Neat-O: Sports Bar's Worst Nightmare
By Steve Crowe
System at sports bar in Bozeman, Mont. was so poorly designed it was costing the bar business every weekend.

Ever been to a sports bar to watch the big game only to be disappointed with the experience? Broken TVs. Dropped signals. Employees can't change the channel.

Those experiences won't attract many return customers. And that is exactly what was happening to Joe Domanski, owner of Spectators Sports Bar and Grill in Bozeman, Mont., right next to Montana State University.



A local custom integration business installed 22 TVs throughout the bar and a control system, but there were quite a few problems. "There were so many limitations the way the original system was set up," Domanski says. "We couldn't get certain channels on certain TVs, so we couldn't get all the games. Only certain satellites were connected to certain TVs. Customers were frustrated and were walking out the door, costing me business every weekend."

Domanski called the company countless times to fix the system, but nobody ever showed up. "Completely unprofessional," Domanski says.

That's when he turned to Avitel, another local company. System designer Derek Flikkema and three installers revamped the entire system over two days, working from 2 a.m. to noon each day while Spectators was closed.

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