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Anjali Kumaran admits she was never much of a sports fan. And yet, Kumaran now spends several nights a week (and even some days, working remotely from her laptop) at a sports bar. What is it encourages her to venture outside of her cozy Portland neighborhood and into Sullivan’s Gulch so regularly? A seat at The Sports Bra, America’s first sports bar 100% dedicated to women’s sports.
“There’s a family vibe,” Kumaran smiles. At “The Bra,” she mingles with familiar faces and like-minded people, absorbs sports trivia from the coasters, and even catches herself watching a basketball game, anticipating a championship, or chatting stats. “The main reason I wasn’t interested in sports was because I wasn’t exposed to women’s sports,” she adds.
The story is all too true for most Americans. As of 2023, women’s sports coverage made up only 15% of all sports coverage in media—and in the preceding decades, women’s sports had only made up 5% of coverage, if that. Now, the WNBA is registering record viewership and game attendance, ESPN is exceeding record viewership with NCAA women’s games, a brand new Professional Women’s Hockey League (PWHL) is selling out arenas, and the 2023 Women’s World Cup drew in over 2 billion viewers—yet there are still very few dedicated spaces to watch female athletes. That’s all about to change.
As viewership for women’s sports continues to exceed expectations, now reaching an all-time high, sports bars across America are opening with a mission to promote, amplify, and, most importantly, stream women’s sports.
Before April 2022, public spaces to watch televised women’s sports across the United States were virtually non-existent. The Sports Bra changed that. A multi-screen Portland sports bar fully committed to showing WNBA, NWSL, WTA games, and more, it serves drinks from women-run breweries and distilleries, a kids menu, as well as gluten-free, dairy-free, and vegan options across an extensive pub fare menu. Inclusion is at the heart of founder Jenny Nguyen’s project, and she’s become somewhat of a patron saint in the women’s sports bar space (and the leader of a popular group chat for current and aspiring women’s sports bar owners).
Earlier this month, A Bar of Their Own opened in Minneapolis. Inspired by Nguyen’s success, owner Jillian Hiscock hoped for years that a space to watch women’s sports would open in the Twin Cities. When it didn’t, and the games she wanted to watch still weren’t shown at most local venues, a call with Nguyen encouraged Hiscock to apply her project management experience to a restaurant-sized, colorful sports bar with free parking and 12 TVs, showing everything from Minnesota Lynx games to non-Olympic gymnastics. The screens are visible from every seat, to be enjoyed by guests drinking pours from women-owned breweries and distilleries.
“We’ve gotten used to being okay with women’s sports and women’s sports fans being an afterthought, which is no longer okay. People are no longer accepting it. People are no longer okay with having to ask and beg to be recognized,” says Hiscock. “We’re doing our best to highlight these women athletes and so we’re creating our own spaces. We’re creating places that are the places that we’ve wanted to exist, that didn’t exist without us. It’s a long time coming.”
Hisock sees these new spaces as part of a longer story of women’s sports and athletes striving for recognition—be it equal pay, prize money, or just air time. The latter is an ongoing challenge for all women’s sports bar owners. “You can t just turn on ESPN and put on whatever’s there. You have to really think about it,” says Jen Barnes, owner of Seattle’s Rough Tumble. Programming is a burden, but it’s one she’s dedicated to overcoming—even if it means consulting six different sources to find a big softball game. (If it’s even televised at all.)
“You need a master’s degree in streaming services to be able to be a women’s sports fan,” Barnes says. “It’s really frustrating how difficult we make it for people to watch women’s sports. And we’ve had incredible progress.” Even with a subscription to nearly every streaming service, bars can’t show the plethora of women’s games that lack commercial licensing, including many that stream exclusively on Peacock or that can be viewed with the WNBA league pass.
Much-needed improvements are coming. As of November 2023, the National Women’s Soccer League’s media rights deal is the biggest broadcast agreement to date for women’s sports, via new partnerships with CBS, ESPN, Amazon Prime Video, and Scripps Sports. “It’s restructuring how female leagues and teams value themselves while also spurring the growth of women’s sports bars so fans can come together to watch the matches,” says Julie Haddon, the NWSL’s Chief Marketing and Commercial Officer. In 2024, 118 NWSL games will be broadcast, a major increase from 30 broadcast windows in 2023. In comparison, MLB season, which overlaps with the women s soccer season, broadcasts 2430 games.
