Top Sports Bars in Varanasi to Watch the Match With the Crowd

Varanasi does not have a surplus of polished sports bars the way Bengaluru or Mumbai does. What it has instead is a loud, beer-sticky, cricket-obsessed culture that spills into rooftop terraces, darkened parlor-style restaurants, thickly carpeted banquet halls, and a handful of air-conditioned lounges that go completely feral when India bats. If you are hunting for the best bars to watch sports Varanasi has on offer, you will find them scattered between Godowlia, Assi, Lanka, and the odd cluster near Cantonment, each packing slightly different crowd energy and screen quality. The game may be the same, but the benches, the commentary language, the snacks, and the volume change drastically from one gully to the next.

Below is the list of top sports bars in Varanasi that I keep returning to during IPL, international cricket, high-stakes football, and the occasional hockey friendly. I have watched last-over finishes in some of them, missed train departures because of nail-biting penalty shootouts in others, and once got my tab inflated because the DJ on the floor next door kept hijacking the TV sound. These are the real venues, with prices, shortcuts, and the one detail most visitors overlook.

1. Apex Bar and Grill, Godowlia (The Original Cricket Den)

Tucked between the Godowlia market chaos and the edge of the Vishwanath corridor, Apex Bar and Grill is the first spot locals name when you ask for game day bars in Varanasi that never cancel the feed. I walked in last IPL season expecting a standard screen-and-stools setup and found a 120-inch projector, eight split-cam feeds, a wall of team scarves hand-painted by a local artist, and a crowd so thick on a Saturday evening I had to share a bench with a group of engineering students from BHU who narrated every over in fatalistic Bhojpuri. They open by 5:30 PM for evening matches, a short rickshaw ride from Godowlia chowk (₹40–₹60 on an auto without meter), and they stay open well past midnight on match days, which in this part of town is almost an event itself. What surprises most visitors is their dedicated "Chai Counter" that pours over 400 cups on high-voltage nights, a nod to the city’s refusal to fully offload its tea-sipping culture just because the bar opens.

The Tiger beers go for ₹250–₹300 each, the chicken platters hit ₹400–₹550 for a substantial helping, and if you are on a budget, a plate of masala papad and three beers still keeps you under 900 for the night. The big crowd shows up between 15 and 30 minutes before the first ball, so arrive by 8 PM for a 9:30 PM start to get a corner seat near the projector. I once made the mistake of walking in at the toss and ended up standing at the back, craning my neck past a column while the bartender kept shouting "last seat, brother, take it or leave it." The screen is large but the angle isn’t perfect from the rear, and during peak matches the latecomers basically merge into a single, sweaty standing mass behind the sofa row.

One honest complaint here is that the washroom area can get properly grim by the sixth or seventh over if the water pressure drops, which it occasionally does in the summer months. If sanitation matters to you during a long match, swerve to a slightly newer spot that I will mention a little later on. Still, for raw crowd energy during a sports viewing Varanasi moment, Apex on a Saturday cannot be beaten.

Local Insider Tip: Sit to the left of the projector, not the right. The speakers there catch the commentator’s audio clearly without the bass thud from the DJ booth bleeding in. The kebab counter behind the left column is also where they stash the fresh juice for late-night crowds, so you essentially get free orange slices if you are nice to the guy in the brown apron.

2. Fabheda Palace Restaurant, Lahurabir (Smuggled Sound and Roof-Top Feeling)

A little east of the Assi junction, in the narrow crossroads near Lahurabir crossing, Fabheda Palace is the kind of place that does not scream "sports bar" from the street but once you climb to the rooftop, you immediately understand. Banners of Indian cricketers hang between the fairy lights, a floor‑to‑ceiling projector screen drops from the central beam, and the city skyline in the background, dust and temple spires included, gives the experience an almost accidental cinematic quality. I attended a Champions Trophy night here last year and the owner, a former Ranji player from Ballia, personally served glasses of an excessive orange cocktail that tasted like Tang had been into the rum. The crowd in this locality skews towards the 30‑plus demographic, less rowdy than the students but equally loud when Dhoni walks back to the pavilion or when Virat Kohli drives through cover.

The rooftop section fills up fast for a 7:30 PM start, and they begin serving alcohol from the upstairs bar at 200–₹280 for the standard Kingfisher pints. The snack menu, a mix of Tandoori platters, mutton seekh kebabs, and local paneer dishes, hovers between ₹350 and ₹700 depending on how vegetarian you want to stay. On a half-day office schedule, you can easily spend an evening here for around ₹1,500–2,000 per head, drinks included. The place is a short walk from the BHU Lanka gate, which means post-match Uber rides back towards Assi can be slow on nights when the entire student population spills out after 10:30 PM.

A warning for the sunshine‑sensitive: from April to June, the rooftop open seating becomes genuinely punishing after sunset because the thermopore ceiling retains heat well into the night. If you are travelling in summer, ask them to seat you near the fan cluster or choose their air‑conditioned ground‑floor hall, which has a smaller but still decent screen. In winter, however, Fabheda is heaven, with the ghat‑chilled air flowing past the city skyline behind the boundary ropes.

