Mark Cuban, Dodgers boss back star-studded LA…
Apparently, Mark Cuban and Andrew Friedman weren’t content conquering skilled sports activities.
Now they’re coming for your neighborhood sports activities bar.
Tucked inside a sprawling 8,500-square-foot former pawn store that dates back to the Nineteen Thirties, L.A.’s latest reinvention on sports activities, luxurious, and wonderful eating is born. Located on the nook of Melrose and Cahuenga sits Pawn Shop, a new restaurant and sports activities bar that options more than 60 televisions, two huge media partitions, non-public suites, and high-end cocktails galore.
LA’s latest star-studded sports activities bar Pawn Shop, positioned at the nook of Cahuenga and Melrose Blvd. SHELBY MOORE
It’s led by founder and CEO Diego Torres-Palma and James Beard Award-winning chef Tony Messina. Together they’ve made the usual sports activities bar menu of chicken wings, nachos and mozzarella sticks look insulting by comparability.
A housemade wagyu scorching canine, beef tallow fries, chicken liver mousse, caviar and charbroiled Maine oysters are just some of the menu’s highlights.
Seven of Pawn Shop’s top tier menu objects. SHELBY MOORE
But the most fascinating factor about Pawn Shop isn’t what’s on the partitions or plates.
It’s who is behind it.
Billionaire entrepreneur and former Dallas Mavericks proprietor Mark Cuban is an investor. So is Dodgers’ president of baseball operations Andrew Friedman.
Dallas Mavericks proprietor Mark Cuban celebrates after a 124-103 victory against the Minnesota Timberwolves in Game Five of the Western Conference Finals at Target Center on May 30, 2024, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Getty Images
Andrew Friedman seems to be on during a ceremony after the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the Milwaukee Brewers 5-1 in recreation 4 of the National League Championship Series. Getty Images
The checklist of names in either investing or being a half of the business is longer than a CVS receipt.
Aaron Donald, who lately shocked the soccer world by popping out of retirement and returning to the Los Angeles Rams, has mentioned investing alongside his spouse, Erica, according to Torres-Palma.
“We literally traded emails when Aaron announced he was coming back,” Torres-Palma said.
Los Angeles Rams defensive end Aaron Donald at a press convention at the Rams Practice Facility in Woodland Hills, California, on Sunday, Aug. 30, 2026. IMAGN IMAGES via GWN Connect
Donald isn’t the only Dodgers-or-Rams-adjacent star circling the new sports activities bar. Dodgers’ shortstop Mookie Betts met with the company and will now characteristic his Tequila Providencia behind the bar. Torres-Palma said Providencia’s CEO Rodd Rafieha’s tequila impressed his beverage staff enough to earn a place in the effectively.
Los Angeles Dodgers shortstop Mookie Betts seems to be on in the first inning against the San Diego Padres at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, California, on July 4, 2026. Kiyoshi Mio-Imagn Images
Kendall Jenner’s 818 Tequila also needed in on the enjoyable.
“We’re excited to have 818 Tequila featured at Pawn Shop LA,” said Lanay Jacobs, President of 818 Tequila. “It’s a lively destination that brings together sports, cocktails, and community in a way our audience will love.”
Model and actress Kendall Jenner poses behind the bar at Pawn Shop with her 818 Tequila. (Instagram: @PawnShop_LA)
Torres-Palma has other conferences set up with L.A. famous person athletes as effectively.
That assortment of names helps clarify why Pawn Shop has shortly change into less a sports activities bar and more a hangout spot for athletes and celebrities alike.
Former NBA participant Chandler Parsons, now the co-host of the online show “Run It Back,” makes a level to stop by at least once a week.
“Pawn Shop is exactly what LA needed,” he said. “Great food, great energy, amazing people, and a genuine love for sports that you can feel when you walk in.”
Sportscaster and radio host Rich Eisen lately held his fantasy soccer draft there. The complete LAFC staff did the same. Actor Anthony Ramos has stopped by a number of occasions. Several leisure executives have used the space, while close by Paramount staffers have turned its non-public upstairs suites into off-site work rooms.
Actor Anthony Ramos exhibiting off his Pawn Shop t-shirt after visiting the new LA-based sports activities bar.
Cuban lately visited with his son and was in awe.
“Of all the investors, Mark is probably the one that I communicate with the most,” Torres-Palma said. “He’s so pumped. Honestly, he’s probably been our top supporter.”
The timing of Pawn Shop’s opening might hardly have been better.
It arrived during the 2026 FIFA World Cup, immediately giving an unknown sports activities bar the sort of crowds and ambiance most eating places spend years making an attempt to manufacture.
