Per this articlewhat exactly is a “soccer club”… that is also a bar? Is this common?
Psst. New South Wales is in Australia.
Doh! … Oh well too late now.
Sporting clubs (rugby league, rugby union, soccer, Australian football, cricket, lawn bowls, golf etc) often have premises where facilities are provided for financial members of the club. These facilities would generally include a bar, and often a restaurant, a gym etc.
They are common all across Australia. My local equivalent is the North Sydney Leagues Club.
To answer the OP - yep - it’s common in New Zealand as well, generally speaking (and without citing the specific law) they still need to get a liqour license, BUT the restrictions are very much relaxed on the basis that its a private club with a membership list.
This a good example. Most sports clubs have more than just a pitch. Small local clubs of all sports will have entertainment facilities for members just like a golf club. Large multi-million pound sports teams (like Manchester United) will have exclusive members’ bars and restaurants.
This is true of the UK and beyond.
My first thought, different from the rest of the posters, was a " sports bar". Some regular bars, not anywhere near a sports facility, have a sports " theme" in their loyalty, are decorated with sports parafernalia, signed pics, club colours, etc. And they are the hang out for fanatic supporters.
No, it’s not a “sports bar” – that concept is uncommon in Australia. Budgewoi Football Club is a local amateur soccer club, which has a licensed bar next to the football ground. Most of the members would be players or fans of the club, though it would be open to any one living near by to join.
I’m surprised Maastricht was thinking of ‘sportsbars’, since these hardly exist in the Netherlands (some normal bars or pubs may show a lot of sports though. While every amateur football club, hockey club, tennis club or ‘whatever sport you fancy’ club has a canteen/bar/restaurant that also sells beer. From my recollection, having a few beers after the game is one of the biggest reasons people play organized amateur sports in this country. I fondly remember returning to my own Tennis club (after playing somewhere else) and having food with my own team and all other teams that came back or had ‘homegames’. Let’s just say these evenings usually ended with people dancing on the tables with pitchers of beer in their hands. Agewise, anything between 18-65 :).
Small world. I used to swim there.
Isn’t pretty much everything a bar in Australia?
Except pubs. Those are hotels. 
In the UK that can be true all the way down to village cricket level. I once played at a ground whose pavilion contained a “bar” which consisted of three bottles of booze, and a minifridge with beer. And they still had a licence and everything needed to be legit.
The highlight of my teenage years were the regular discos held in the clubhouses of the local cricket, tennis and rugby clubs, where they had a very…relaxed…approach to underage drinking.
It’s been half a century since I was in Australia, but when I was there, I was told that all the major league sports teams were owned by and sponsored by clubs. Although the ostensible reason for the club’s existence was to run the team, the club locations were designed for family fun – bars, gaming areas, TV/movie/video areas, restaurants…you took your family to the club for the entire evening and they split up into whatever rooms and activities they wanted.
I understood that the clubs came into existence partly to circumvent the (liquor?) laws, but were well accepted by that time.
And the profits went to support the teams. Obviously the fans were fanatically loyal.
Of course a lot of things may have changed in 50 years, so I don’t know if anything I said here is still the situation.
I’m sure this place had a similar approach to underage drinking, but it also was so small we couldn’t all be in the changing room at once and had to take turns. A disco there would have been…well, intimate 
I imagine it would have evolved for the same reason that there are no bars in Utah, but there are plenty of “gentleman’s clubs” with bartenders, bouncers, and any kind of drink you fancy.
In England, the bar of the sports club is probably the club’s chief income generator or at least helps to subsidise the club’s sporting activities. Prices are usually lower than in commercial bars. Social drinking is a large part of some amateur sports (for rugby perhaps the major part)
Not trying to be a smartass, but that particular little bit of Utah’s Byzantine Liquor-Law jackassery was done away with several years ago; The so-called “Private Clubs” of yore are now just regular old bars, where anyone who is 21 or older is welcome to spend their $$$ on 1 oz. pours of booze and 3.2% draught beer…