Local Insider Tip: Ask for the "Dehati Mojito" and you will get a drink that is not on the menu. It tastes closer to a nimbu paani with a generous kick of vodka, and it costs half the price of anything listed on the drinks card. Also, the corner seat next to the low wall gives you an escape route to the tea stall downstairs if the power plays up, which it once did during a crucial India‑Pakistan game, turning the twenty‑two yard into a 10‑minute dark comedy.

3. Hotel Bar Roof Tops (Assi and Bhadaini Belt) — The Low‑Key Middle Whisper

Between Assi and Bhadaini, a string of modest‑priced hotels have quietly assembled rooftop bars that primarily target visiting families and occasional cricket lovers. Names change fast, but the common denominator is a 40‑inch LED mounted on a whitewashed wall, plastic chairs with a low‑back lean, and staff who will switch between channels based on a show of fingers. Unlike the polished chains, these spots don’t have a dedicated DJ, nor a separate smoking section, and that’s exactly what makes them oddly comfortable when you want to hear a Test match commentary without a bass drop drowning out Harsha Bhogle. A few such rooftops are scattered along the narrow lanes between Dashashwamedh and the Assi stretch, particularly behind the row of sweet shops near Hanuman ghat.

The food here is mostly standard hotel fare: butter chicken platters for ₹450, fish tikka around ₹600, and a basic cold beer for 200–₹250. The real value, however, is that during low-key series or bilateral matches, these places can arrange private group screenings for around ₹6,000–₹8,000 per hour including projector rental, decent sound, and a food package for 15–20 people. For a group planning to watch a late-night SA20 or Big Bash game without the chaos caused by India centric crowds, that negotiation alone makes the experiment worthwhile. The owners will often bribe the boy who runs the chaat stall below with a free samosa just to keep the volume high on the TV downstairs as well, so you effectively get an entire building glued to the playoffs.

Traffic around the Assi ghat from October to March is quite predictable: the route between Assi and Lanka is choked with tour buses until about 8:30 PM, which means post‑match exits on scooter are practically suicide. Auto-rickshaws on this belt often overcharge by 20–30 Rs after dark during festive or match nights, so it’s preferable to pre‑book an Ola or walk the 15 minutes from the Lanka crossing. In monsoon, these rooftops don’t open until the rain stops, or until the plastic tarp above the bar is re‑stretched, which means delays can stretch your evening before a ball is bowled.

Local Insider Tip: Bring your own HDMI dongle just in case their TV doesn’t support your streaming app. The staff look at Apple TV kits with suspicion but will promptly give you the remote the moment you mention you have "a big match coming from Bengaluru", a wordplay that makes them think your hometown team is involved. Also, the tea lady who comes up from the kitchen at 11 PM makes exactly one decent black masala chai of the entire day; catch her before she disappears.

4. Bistro 22 and Lounge Bars along Cantonment Road

The Cantonment area is where Varanasi quietly apes a mini‑Mumbai without the arrogance. Around the Mall Road and the Cantt railway crossing, you will find a handful of bars and lounges that regularly run theme nights for FIFA World Cup, Premier League, and the semi‑finals of knockout tournaments. Venues with names similar to Bistro 22 tend to pop up every few years, taking over older banquet halls, repainting the walls black, putting in new LED screens, and slapping craft beer frames on the chalkboard. I remember sitting in one such place on a damp Saturday in February, midway through an India vs Australia Test match, watching the rain hammer the terrace glass while the bartender poured a local IPA he swore was "exported from Dharwad". Turns out it was just from Prayagraj, and we clinked glasses anyway.

This part of town is a 30–40 minute auto ride from Godowlia (₹100–₹140 on a shared auto during the day), and the bars are significantly less packed than the student‑dense Assi strip. You’ll find table beer at ₹300–350, cocktails starting at ₹550, and a meal for two (including starters and biryanis) in the ₹1,600–2,200 range. The crowd here is mid‑career professionals, visiting teams of corporate sales staff, and the occasional Sikh gentlemen who have driven in from Unao or Kanpur just to taste the Varanasi lassi. During monsoon, these spots fill up because parking is easier compared to the gully-packed Godowlia zone, but during summer the impact of the afternoon heat can be brutal if you arrive before sunset while the AC is still catching up inside.

One complaint: several of these lounges have a 2‑kilometer jeep parking crammed so tightly on weekends that retrieving your vehicle after a match can take 15–20 minutes, and the parking youths often demand a “chai paani” tip above the printed ₹50 fee. Keep small change. Also, the entry policy for women and couples is slightly more relaxed here than in the older‑school bars towards Godowlia, which means traffic of unsolicited stares is entirely avoidable. If you come with a mixed group, this is the safer choice of game day bars in Varanasi.

Local Insider Tip: The bartender at the far end of the counter near the bistro kitchen doubles as an actual cricket analyst. During the Ashes series last year, he threw in a free wing platter for anyone who correctly predicted the sixth ball of an over. The restaurant also has a WhatsApp broadcast for match‑night specials. Scan the tiny QR code etched on the bottom of the beer coaster (not the big one with the menu) and you will get a 10% off coupon for your next visit.

