By admin 
DENVER – Long before crack-of-dawn watch parties filled Denver bars with fervent English Premier League fans, and long, long before the EPL’s fan fest brought thousands to Union Station this past weekend, Glen Eastwood was an expat willing to do whatever it took to watch his beloved Liverpool.
Read more College Football Rankings Week 7: Teams 26-138, Where Does Everyone Stand at Midseason?
After moving to Denver in 1994, he’d have his father in Dublin record the game on VHS and ship it. Then Eastwood would take that VHS to a shop on 16th Street to convert the video from European to U.S. format. Finally, usually about a month after the match, Eastwood would get to watch his EPL team.
“My buddy from Cork, he’s a Manchester United fan, so we’d sit around together at my house and watch the game when the VHS was finally ready,” Eastwood said. “We’d get some beers and make a night of watching football. That was my version of a watch party around 30 years ago here. It’s changed a lot since then for us watching the games overseas.”
As the turnout at Union Station this weekend for the Premier League Mornings Live event shows, Denver has become an American hotspot for the world’s top soccer league.
Denver is home to an array of official supporters clubs for EPL teams, and a handful of those clubs are affiliated with a local pub, giving diehards a consistent gathering spot to stoke their camaraderie.
An estimated 40 million-plus EPL fans live in America, and that growing presence – accelerated recently by the U.S. hosting FIFA World Cup games this past summer – is why the league opened an office in New York City three years ago.
The EPL’s marketing campaign promoting the 2026-27 season, narrated by Arsenal FC icon Ian Wright, shows highlights of league matches interspersed with Americans watching over breakfast. The promo opens with, “It was always inevitable, wasn’t it America? That you’d fall in love, with all of this.”
Later in the video, Wright mentions “title celebrations in the Mile High City” over shots of the Denver Gooners supporters group celebrating Arsenal’s 2025-26 EPL title outside The Celtic on Market.
Denver is one of the core cities in the EPL’s plan to grow its brand stateside, according to Akash Jain, the league’s U.S. managing director. Denver is the 13th city to host Premier League Mornings Live, and it was also selected for the Premier League Coast to Coast event focused on Arsenal, which took place at McGregor Square in August.
“(Denver) is definitely one of the one of the strongest and fastest growing markets for us in the U.S.,” Jain said.
Denver’s array of supporters clubs
In addition to the Gooners, the other largest supporters club in the city is OLSC Denver for Liverpool fans. While the Gooners’ home is the Celtic, OLSC Denver is affiliated with The Abbey Tavern.
Beyond those two behemoths, which both have hundreds of members, other notable local supporters clubs include Colorado Spurs (Tottenham Hotspur/Esters Pub), Leeds United Colorado (Leeds United/DNVR Bar), and the Rocky Mountain Blues (Chelsea) and Colorado Red Devils (Manchester United), both of which are housed at the British Bulldog. Plus, there are the Mile High Magpies (Newcastle), Mile High Hammers (West Ham United), and Mile High Cityzens (Manchester City), among others.
The diverse EPL fandom landscape in Denver has evolved quickly, Eastwood, a member of OLSC Denver and owner of the Abbey Tavern, recalls opening his pub for early-morning matches a decade ago with just him and his bar manager.
Now, it’s routine to have upwards of 100 fans in the bar for 5:30 a.m. kickoffs, and as many as 250 people – the pub’s maximum capacity – for Liverpool’s biggest matches. The chants and songs and energy flow. And once it hits 7 a.m., which is the earliest that bars can begin serving alcohol, the beers start pouring.
Considering the ripple effects of COVID on his business, ongoing construction on Colfax Avenue that makes it difficult to access the pub, and people’s changed drinking habits, Eastwood says being the venue for OLSC Denver “is more important now than it’s ever been to building and sustaining my business. And I’d imagine other (soccer) bars feel the same.”
“We started (hosting OLSC Denver) when Liverpool was really bad, and it was a huge commitment to open the bar at 5:30 in the morning, and I got basically nothing out of it (financially),” Eastwood said. “But (former Liverpool manager) Jürgen Klopp comes along, makes us good again. Now, it’s a crazy atmosphere for those morning matches, and we open the kitchen, too.
“We know what everybody drinks. We know who’s going to have a drink. And we’ll know in our heads at five minutes to 7, we’re starting to pour all these drinks. I don’t think Denver’s ever seen so many pints of Guinness being poured at 7 o’clock in the morning.”
The TV turning point
The Abbey opened in late 2013, coinciding with the major turning point in the EPL gaining significant American traction: matches being broadcast on major U.S. TV.
NBC has been the league’s broadcast partner since 2013, and its current deal with the EPL runs until 2028. All 380 EPL matches can be watched live across NBC, USA Network, Peacock and Telemundo.
