Latest news with #AlexisOhanian
CBS News
2 hours ago
- Business
- CBS News
The Sports Bra, a bar that only shows women's sports, is opening in Boston
A bar dedicated to showcasing only women's sports on its TVs is coming to Massachusetts. The Sports Bra, which got its start in Portland, Oregon in 2022, announced Tuesday it will open bars in three new cities, including Boston. There are no details yet on exactly when or where The Sports Bra will open in Boston. The bar also announced it is opening in Las Vegas, Indianapolis and St. Louis. "The addition of these new locations will help fuel the movement for gender equity in sports and provide even more opportunities for fans to watch, cheer, and connect over their favorite women's teams and athletes," The Sports Bra said its announcement. The original location and founder Jenny Nguyen were profiled on CBS Sunday Morning. Nguyen said the idea started when she and her friends were looking for some place to watch the women's NCAA basketball championship game. Since then, The Sports Bra has been backed by investors like Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who is married to tennis legend Serena Williams. Now it's expanding across the country with the new franchise locations. "Each new location will carry the same heart and mission as our original one in Portland-uplifting women-owned businesses, serving delicious food, and creating a welcoming space for everyone who wants to belong to a community and be part of the movement," Nguyen said in a statement. Among the local women's professional sports teams highlighted by The Sports Bra in its announcement are the Boston Fleet (hockey), the Boston Banshees (rugby), Boston Legacy FC (soccer), the Boston Guard (lacrosse) and the Renegades (football).
Forbes
5 hours ago
- Business
- Forbes
The Sports Bra Expands To Four New Cities Across The United States
Inside The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon The Sports Bra America's original women's sports bar is making big strides across the country. Today, the Sports Bra announced an expansion from coast to coast, with two major sports cities in between. This follows the September 2024 announcement that, in partnership with Alexis Ohanian, co-founder of Reddit, founding control owner of Angel City FC, and founder of the 776 Foundation, the Sports Bra will franchise nationwide. The first Sports Bra franchises will open in Boston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, and St. Louis, all locations with professional womens sports teams. Local fans can cheer on WNBA's Las Vegas Aces and Indiana Fever, the Professional Women's Hockey League's Boston Fleet, the Women's Football Alliance's St. Louis Slam, the Women's National Football Conference's Las Vegas Silver Stars, and the National Women's Soccer League's Boston Legacy FC (set to begin play in the 2026 season). The Sports Bra opened in Portland in 2022, with a dedication to creating a space to watch women's sports. Since, several independently owned women's sports bars have opened across the country: Rough and Tumble opened in Seattle that same year, A Barof Their Own opened in Minneapolis in 2024, and Watch Me! recently opened in Long Beach, California. Several more women's sports bars are slated to open in 2025, with the count expected to quadruple by year's end. It's big business according to a report from Barbarian and The GIST, women's sports revenue has seen a 300% increase since 2022, and media coverage of women's sports has increased 275% over the past five years. 'The first four franchises of The Sports Bra will join our OG Portland location to become the 'Starting Five,'' said Nguyen, founder and CEO of The Sports Bra. "Together, we're serving fans nationwide who are hungry for spaces that not only champion women's sports, but create a community where everyone feels like they belong. There is no better moment than this to open these places.' Each new Sports Bra location will be locally owned and operated, with the aim to will spotlight local producers in each region. 'The Sports Bra is more than just a place to watch the game—it's a movement. Our team spoke with hundreds of interested people about opening a franchise location, and we've met some incredible people along the way,' Nguyen added. "These owner-operators are capable, enthusiastic, and deeply committed to The Bra's mission. We continue to support them as they locate the perfect spaces for their own Bras, and we can't wait to celebrate with them when it's time to open their doors!'
