Jake Paul is opening 25 sports bars

While his brother has chosen to try building off-social-media-platform wealth by starting food & bev companies like Prime and Lunchly, Jake Paul is putting a big chunk of the money he’s earned from boxing in the Dog Haus.

He and Nakisa Bardarian, the co-founder of his boxing promotions company Most Valuable Promotions, have signed a deal with the national restaurant/sports bar chain to become franchise owners of 25 new locations. They’re also joining Dog Haus’ board of directors.

Four of Paul and Bardarian’s locations have already opened in Dallas, Houston, and San Antonio, with plans for the next bars to open up in Florida and Puerto Rico, per Dexerto.

Neither Paul nor the Dog Haus said exactly what the scale of his investment here is, but a 2022 report from Restaurant Dive pegs Dog Haus’ initial required investment per franchise at between $500,000 and $1 million, with a franchise fee of $40,000 for franchisees’ first restaurants, and $20,000 for every location thereafter. Franchise owners also reportedly get charged a 6% royalty fee. That means, conservatively, Paul and Bardarian are putting up a little over $13 million. On the high end, they’re paying over $25.5 million.

And while there aren’t many content creators becoming franchise owners at major national chains, there are plenty of wealthy people who’ve decided to use and grow their money by getting into franchising. It’s interesting that Paul is now taking this route, which is populated by seasoned businesspeople and athlete investors buying into established brands, instead of strictly following the traditional content creator path and relying on the performance of his homegrown DTC company or big-box food & bev brand.

But that doesn’t mean Paul is moving away from having his name on food products (and, to be clear, he does

still do consumer brands: he launched body care brand W by Jake Paul onto Walmart shelves in June, and it’s expected to hit $50 million in sales by the end of this year). Part of the deal with Dog Haus is that he’ll have his own branded menu items.

“Manifested this into reality,” he tweeted about the deal Oct. 16. “I love nothing more than backing people/companies I truly believe in and are fans of.”

He urged fans to go check out Dog Haus’ full menu…including, “most importantly,” he said, “trying my ‘El Gallo’ chicken wings and sandwich on fight night.” (He’s referring to his upcoming, much-ballyhooed fight with Mike Tyson on Nov. 15, which—and this is worth noting—will stream live and exclusively on Netflix.)

Paul and Bardarian’s franchise buy-in will grow Dog Haus’ presence by over 30%, as it currently has 70 locations.

As for why Dog Haus chose Paul and his promoter for a deal this big, CEO Michael Montagno said that it “really has very little to do with his celebrity.”

“It’s about his dynamic personality, relentless drive, and the fact that he has revolutionized the way we communicate, all of which align perfectly with our brand’s ethos,” he said. “So this is just the beginning. We’re excited to partner with Jake and Nakisa, proven game-changers and promotional geniuses, in taking Dog Haus to an unprecedented level.”

Like we mentioned earlier, Paul has already opened four Dog Haus locations, and we expect to see some pretty heavy co-promotion for them, his El Gallo menu items, and his fight with Tyson in the coming weeks.