MIAGuide
The Best Sports Bars In Miami
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
It can be a cruel thing to be a South Florida sports fan. Not as awful as being a Jets fan, but, you know, it’s tough. The good news is that the best sports bars in Miami offer more than just huge TVs to show you the Dolphins blow it in the fourth quarter. These places are also serving some of Miami’s best wings, have waterfront views, and also include some of our favorite dive bars in town.
THE SPOTS
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
South Miami is the epicenter of sports bar wings, and Sports Grill does them better than anyone else in the neighborhood. There are a few options here, but get the Dale style, named in honor of a Sports Grill regular who requested his wings be basted on the grill with the spicy house Miami Heat sauce. We thank you, Dale, a true wing genius if there ever was one. Because the result is saucy, charred, spicy, and truly the ideal sports bar wing. So come here next time there’s an important game on and (even if we lose) you’ll at least have these wings.
photo credit: Emily Schindler
Miami is not a sports bar town, possibly because we seem to only realize we have sports teams when they’re in the playoffs (and that doesn’t happen a lot). But if we ever do have a reason to care about sports, Wynwood’s Grails is a solid place to cheer on the [insert team here] to victory. The bar has a lot of outdoor seating, a menu with OK chicken wings and other decent bar food, and there are TVs everywhere so you can watch your game of choice no matter how crowded it is. They also have one of those mini arcade basketball hoops, which gets 30% more fun after each drink you have.
photo credit: Cleveland Jennings
Keg South is a dark sports bar/dive bar in Pinecrest with dollar bills stapled to the walls, games playing on TVs, and bar food, including some of the best wings in Miami. These are grilled wings in their simplest form: served naked with nothing but char marks and ranch or blue cheese. You should most definitely order those while you eat at the bar or pace back and forth stressfully because the Dolphins are going to blow it (again) in the fourth quarter.
photo credit: Peter Rentschler
Shuckers definitely has the best view of any sports bar in town. This North Bay Village spot is one of the only casual waterfront restaurants in Miami where the prime views don’t come with incessant house music and $300 bottles of rosé whizzing by your head. The food here is what you want in a breezy raw bar—they have good wings and solid seafood—but the best part of Shuckers is its wide-open view of Biscayne Bay. There are also a ton of TVs, and if the place is packed, you can always watch from the bar.
photo credit: Virginia Otazo
With its long, old-timey wooden bar and multiple TVs, The Brightside is a fun place for Shenandoah locals to watch sports and enjoy a good Happy Hour. We like the beef on weck with horseradish and jus, but a lot of the food here is about the same quality of a nice movie theater menu. And the music is loud, so you may not hear the person directly across from you. But it still serves an important purpose. The Coral Way bar is a good spot to meet up and get loud with friends, watch a marathon of football games, and enjoy some beers.
If an Irish sports bar closed its eyes and made a wish to be on a roof, you’d get Mike’s. This place is casual bordering on dive bar, and it’s on the roof of an old apartment building right at the west end of the Venetian Causeway. But it’s got a charming old Miami vibe we really love. They also have decent fried bar food, affordable drinks, and plenty of TVs. There’s even a few on the outdoor patio that overlooks Biscayne Bay.
photo credit: Tasty Planet
Flannigan’s is a very popular South Florida chain that’s been a favorite since 1959. And if there’s an important game happening, you can bet all eight Flannigan’s locations in Miami will be packed. This place is dark and mostly made of wood, and both the wings (free every Wednesday if you buy a pitcher of beer) and ribs are what you want while watching athletic adults do impressive things with their bodies. Our favorite location is the Grove one, but Surfside is always fun too.
This Virginia Gardens pub doesn’t look like much from the outside, but it has a big indoor bar, a liquor store, an outdoor bar, tons of booths, TVs lining every wall, and they make everything from the chili to the chunky blue cheese dip from scratch. The food here is a level of quality you wouldn't expect from a sports bar near the airport, and the wings are some of Miami’s best. Each is baked, fried, and then grilled. The sweet ginger wings are covered in a glossy sauce that has a hint of heat. And the buffalo wings are sauced before being grilled, so all of the flavor is sealed underneath a nice char.
photo credit: Phillip Pessar
Seven Seas is a classic cash-only Miami dive bar with a pretty legendary karaoke night every Tuesday, Thursday, and Saturday. But it’s also a great place to spend a Sunday with folks who probably remember seeing the ‘72 Dolphins in person. It’s small, but there are TVs surrounding the bar. And if you have enough drinks here, you might actually start to think you’re inside an old ship. There are porthole windows, campy nautical decor, and a cast of colorful regulars who kind of start to look like pirates after a few shots.
We hesitate to call Lost Boy a sports bar. It is a bar that often pulls down a big projector screen to show big games. So if one you want to see is coming up, check in on their Instagram page to see if they’re showing it. If they are, this is a lovely place to watch sports. They have good cocktails, a menu of simple bar food, and lots of tables, including an old piano that doubles as one in the center of the room.
