In July 2023, about 40 people gathered to watch the season 5 premiere of “Love Island USA” at a rooftop bar in central LA.
The event was the brainchild of Maddy Biebel, a digital marketer working to revamp the restaurant’s weeknight programming. She wanted to test out her new concept, Reality Bar: Think, a sports bar, but for reality TV watch parties.
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Fast forward to this summer, and on a recent evening, Reality Bar hosted another watch party for the current season of “Love Island” to a packed house of some 200 people at Hollywood’s The Palm & The Pine. Across LA, hundreds more viewers gathered at bars around the city, steered by Reality Bar’s Instagram page, eager to catch up on their favorite islanders in Fiji with other fans.
LA business owners who’ve
joined forces
with Biebel and Reality Bar say they’ve been “blown away” by the results in recent weeks: increased sales and more potential regulars after “Love Island’s” season finale airs Sunday on Peacock.
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For Biebel, Reality Bar’s recent success has been a whirlwind, but not a surprise.
“I’ve always been very confident that this is something that people want, and something that people would like to do, and I just don’t know why people aren’t doing it yet,” she tells CNBC Make It.
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It’s taken a few years for other businesses to see the potential in channeling strong online communities around reality TV into in-person opportunities. “The amount of nos that I’ve gotten from Reality Bar has absolutely outweighed the yeses,” Biebel says.
But June was a record month for Reality Bar: It hosted 21 events across five venues, the majority of which were for “Love Island.” Nine bars are partnering with Biebel to stream the “Love Island” finale on Sunday. And one recent event included
a surprise appearance
from two contestants who were recently dumped from the island.
“I’ve seen a lot of people call me the original Los Angeles ‘Love Island’ watch party, which I love,” Biebel says.
Reality Bar has also hosted watch parties for shows like “The Bachelor,” “Survivor,” and “The Traitors.”
These days, Biebel spends upwards of 20 hours per week on Reality Bar (and likely more during recent weeks) doing marketing, graphic design, scheduling events and talking with venue owners. She pours into the side hustle on top of her day job working as a digital marketer for several brands in hospitality, including Ggiata Delicatessen, which is owned by her brother and his two friends.
Biebel says she personally funds the majority of Reality Bar’s operations, and any earnings go back into the project like by hiring photographers or building out the events, which are free to attend.
The project feels bigger than a job, Biebel says: “With Reality Bar, it wasn’t until I saw community start to form that it really felt like my calling, in a way, to just provide a space for people to gather and to build community.”
The pandemic gave rise to more conversations around
America’s loneliness epidemic
, and some experts point to
gatherings at third spaces
(places that aren’t the home, school or work) as a means of helping people feel more connected.
“The main reason I love the concept of a watch party is: You’re showing up to a room of a bunch of other people who care about the same things that you care about. And that’s immediately a way you can talk to someone or make a new friend,” Biebel says.
“People have showed up to the watch parties by themselves, and they leave with seven new friends. That is worth more to me than any amount of money that I could ever make from this concept.”
Along the way, Biebel says she’s been in talks with other people who work in unscripted TV and with networks to grow her project “in a way where I’m not stepping on anyone’s toes, and I’m truly just out here doing grassroots marketing for people.”
She also tries to partner with other pop-up event organizers around town. At one recent watch party, guests were invited to partake in a speed dating event hosted by
Friend or Flame
; other watch parties are followed by karaoke or performances from live bands.
Biebel eventually hopes to turn Reality Bar into her full-time business.
“Ideally in the future, [I] would love to have a more formal partnership with the networks and act as a marketing arm and a way for them to build their communities in real life,” she says.
She estimates that thousands of TV-obsessed Angelenos have attended a Reality Bar event by now.
Biebel won’t have much time to rest after “Love Island” fever simmers down — Reality Bar is already gearing up to host weekly watch parties for the new season of “Big Brother,” and she hopes to one day tap into Bravo’s “Real Housewives” fandom.
“If enough people DM me about a show or a finale or reunion, I’ll find a place to do it,” Biebel says. “At the end of the day, that’s what this is. I will find a place for you to gather.”
Disclosure: Peacock is the streaming service of NBCUniversal, parent company of CNBC.
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