A lively standing-room-only crowd gathered at the year-old Watch Me Sports Bar in Long Beach, California, for an NCAA women’s basketball Final Four watch party. Draft beer and cocktails were flowing alongside orders of chili lemongrass wings and piled-high nachos. Then, she walked in.
Wearing a green track jacket and pearls, Billie Jean King glided out from behind the bar. The renowned tennis player and longtime advocate for women’s equity in sports and LGBTQ+ rights and her wife, Ilana Kloss, herself a powerhouse in the tennis and sports worlds, stopped by unannounced to sign a mural portraying King.
“It was absolutely amazing,” says Jax Diener, who co-owns Watch Me with her wife, Megan “Emme” Eddy. They’ve since preserved King and Kloss’s signatures behind plexiglass. “That is certainly a moment I’ll never forget. Everyone started chanting her name.”
Diener said that was when she truly felt like her goal of owning a women’s sports bar was realized. “I was able to thank [King] for building our place, telling her there’s no way we’d be here if it weren’t for her,” she says.
Gone are the days when a singular college women’s basketball game is relegated to the sad TV in the corner at the only bar in town streaming the match. Sports bars spotlighting women athletes and leagues are booming around the country and expected to quadruple in 2025—from six to about two dozen. This coincides with a surge in viewership, fandom, and ticket sales across women’s college and pro sports leagues.
“From food to decor, cleanliness to decorum—sports bars in general were not designed or built to cater to everyone,” says Jenny Nguyen, who is credited with opening the first women’s sports bar in the US, The Sports Bra, in Portland, Oregon, in 2022. While sports bars have become more inclusive to women and families, “few extend that appeal to include LGBTQIA+ and BIPOC community members,” she says.
Even with the rise in popularity, women’s sports and bars dedicated to them share similar struggles. For athletes, inequitable playing contracts and pay remain a major issue. Across both fronts, less media coverage and sponsorships mean it’s still hard to simply watch a game.
“Women’s sports fans have been an afterthought for so many years, and we’re here to take up our rightful space, show out for our favorite athletes, and create community among fans,” says Jillian Hiscock, owner of Minneapolis’s A Bar of Their Own, which opened in 2024.
Kat Moore, who co-owns Title 9 Sports Grill, which opened in Phoenix in March, sums it up: “To be able to see a game without having to ask for the men’s game to be turned off is huge.”
Patrons tuning in at The Sports Bra.
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