At last, Pune gets a good sports bar

It’s that time of the year when there’s always a game on—F1 race weekends, FIFA World Cup matches (aired at insanely odd hours), the India-England cricket series. So, you could either stay home and upend the daily routine of family members not so inclined to holler at the referee at the sight of a yellow card, or simply find a place to watch a game with other hungry fans.

But at most bars, the screen is usually a television screen placed above the liquor shelf, and angled slightly wrong. Or the sound competes with a DJ who starts at nine. Or someone’s birthday party has colonised the best table. The bar, which does not especially care about the match, will switch to something else at halftime.

But Aufside Sports Bar, on the sixth floor of Millennium Club by Ileseum in Wakad, Pune, is different. And you can tell even before you enter it. The day I visit, the FC Barcelona Pune fan club had arrived in numbers for the Argentina versus Austria World Cup match. It was a crowd of Messi fans (as it often tends to be). Harish Vadde, founder of We Are Messi, a community built around fans of the Argentine captain, was there wearing his signed Messi jersey for the evening. And the energy was amazing, with all the football fervour.

Running through the middle of the 3,000 sq ft room is a 52-foot bar, one of the longest in the country. Thirty-two screens surround it, so there isn’t a bad angle in the house. At the far end, near the pool table, is a large projector that pulls in its own crowd. The walls across the space are framed with sporting legends and tongue-in-cheek art—an F1 car captioned “Fast, loud and highly engineered. Just how we like it”, a Ferrari logo reworked to read “I Need Therapy”, the Mona Lisa lifting a pepperoni slice, appropriate for a bar that takes its pizza seriously.

On that particular evening, outside, on the terrace, the same match played on an 85-inch screen against Pune’s skyline. Aamchur Sours and Toit drafts moved fast. When Argentina scored, the room erupted—chests thumping, strangers hugging, drinks raised.

“The biggest shift isn’t football, Formula 1 or even cricket. It’s community. People come back to Aufside because they find their tribe. The next decade of sports hospitality in India will be defined by community, not consumption,” says Nisarg Doshi, COO of Aufside Hospitality. On a night like this, in a room like this, he is not wrong.

In a country with 678 million sports fans and counting, an IPL opening weekend in 2026 that drew over 515 million viewers across TV and digital platforms, and currently a World Cup played across time zones that often fall outside convenient viewing hours in India, certain fixtures that do land in watchable time slots become key moments for fans seeking a shared, community viewing experience.

Some sports bars have tried. Across India, Studs and Underdoggs have built chains around sport as their primary identity. The Irish House and Big Pitcher do it well on the side. Newer venues, like Mumbai’s Courtside, pair padel with cocktails. But if you wanted sport and community to co-exist in a single ecosystem, you usually had to belong to a gymkhana or a members’ club. Aufside offers that, minus the membership tag.

“Most sports bars in India are basically a pub with a television,” says Pranav Trehan, co-founder and CEO of Aufside Hospitality. “We are already part of an ecosystem—a club—so we already have a community to cater to. Outside customers are just an add-on."

At Millennium Club by Ileseum, this ecosystem spans six floors below the bar: squash courts, basketball courts, a Michael Phelps Signature swimming pool, a boxing studio, spa, sound-healing rooms, and a kids’ play zone. People drift upstairs after a workout, a swim or a game of squash, while football fan clubs arrive for screenings.

“India’s club culture exists at two extremes: ultra-exclusive legacy gymkhanas at one end, fragmented hyper-local gyms at the other. We identified a massive whitespace in between, where nearly 90 per cent of urban India actually exists,” adds Pavit Singh, co-founder of both Aufside and Ileseum, which now operates 27 clubs across 13 cities, with 35 more under construction.

The programming reflects that ambition. They have tied up with Indian fan clubs, including FC Barcelona, Real Madrid, Argentina, Spain, and Manchester United. Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal, and Manchester City are in the pipeline. F1 screenings run with Kasaaki India, and World Cup watch parties are complete with quizzes and merchandise giveaways. Comedy nights, karaoke, trivia, Bollywood jam sessions, and live music ensure there’s almost always something happening. Even half-time comes with its own entertainment—foosball, darts, beer pong, and mini table tennis.

The space is built to keep up. While it seats 192, it can comfortably host more than 500 people standing during big screenings. Doors typically open at noon, but the schedule bends around the community rather than the clock, opening early or staying open late depending on the programming. For the semi finals this week, the space will be open until the 12.30am match is over. 

Last Sunday looked very different. The Alpha Run Club started with a warm-up at Millennium Club before runners headed out on a 2.5 km or 5 km route. Back at the club, the morning unfolded into yoga, spinning, self-defence or Zumba, followed by aqua Zumba, a coffee rave at Aufside, a steam or sauna, and finally lunch back at the bar, all curated at special prices.

Trehan is an avid home cook, so it’s perhaps no surprise that at his space the food matters as much as the football. Developed alongside chef Kuldeep Singh Kathait, the menu skips the usual sports-bar clichés in favour of a line-up that works just as well for post-run lunches as it does for match nights; for instance, there’s lotus stem chips with guacamole. The bara kebab arrives in bamboo steamers with charcoal tucked into the centre to keep the smokiness intact. The Thai green curry holds its own against that from many standalone Thai restaurants—not something you expect to say at a sports bar. The pizzas are excellent, made with Italian 00 flour; the pepperoni and truffle mushroom are the two I’d happily return for.

The drinks programme, led by head mixologist and beverage director Sachin Chaudhari, formerly of Hyatt Goa and Palm Jumeirah, Dubai, goes beyond what you’d expect. Yes, craft beers sit alongside classics, and there’s a wide range of premium alcohol, but the surprise is the extensive cocktail menu organised into four distinct menus: Signatures, Classics, Power Play LIITs, and the Aufside Nostalgic Picante.

The menu also includes four tequila-based picantes, including the Aam Aadmi Picante with mango, lime and Kashmiri chilli; the 3 pm Pune Pineapple Picante Masala with roasted pineapple, black pepper honey, chilli, and turmeric; the Tam Yum with tamarind jaggery shrub and chipotle tincture; and the Recess Guava Chilli Picante with mezcal and chilli hibiscus syrup. I swapped my usual martini for the Puneri Aamchur Sour, a whisky cocktail that leans into raw mango and aamchur. Tart, savoury, and balanced, it’s the sort of drink you order out of curiosity and end up recommending to the table.

India’s sports fans have always had the passion. What they’ve lacked is somewhere that matches it—a room that takes the match as seriously as they do. That gap is beginning to close. Slowly, across padel clubs, rooftop courts, and newly opened sports campuses, a new idea of what sport and social life can look like together is taking shape. Aufside at Millennium Club is the most complete version of that yet.

Address: 6th floor, Phoenix Millennium Club, Shankar Kalat Nagar, Wakad, Pune

Timings: 12 pm to 1 am

Reservation: +91 99305 01459

Price for two: ₹1,500 plus taxes (approx)