A view inside Pawn Shop during the 2026 FIFA World Cup Final match between Argentina and Spain.
Torres-Palma compares those first weeks to internet hosting a wedding ceremony every few days: tons of of prospects arriving together, watching the same event and wanting food and drinks at just about the same second.
The peak got here during Mexico’s wild Round of 16 match against England.
“I’ll never forget the roars in here,” Torres-Palma said. “That feeling is why you build these things. It’s such a crazy, loud, energetic feeling that everybody experiences at the same time.”
He even has a phrase for it: “monetizing moments.”
It sounds cold until you stand inside a room crammed with tons of of strangers collectively shedding their minds over a aim. When followers of El Tri or the Three Lions look back on that historic match, they’ll keep in mind being at Pawn Shop and sharing a reminiscence they’ll never neglect with others.
That’s what “monetizing moments” is all about. It’s also a fairly good description of the complete sports activities business.
The query now is whether or not Pawn Shop can maintain that feeling now that the World Cup is over.
A view inside one of the many non-public suites positioned upstairs at Pawn Shop. SHELBY MOORE
Los Angeles is littered with eating places that have been once the most popular reservation in city. Sports bars and national chains have closed areas, too. Novelty disappears shortly right here.
Torres-Palma doesn’t appear significantly frightened.
“When people say the restaurant business is brutal or very tough, I always ask them, ‘What’s an easy business so I can go do that?’” he said.
His reply to struggling rivals is significantly sharper.
“Let them quit,” Torres-Palma said. “They should have never played the game.”
That swagger only works if the product backs it up.
So far, Pawn Shop has a legit argument that it does.
Its greatest benefit may truly be the food. Pawn Shop feels less like someone dressed up a sports activities bar as a restaurant than someone constructed a critical restaurant and occurred to cowl it in televisions.
Customers can inform their server which recreation they need and employees can route it in seconds to televisions close to their desk. If somebody desires USC soccer on one screen, the Dodgers on another, Texas soccer on a third and the U.S. Open close by, you may get all of them and more at the snap of a finger.
Two Rams followers watch the sport between the Los Angeles Rams and San Francisco 49ers on Thursday Sept. 10 at Pawn Shop in Los Angeles. Pedro Colo for CA Post
During NFL Sundays, the 2 huge central media partitions can even show different video games, successfully splitting the room into competing fan bases.
“A lot of bars in L.A., we’re learning, don’t put the sound on,” Torres-Palma said. “We will fully lean in to actually having the sound on.”
It appears laughably apparent for a sports activities bar to play the sound of the sport they’re that includes.
That’s also the purpose.
Pawn Shop is betting there’s a gap in Los Angeles between the neighborhood dive with eight televisions and mediocre wings and the precise stadium expertise, where dinner can price a fortune and no one goes just for the delicacies.
“We are that clubhouse,” Torres-Palma said. “We just want to be a sports hub.”
And this is only section one.
Pawn Shop plans unique digital programming pairing athletes with Messina, including a idea in which the chef recreates a favourite childhood meal for a participant. “Sinatra Tuesdays” are coming, that includes old-school Italian dinners and Hollywood-inspired programming. October will carry outside film nights.
Chef Tony Messina assembles Pawn Shop’s signature caviar scorching canine, while sous chef Katie Valdez prepares the new canine from scratch in the kitchen on Thursday, September 10, 2026, in Los Angeles, California. Pedro Colo for CA Post
In February, the Super Bowl returns to Los Angeles, a time when Torres-Palma says corporations are already approaching Pawn Shop about buyouts, pregame events and postgame occasions.
After that?
Expansion.
“I think we’ll be opening up No. 2, or be close to opening,” Torres-Palma said of where he expects Pawn Shop to be by next summer time. “Probably Vegas, almost certainly.”
For all the celeb buyers, tequila offers, televisions and franchise plans, Torres-Palma retains coming back to one thing a lot less complicated.
He desires people leaving Pawn Shop with a story to inform.
Whether that’s a World Cup aim, a Dodgers walk-off win in October, a Rams 4th quarter comeback, a likelihood encounter with an actor or athlete, or even a glimpse of a World Series trophy or Super Bowl ring.
“I just really want people to talk about Pawn Shop as a place where, like, ‘Oh, this crazy thing happened to me here,’” Torres-Palma said.
Ultimately, that is likely to be Pawn Shop’s smartest guess.
L.A. has lots of locations to eat, grab a drink or watch a recreation.
But what Cuban, Friedman and Torres-Palma are betting their business on is that L.A. still wants a place where one thing price remembering occurs while you’re doing all three.
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