Read more Notre Dame’s Running Back Experimentation Must Be Over
Rebecca Lowe, who has anchored NBC’s studio coverage since the network acquired the EPL rights, is a programming staple. She’s in Denver this weekend for Premier League Mornings Live. Lowe was also the lead studio host for FOX Sports during the 2026 FIFA Men’s World Cup, and will be the lead host for Netflix’s coverage of the 2027 FIFA Women’s World Cup.
“What led to (explosive growth of supporters clubs in America) was NBC picking it up,” Colorado Spurs organizer Brent Barkley said. “Also, I believe NBC picking Rebecca Lowe was a part of it, too. That’s why this weekend is such a big deal, with her here, because she’s been an amazing figurehead for the sport on NBC and in the U.S.
“So NBC picking her, and deciding to show all those matches from 2013 to 2015 without needing Peacock, that’s why we saw the growth of all these groups. We actually have an easier time watching the matches than they do over there, because there’s blackouts and they’re trying to get people into the stadiums. Here, for a relatively low price, you can watch any match you want.”
Supporters clubs’ social impact
With the EPL now more accessible than ever to American viewers, supporters clubs keep popping up and expanding across the country. That lets members of those clubs to find like-minded fellow fans wherever they go, and when that happens, there is usually a customary scarf swap involved.
“Anytime I go to another city to watch, or if I’m out of town for the weekend, I’ll find the Chicago Liverpool pub, the New York pub, the San Francisco pub, and I’ll bring a scarf of ours to swap,” Eastwood said. “I’ve got 80 scarves hanging up in the pub from Liverpool clubs from all over North America, from Germany, from Ireland, from Scotland. I’ll always find them.”
While the social networking aspect is obvious, so is the impact on the individual fan. For one native Denverite, joining a supporters group saved his life.
Leo Diaz, a 39-year-old who is one of the organizers for the Colorado Spurs, joined the Tottenham Hotspur supporters club about six years ago. Diaz grew up in a gang environment in West Denver and was a member of the Bloods. He was incarcerated, and then battled a drug addiction.
But Diaz says “joining a new gang” changed the trajectory of his life. His body is now covered in Tottenham tattoos.
“I was strung out for about four-and-a-half years,” Diaz said. “And one of the things that I got into after getting clean was I started going to Esters. Being a part of Colorado Spurs gave me a community that held me accountable for my actions. It was a family that I really needed, and I think a lot of people do (even if they weren’t a situation like mine).
“When I was running the streets, dealing drugs and into drugs, I never would have thought that I could say, ‘I’ve been to London three times. I’ve got friends in London that love seeing me when I go out there. I’ve got a YouTube channel that’s nothing but Tottenham content that’s helped me reach a whole other life.’ This group has pushed me to be a better version of myself.”
Denver’s EPL fan future
Considering Denver is now firmly established on the EPL American map, more events could be on the horizon.
The EPL held the Premier League Summer Series, a preseason touring event, in America in 2023 and ’25. In the latter year, matches were held at MetLife Stadium in New Jersey, Soldier Field in Chicago and Mercedes-Benz Stadium in Atlanta. When the event featuring first-team players returns to the U.S., Jain said Denver will be considered as a host.
“We know that Denver is a great sports city with great infrastructure and great passion for soccer, so we’d love to explore that in the future,” Jain said.
And overall, it’s clear EPL teams are putting a heightened emphasis on engaging with official supporters clubs in America like the many that Denver boast.
“The relationships with the pubs will deepen, the number of members will keep growing, and our relationship with (Arsenal) itself has really taken off in the last couple of years,” said Wadi Muhaisen, the organizer for the Denver Gooners. “Before, Arsenal would say, ‘Here’s guidelines for chapters around the world, go by the guidelines and you’re an official pub.’
“But now, they engage with us. For the event in August, I was in touch with Arsenal itself and their representatives flew out and they brought the Premier League trophy for us to pose with. We’re in touch with them regularly now. They are realizing that there’s a whole world out there (outside of Europe) where, for financial reasons, it makes sense to actively engage us.”
And to those English fans who are “rolling their eyes about Americans and Australians and Mexicans who are fans of their clubs,” Muhaisen believes the Denver supporters clubs are “in some senses more dedicated (than the average EPL fan).”
“Many of us will fly to England to watch a match; we’ll wake up at 5:30 a.m. here to watch,” Muhaisen said. “It’s not a joke. We are all backing our clubs in serious ways, and it’s a big part of our identity.”
Read more Iran says it will reply to US response on Hormuz proposal once review over
____
Copyright 2026 Tribune Content Agency. All Rights Reserved.
This story was originally published October 12, 2026 at 2:38 AM.