Frustration when seeking women’s games to screen year-round is a recurring issue. At Icarus Wings Things in Salem, Oregon, co-owner Kelli Gilliland prioritizes showing women’s games. But when she does, folks tucking into crisp gluten-free wings at communal tables may not be so amenable—they sometimes request that staff change the carefully curated channel to show men’s games, which are likely playing at every other venue in town.
“We know it’s awkward, but it’s a good conversation,” Gilliland says of the persistent requests, which her team knows to turn down. “People just don’t realize how unlikely it is to find women’s sports [playing in a bar].” Once guests are aware of the fact it’s intentional, though, they’re usually placated. “We want to be a space where we are not excluding anybody,” Gilliland adds. “People who don’t know about these things are also welcome.”
Such is the case at Whiskey Girl Tavern in Chicago, where Heather Roberts and her wife Christine (they met playing flag football) have a cohort of new women’s basketball fans, who never watched the sport until last year’s Final Four packed the venue. “We’ve been really pleased with the reception and interest in women’s sports and the passion about it,” says Roberts. “People haven’t had much opportunity to watch in a social setting and we’re building an audience. If they can watch with people who are excited and know the game, and are fans of the players, that helps generate interest.”
Meanwhile, in New York—a city that seemingly has everything except a place to watch women’s sports—Althea’s and Athena Keke’s both plan to open women’s sports bars in the near future.
Jenny Garcia, 37, has been a New York Liberty fan since the team was founded in 1997, and spent most of her twenties looking for bars to watch the games, often denied her request to change one of multiple TV screens to a WNBA game (which overlaps with baseball season). She finally found a few spots that were open to it, but they closed during the pandemic. “There’s nothing like being around other sports fans,” Garcia says. “There’s so much excitement. It makes me so emotional to see how much women’s sports has grown.” But when the Liberty is out of town, the season ticket holder has nowhere to watch the games, retreating to her couch where she—a proud member of the cord-cutting generation—pays for expensive streaming services to watch away games.
The community lured Garcia’s girlfriend, Felicia Fitzpatrick, 32, as a new but enthusiastic WNBA fan. More of a thespian than an athlete, Fitzpatrick digs the drama, the colorful costumes (also known as uniforms), and the electric energy of the games. The fact that the players and fans are majority women, and queer women, helps. “I’m not a competitive person, I hate that someone has to lose,” Fitzpatrick says. “But I love the vibe.” Already, she can envision herself commuting from New Jersey into the city to kick back at Althea’s, with friends or with strangers who quickly become community, as she’s already found in her early fandom.
“These bars are going to uplift and amplify women and women s sports,” says Breanna Stewart, 2023’s WNBA MVP and New York Liberty Forward. “When we have more viewers, it gains attention. The excuse of not being able to watch isn’t going to be an excuse any more. There’s a lot of momentum to get behind.”
Still, there’s much progress to achieve when men’s sports are still considered just “sports” and women’s sports have to come with a special moniker. Women don’t have a professional baseball or football league, nor are pro athletes compensated at a fraction of the salaries received by their male counterparts. (Stewart’s current contract is for $205,000, while the 30th NBA rookie draft pick is looking at a minimum of $2 million.)
“Progress takes time, and the time is now,” says Jackie Diener, who is in the process of opening Watch Me!, a women’s sports bar in Long Beach, California, with her wife, Emme. She remembers the absolute dearth of women’s sports coverage before streaming and sees plenty of room for continued growth. “Jenny created the women’s sports bar movement. This is just getting started. Everything’s aligning. We have superstar athletes and teams. There’s a bubble of energy that’s been vibrating and just starting to explode.”
True equality, though, will be the day when patrons can glance up while cleaning their buffalo-sticky fingers and see a WNBA, NWSL, or PWHL game broadcast on screens next to NFL, NBA, or MLB games—no questions asked. “I can’t wait for a day when it’s like, Oh, of course I can go into a Buffalo Wild Wings and find the Lynx game on TV,” says Hiscock. “That would be the absolute dream to get to the point that it is more mainstream that you don’t have to go in and ask for those things. It’s just a given that they’ll be on.”