5. The Kashi-Vishwanath Night Circuit: Street Food as Sports Viewing

This is not a sports bar but a geographical obsession that every cricket lover in Varanasi implicitly understands. Barely 200 meters from the Kashi Vishwanath temple, in the gullies that fan out from the Bhojubah locality, makeshift viewing arches spring up during IPL and World Cup months. Shops pull out extra LCDs, hook them illegally to street light power lines, and suddenly an entire commercial lane turns into an open‑air amphitheater. Last T20 World Cup final I sat on an inverted steel tiffin box near the Vishwanath gate, eating aloo tikki for ₹20, watching the match on a 55‑inch screen propped at eye level between two saris on display, sharing the noise, the groans, and the tear gas smell of sudden firecrackers with at least 600 strangers. In that exact moment, I understood why people call religion a spectator sport in this city.

The street food here is the real MVP: golgappe plates for ₹40, chole bhature around ₹80, and the famous Banarasi tamatar chaat at ₹60–₹80 per plate. Cold drinks and bottled water carry a 10% premium on high‑voltage match nights, but you will barely notice it because the street turns into an ECG graph of noise anyway. The sweet shops in the same lane stay open past midnight, selling hot gulab jamun to fans who need an emotional sugar fix after a narrow defeat. Keep your hands in your pockets and your phone near your spine; pickpocketing spikes dramatically during these nights because the crowd compresses to the point of choreography.

Do not try to drive into the old city after 5 PM on match days; it’s a mistake I keep making and repenting in slow, honking motions. Watch the last few overs from the street and then walk towards the Godowlia stand, where autos sporadically appear after 10:30 PM. They charge arbitrary prices, often ₹100–150 for short hops that usually go for half, but the sheer relief of sitting bleary‑eyed on a moving metal box justifies the fleecing.

Local Insider Tip: The real screen alignment, not the road‑facing one, happens three gully lanes behind the statue of Swami Vivekananda near Godowlia. A guy named Pappu runs a tiny electrical repair shop there but keeps a projector‑mapped sidewall screen for his own fun. During the IPL, he lets the crowd spill in and sells cold water for half the MRP. Walk towards the sound of a pressure cooker whistle, and you will find him.

6. Rooftop Bars Beyond the Ghats: The Tandoor of Assi Junction

Walking west out of the Assi ghat market crossing, towards the concrete row of government offices, lies a cluster of mid‑range hotels whose rooftop bars become hockey and football shrines whenever a major tournament overlaps with a weekend holiday. I dropped into one such rooftop on a foggy January night to watch an India hockey quarter‑final and found the patio section filled with heavily padded jackets, steaming clay cups of filter coffee, and a surprising amount of hockey stick knowledge among the cigarette‑puffing patrons. The owner, a former university hockey player himself, curated the screen space meticulously: one 65-inch LED facing the open table cluster, a smaller 32-inch unit near the food counter for kitchen‑bound watchers, and a backup laptop‑to‑TV hookup in case the Star Sports app refused to load.

The drinks here are simple and honest: pint of beer for ₹200–₹280, rum‑based cocktails for ₹350–₹450, and a solid tandoori platter for 600 that serves four moderately hungry fans. The setting is less glitzy than Cantt but more personal than the anarchic Godowlia rooftops. If you want to watch a non‑cricket tournament without shouting "where is the betaal that hangs the screen," this is a great corner to plant yourself. However, seasonal context matters hugely. In winter, when the Assi breeze hits hard after 10 PM, you are forced to burrow under the otherwise moth‑eaten blankets draped over the sofa seats. In summer, the air becomes a wet blanket of its own, and the ash‑tray smoke mixes with the mosquito coil smoke to create an unpleasant quasi‑sauna unless you choose the small indoor dining section.

The owner also does an unofficial "predict the score, get 30% off" offer if you correctly guess the opening partnership of the match. I capitalized on it once and got a free chaat plate, but do not try this if you don’t understand the game; the quiz is verbal, and he will gently roast a fool.

Local Insider Tip: The torch they use to light the rooftop candles doubles as a powerful selfie stick light and a reading lamp when the generator fails. Also, the kitchen makes a "Kachaudi plate" at midnight only (don’t ask why eleven‑thirty is still too early). Most people leave before the third innings and miss what is arguably the best late‑night snack in the Assi circuit.

7. The Brahmanand Club City Lounge: Semi‑Private Game Pads

In pocket neighborhoods like Kamachha, Maldahia, and the edges of the railway station periphery, old row‑house bars have been repurposed into cozy 20‑40 seat “city lounges” that market themselves as semi‑private viewing rooms. The Brahmanand Club‑style name changes with the landlord, but the format is identical: a small hall with a 75‑inch TV, a proper home‑theater system that genuinely envelops you in HD noise, leather recliners that lean back just enough, and a snack menu that skews heavily towards tandoori chicken and beer pints. I