the bar inside already knows why they're there. On a normal day, 10 or 20 different nationalities might be represented at the venue. When the world's biggest soccer tournament comes to New York, that number doesn't just grow. It overwhelms.
"Because we're in Times Square and we deal with so many European tourists, soccer's become bigger and bigger over the last few years," McCarthy said. "Any big major tournament, there's always a fierce interest."
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Having a bar in Times Square is like the jewel in the crown... You're in the center of the world. Every day you meet somebody new.”
Tom McCarthy, Long Acre Tavern Owner
"Someone comes in and wants to watch a game from South America," McCarthy said. "I can say, ‘I can stream that through Spectrum Business.’ And I can."
The typical preparation for a big match day at Long Acre is not complicated, because it doesn't need to be. Staff is scheduled, product is stocked and the social media posts go out on Instagram and Facebook to a following that already knows what the bar is about. But when the biggest soccer tournament in the world comes to New York, preparation only gets you so far. Fans flying in from countries like Brazil, Germany, Argentina, and Mexico, land in Times Square, all of them looking to cheer on their teams at a place like Long Acre – a place that is more than a bar that simply has a lot of TVs.
That surge is unlike anything else on the sports calendar. Fans travel internationally to be in the city where the tournament takes place. This year, they will pack into Times Square already looking for somewhere to watch, already wearing their colors, already loud. For Long Acre, the tournament doesn't just bring more customers. It brings the most passionate soccer fans in the world to a bar that has spent three decades preparing for exactly this moment. The room fills fast and stays full.
The operational challenge that creates is significant. Long Acre has 36 TVs. When the tournament is running, the bar pushes 200 to 250 people at a time, with multiple matches streaming simultaneously for fans from different countries cheering in different directions. A Brazilian fan needs one screen. A French fan needs another. If someone from Argentina wants to know if McCarthy can pull up their match,the answer is always yes.
Someone comes in and wants to watch a game from South America... I can say, I can stream that through Spectrum Business. And I can.”
Tom McCarthy, Long Acre Tavern Owner
Streaming multiple live international matches simultaneously, for a room packed with fans who flew across an ocean to watch their national team, requires infrastructure that doesn't flinch under pressure. Long Acre relies on Spectrum Business to handle the streaming, the point-of-sale (POS) processing and the guest Wi-Fi all at once, on the days when the bar is at maximum capacity and the cost of any single failure is highest.
"Most people use credit cards. There's very little cash in this business anymore," Slattery said. "You could have 200 people all closing out at the same time at the end of a game. You need an extremely reliable system to run your POS." Spectrum Business, he added, processes everything fast enough that the volume never becomes a bottleneck.
Spectrum Business is what makes sure the bar is ready when they arrive. From the back-office systems before doors open to the POS sprint at final whistle when hundreds of tabs close at once, the infrastructure holds, regardless of how many people are inside or how many matches are running simultaneously.
"We know that with Spectrum Business, we're good to go," Slattery said. "It doesn't go down. Inclement weather, snowstorms, whatever interferes with other ways of getting the game don’t impact us here. We know we've got it."
Now, 30 years of operating soccer bars have led to this moment where the world's biggest tournament is converging on Times Square.
Long Acre is ready for all of it.
Learn more about Spectrum Business today.
