Pioneering women's sports bar draws crowds, eyes path to equality
The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon, opened its doors in 2022 to great community reception. PHOTOS: THESPORTSBRAPDX/INSTAGRAM
PORTLAND – A rare sports bar dedicated to showing women's sports has built a loyal following in north-western United States, with the founder and many patrons hoping progress towards equality for female athletes will come with the growing popularity of such establishments.
The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon, opened its doors in 2022 to great community reception.
'The line was four blocks long the entire weekend when we first opened. It was mayhem,' said Jenny Nguyen, the founder of what is believed to be the country's first women's sports bar.
Of the gender-based wordplay in the name, created by inverting two letters, Nguyen, 45, called it 'a tiny change that makes a dramatic difference'.
She said the bar is a place where she imagined women's sports would not only be shown in a corner on the smallest TV, as at other venues, but instead on every screen and with the whole crowd invested in the games.
But what really convinced Nguyen to open the business is what she thought it could mean for young girls just beginning to take an interest in sports.
'If we opened the door for six months and only one girl came in, looked at the TV, and felt like she belonged in sports, that moment would be worth it,' she said.
On a day in April, as patrons watched the semi-final games of the US women's college basketball tournament, their cheers could be heard from the line outside as people waited to get a seat in the packed bar.
Christi Smith-Ryan, 48, a regular of the bar, praised it for making women's sports 'accessible for everyone'.
Her 44-year-old wife Nicole said: 'You can go to another sports bar to see a women's sporting event, but nine times out of 10, all the guys in the bar are not going to get excited about the game you're watching.'
According to a 2024 survey conducted in the United States, Canada, Australia and four European countries, 73 per cent of those polled said they watch women's sports at least a few times a year, close to the 81 per cent who view men's sports with the same frequency.
Moreover, the level of interest appears to be growing, as over half of those who watch women's sports said they only began doing so within the last three years, according to the survey by sports marketing platform Parity and online polling firm SurveyMonkey.
'Gender equality and the popularity of women's sports are deeply connected,' Nguyen said, noting that if more women are in positions of power, more money will be spent on advertising and TV deals for women's sports, allowing the industry to grow.
Bree Edwards, 47, a Sports Bra patron who played college football at the University of California, Los Angeles, said she was grateful for the progress that has been made towards equality for female athletes.
She recalled that the first broadcast of women's football she ever saw was from the inaugural Women's World Cup in 1991 – but because the tournament was not aired widely in the United States at the time, she only saw it years later on a videotape.
But although viewership for women's sports has been increasing, there are still major inequalities between male and female athletes. A World Athletics study showed that 87 per cent of the online abuse before and during the 2021 Tokyo Olympics was directed at women.
According to sports media outlet Sportico, no women were among the 100 highest-paid athletes in the world in 2024.
But as audiences continue to grow, an NBC News analysis found that the number of women's sports bars in the United States is expected to quadruple to two dozen by the end of 2025. KYODO NEWS
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