DOWNTOWN DETROIT, Mich. (WXYZ) — While many college basketball fans came to Detroit to watch the March Madness games at Little Caesars Arena, others are taking to the bars and restaurants to watch their favorite teams.
“I came to watch Creighton Basketball play Tennessee,” said Mackenzie Porupsky, Creighton Basketball fan.
Porupsky came from Tennessee to Detroit to support the Creighton University basketball team.
I caught up with her on Saturday while she was at Harry’s Bar downtown taking a break from watching the March Madness games.
“It was really rainy all day but we found some good space to watch some Minnesota Hockey,” Porupsky added.
While Porupsky is a Creighton Bluejays fan, Cesar Ramirez, a manager at Harry’s, says they got an influx of Purdue fans on Friday.
“There’s a bar in Purdue called Harry’s as well, so a lot of the Purdue fans made social media posts and what not and they all decided to come here for their Purdue game.”
Ramirez adding that this boost in customers is nothing they can’t handle.
“Compared to the Lions and what we’ve done here, this is small scale, we love the business, we’re ready for it,” said Ramirez.
A few minutes up the road from Harry’s is the Brass Rail bar.
“We’ve been seeing a lot more people especially after all the events have been going on. We serve pizza on the weekends until 3 am so we’ve been seeing a lot of people coming in celebrating,” said Danae Florias, a manager at Brass Rail.
Florias says now they are focused on serving the next round of fans on Sunday.
“We will be open all day just to make sure we can accommodate everybody,” said Florias.
The Elite 8 game will be starting here at LCA on Sunday 2:20pm.
