I've never been in a bar where the TVs had their audio on. The sports games are on screens but muted, and some have closed-captioning turned on.

Wouldn't that defeat this?

Slightly off-topic but I feel like relating it:

When I was a kid, we'd watch baseball games on TV, but muted. Then we'd turn on the radio and tune in whatever station was simulcasting the game. Because the radio announcers assume you can't see the action, they narrate a lot more of what's going on, so we could follow the gameplay without having to be glued to the screen every instant.

We also didn't have air conditioning, so baseball season was windows-open season, and more than once a pedestrian would pause to listen, sometimes holler "HEY WHAT'S THE SCORE?" into the house, we'd holler back, they'd continue down the sidewalk. _Everyone_ watched the Tigers in the 80s, and it was said that when a game was on, you could walk clear from Trenton to Mt Clemens and never be out of the sound of Ernie Harwell's voice.