Premier League fans will find their pubs and restaurants in LA

Adam Johnson became a football fan by accident.

During a visit to his family in London, Johnson's brother-in-law presented him with a Tottenham jacket. And when he put his hand in one of the pockets, he found two tickets to a Spurs game.

At the time, Johnson might have preferred a root canal to a football game, but he played anyway. The experience proved life-changing.

“It was just really exciting,” he said. “The fans blew me away. The singing and the atmosphere, it was just so incredible that I was there straight away.”

Last spring, Johnson, 44, and his wife Clarice, 39, found a way to stoke football fever on this side of the pond by opening a restaurant in Culver City that they called N17 The Lane, a name familiar to every Tottenham -Fan knows. N17 is the postcode of the North London district of Haringey, where the club is located, while 'The Lane' refers to White Hart Lane, the legendary stadium where Spurs played for 118 years.

You could say their strategy was modeled on the plot of Field of Dreams – if you build it, they will come. And it worked. A month later, the small restaurant opened on the ground floor of a luxury apartment complex and was packed with soccer fans. Another two dozen blocked the sidewalk outside to look through the windows and watch the European Championship final on five big-screen televisions.

“That’s the atmosphere we want,” Johnson said. “Standing room. stand out[side]looking through the window.”

Football has been a staple of the Southern California sports bar scene for years. But for much of that time, British-style pubs like The Fox & Hounds in Studio City, Ye Olde Kings Head and the recently closed Cock 'N' Bull in Santa Monica catered primarily to small groups of expats not attending the games could on cable television.

That began to change when ESPN and Fox began broadcasting European soccer widely. The big clubs responded with wild summer tours across the United States, and as more bars and restaurants opened in the early hours of the morning to show the games, fan groups rewarded them with ever larger gatherings.

So Joxer Daly's in Culver City became a Liverpool bar, the Auld Dubliner in Long Beach is home to the Bay City Gooners, an Arsenal fan group, while O'Malley's on Main in Seal Beach has been Chelsea territory for five seasons.

Football bar culture received another major boost when LAFC began play in 2018. The club's active brand and community department made a point of recruiting restaurants throughout Southern California to show the team's games, showering them with club swag when appropriate.

Six years later, LAFC has 77 registered bar partners in four counties, some hosting well-attended viewing parties, others like N17, which recently had three fans at an away game.

“LA is a cultural hub and soccer is everywhere,” said Jimmy Lopez, who has been instrumental in expanding the team’s partnerships as LAFC’s manager of brand and community. “This sport is no longer what it was 10 years ago. I was surprised at how many bars reached out to me. “So it spreads by word of mouth and it’s really cool to see it grow on its own.”

With Southern California's early morning kickoff times, it's even more important to create that sense of community around Premier League soccer.

“They build these little subcultures,” Lopez said. “Football is best when you watch it with people who are on the same team as you. You sing songs and have a good time.

“You want to be with like-minded people. You want to high-five each other and just escape reality for those 90 minutes and have a great time. It’s just fun.”

Given Lopez's passion and knowledge of local fan culture, he was the first person Johnson contacted when he opened N17. He is still waiting for a response from Tottenham.

“We contacted them and it was difficult,” he said. “They never contacted us. We tried it a few times and then we just [said] We’ll try.”

N17 is not a typical sports joint. It doesn't look like a man cave or a changing room, with no pennants, football scarves or sports memorabilia hanging on the wall, just a few lone Tottenham bobbleheads behind the bar. It's not a replacement Irish pub with plenty of dark either Wood, green accents and a Guinness mirror. Instead, the furnishings are sparse, the space is light and airy, and small patio tables are lined up on the sidewalk in the hope of preventing overflow.

But it was the European Championships and Copa América last summer, not Tottenham or LAFC, that drew N17's first big crowds and set the bar on Southern California's soccer map.

“That has largely kept our doors open,” Johnson said.

However, it was the Spurs who kept that momentum going.

“I don’t get a big crowd at any other game,” said Johnson, sitting at a patio table outside the restaurant wearing a worn gray Spurs T-shirt and shorts despite the late September cold. “When Tottenham play, they come.”

Johnson said he and his wife have put about half a million dollars into N17 and have made a profit every month since it opened. But it wasn't easy.

“This is the hardest thing I've ever done,” said Johnson, who estimates he works 100 hours a week, mostly for one reason: “So we can watch the game and other people have a place to come and watch the game.” ”

“It was just a passion,” he added. “It’s just the love of football, of football.”