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Denver officials have started proceedings to take away a southwest Denver sports bar’s liquor and dance cabaret licenses after employees were found working as prostitutes in the bar, according to court records.
Women working at Mecca Sports Bar, 2915 W. Mississippi Ave., in Denver’s Athmar Park neighborhood, routinely offered customers in and outside of the bar sex for money, including undercover police officers, according to a show-cause order from the city.
The Denver Police Department’s vice and narcotics unit received information from the Colorado Department of Revenue’s Liquor and Tobacco Enforcement Division “about prostitution, unlawful liquor activity, and illicit narcotics sales occurring at the bar,” the order stated.
An order to show cause is a court-ordered directive for a party to appear and explain why a specific, requested action — in this case, the revocation of the Denver bar’s liquor and cabaret licenses — should not be approved.
Mecca Sports Bar did not respond Thursday to requests for comment.
Colorado Department of Revenue officials told Denver police that an anonymous complaint had been made about young girls working at the bar offering men “off-premise bottle service,” according to the order. The girls would leave with the customers, be dropped back off at the bar later in the night and be paid for the night by the bar manager.
The vice unit launched an undercover operation at Mecca Sports Bar, formerly known as Club Dubai, in August 2025, city officials wrote in the show-cause order.
An undercover officer contacted a young woman who walked out of the bar and approached the officer’s vehicle, the order stated. She told him it would cost $300 for “culear” — a common Spanish slang term for “sex,” according to the document.
The officer agreed and the woman got into the car, officials said in the document. When the officer told her it was a sting operation, the woman admitted that she and the other employees would go outside to “engage in prostitution.” She also said they would frequently purchase liquor inside the bar and resell it to customers at a higher price.
Further undercover operations in September and November of 2025 revealed that more women at the bar were engaging in prostitution and overcharging customers for profit, according to the document.
One woman told officers that the Mecca did not explicitly allow prostitution-related work, but she said several employees would ask men to leave first and then follow them outside for sex, police said.
During one of the undercover operations, officers discovered a bar security guard was armed with an airsoft gun. The man had a valid private security license but was not authorized to carry an airsoft gun while on duty, city officials wrote in the show-cause order. That was also cited as a reason to revoke the bar’s licenses.
The order was sent to Mecca’s ownership on Tuesday. Bar officials and their representatives will appear before Denver Department of Licensing and Consumer Protection officials on March 20 for the show-cause hearing.
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