Glory Days Grill & Sports House has rolled out GDG Pick'em, a weekly professional and college football prediction challenge that converts loyalty members' correct picks into on-premises discounts and menu items, the company said.

The game runs through the football season and layers onto the chain's existing Victory Club loyalty program. Participation requires Victory Club enrollment, anchoring the promotion inside the membership database the operator already uses for repeat-visit tracking and targeted offers.

How does the loyalty mechanic work?

Each correct selection earns one point on a leaderboard specific to the guest's home Glory Days Grill location. Weekly top-three finishers at participating stores receive:

• 1st place: $15 off
• 2nd place: free order of six boneless wings
• 3rd place: free cookie sundae

A season-long competition runs alongside the weekly game, giving top performers a second path to rewards across the full schedule.

What does the operator get?

The mechanic replaces one-off sports-night promotions — happy-hour markdowns, jersey giveaways, trivia nights — with a participation loop tied directly to the loyalty file. Every pick a guest submits creates a touchpoint inside Victory Club, building the kind of behavioral data operators can later use to time discount offers and menu drops.

Jen Ulmer, Glory Days Grill's chief marketing officer, framed the trade in guest-experience terms: "Glory Days Grill has always been about bringing people together around great sports and great food, and GDG Pick'em takes that experience a step further for our guests."

How does the local-leaderboard format change behavior?

The location-specific boards add a community dimension, encouraging repeat visits at a single store rather than dispersing engagement across the chain's footprint. Repeat visits during peak football windows are the high-margin traffic every sports-bar operator is fighting for, and a leaderboard tied to one specific address gives diners a reason to choose their home store over a competitor's bar down the street.

Ulmer pointed to that dynamic: "Whether you're competing against friends across the booth or climbing your local restaurant's leaderboard for free food and rewards, it turns passive viewing into an interactive, high-energy experience you can only get at Glory Days."

Why football, why now?

The chain's sports-bar positioning makes football the anchor programming window of the year. Football season concentrates the heaviest weeknight traffic for sports-bar operators, and the weekly cadence maps directly to the NFL and college schedule. The prize tier — modest, food-led, and loyalty-funded — leans on existing menu items rather than introducing new SKUs, keeping the cost of incremental redemption tied to standard food cost rather than promotional spending.

The promotion is live and runs through the end of the football season. Guests register through the GDG Pick'em site after joining Victory Club.

With a structured gamification loop now in market across the football calendar, Glory Days Grill's next move will hinge on whether the location-level leaderboard mechanic drives enough repeat-weekend traffic to justify rolling the format into its spring and summer sports programming.