With protests mounting in 2011, Bahrain's rulers made a sweeping offer of cash transfers for citizens. The regime had hoped that these benefits would end the open revolt growing on the streets. Their efforts failed. From Saudi Arabia to Oman, such cooptation had proven successful, helping quiet protests throughout the Arabian Gulf. In this paper, I explore why similar measures failed in Bahrain, where the regime had to resort to outright repression. Drawing on spatial econometric methods, I develop a novel dataset of protests in Bahrain from 2011-2016. I show how the spread and distribution of opposition groups throughout Bahrain has made cooptation prohibitively expensive. Facing a diverse population with distinct preferences over public goods, the regime cannot easily buy-off individual groups with targeted benefits. The spatial segregation of Shia villages has also reduced the cost of repression and made this strategy relatively more effective. These structural conditions have continued to shape protest dynamics and the regime's response since the uprising.