Boston Globe
6 hours ago
- Business
- Boston Globe
The Sports Bra, a sports bar dedicated to showing women's sports, to open Boston location
Details of where the Boston franchise will be located and when it will open have not been released. Advertisement Each location will be locally owned and operated and will serve products sourced from local women-owned breweries, distilleries, farms, and artisan food businesses. The decision to expand was made in light of a recent The Sports Bras is backed by Alexis Ohanian, husband of Serena Williams and the cofounder of Reddit, whose Advertisement 'These owner/operators are capable, enthusiastic, and deeply committed to The Bra's mission,' Nguyen said in the release. 'We continue to support them as they locate the perfect spaces for their own Bras, and we can't wait to celebrate with them when it's time to open their doors!' The Boston franchise will be the first bar in the area dedicated to showing women's sports, and many local fans have been clamoring for such a location for years. Boston is home to the PWHL's Boston Fleet, which just completed its second season. The NWSL's Boston Legacy FC will begin play in 2026. The Boston franchise will be among what the company has dubbed the "Starting Five." FLI Media courtesy of The Sports Bra Emma Healy can be reached at
TechCrunch
a day ago
- Business
- TechCrunch
Digg's founders explain how they're building a site for humans in the AI era
The rebooted version of social site Digg aims to bring back the spirit of the old web at a time when AI-generated content is threatening to overwhelm traditional social media platforms, drowning out the voices of real people. This presents an opportunity to build a social site for the AI era, where the people who create content and manage online communities are given a bigger stake in a platform's success, Digg's founders think. A Web 2.0-era news aggregation giant, Digg was once valued at $175 million at its height back in 2008 and is now being given new life under the direction of its original founder, Kevin Rose, and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian. The two recently teamed up to announce a new vision for Digg, which will focus on enabling discovery and community, the way that the early internet once allowed for. Speaking at The Wall Street Journal's Future of Everything conference on Thursday, the founders offered more insight as to how they plan to accomplish that goal with the Digg reboot. Initially, the two touched on problems they encountered in the earlier days of social media, with Ohanian recalling how he chose to resign from Reddit's board over disagreements about the company's approach to hate speech that he felt was bad for society and the business. For instance, the company was allowing a forum on Reddit called 'r/WatchPeopleDie' to continue operating up until the Christchurch mass shooting, which caught the attention of the media, he said. It was only then that Reddit decided to adjust its policies around violence and gore on the platform. After Reddit, Ohanian went on to found venture capital firm Seven Seven Six, where he says he's focused on building businesses that are more 'values-aligned.' He said he sees Digg as another step in that direction. Techcrunch event Save now through June 4 for TechCrunch Sessions: AI Save $300 on your ticket to TC Sessions: AI—and get 50% off a second. Hear from leaders at OpenAI, Anthropic, Khosla Ventures, and more during a full day of expert insights, hands-on workshops, and high-impact networking. These low-rate deals disappear when the doors open on June 5. Exhibit at TechCrunch Sessions: AI Secure your spot at TC Sessions: AI and show 1,200+ decision-makers what you've built — without the big spend. Available through May 9 or while tables last. Berkeley, CA | REGISTER NOW Rose reflected on the early days of machine learning, where the technology was often used to reward posts on which people would rant about the 'most obscure, kind of fringe-y weirdness,' he said. 'Sometimes that can be good, but oftentimes it's pushing really weird agendas. And that's not even getting into the whole bot and AI side of things that are also pushing those agendas,' Rose said. With Digg, the founders want to create a new community focused on serving real people, not AI or bots, they said. Alexis Ohanian Image Credits:WSJ's Future of Everything conference 'I've long subscribed to the 'dead internet theory,'' Ohanian said, referencing the idea that much of what we see online is not created by actual humans, but bots. Ten years ago, this was more of a conspiracy theory, but with the rise of AI, that's changed, he said. 'Probably in the last few years — since we've blown past the Turing test — [the dead internet theory] is a very real thing.' 'I think the average person has no idea just how much of the content they consume on social media, if it's not an outright bot, is a human using AI in the loop to generate that content at scale, to manipulate and evade,' he added. To address the rise of bots, the founders are looking toward new technology, like zero-knowledge proofs (aka zk proofs), a protocol used in cryptography that could be used to prove that someone owns something on a platform. They're envisioning communities where admins could turn the dials, so to speak, to verify that a poster is human before allowing them to join the conversation. 'The world is going to be flooded with bots, with AI agents,' Rose pointed out, and that could infiltrate communities where people are trying to make genuine human connections. Something like this recently occurred on Reddit, where researchers secretly used AI bots to pose as real people on a forum to test how AI could influence human opinion. Image Credits:Digg 'We are going to live in a world where the vast, vast majority of the content we're seeing is in…some shape or form, AI-generated, and it is a terrible user experience if the reason you're coming to a place is for authentic human connection, and it's not with humans — or it's with people masquerading as humans,' Ohanian said. He explained that there are a number of ways that social sites could test to see if someone is a person. For instance, if someone has owned their device for a longer period of time, that could add more weight to their comment, he suggested. Rose said that the site could also offer different levels of service, based on how likely someone was to be human. If you signed up with a throw-away email address and used a VPN, for example, then maybe you would only be able to get recommendations or engage in some simpler ways. Or if you were anonymous and typed in a comment too quickly, the site could then ask you to take an extra step to prove your humanity — like verifying your phone number or even charging you a small fee if the number you provided was disposable, Rose said. 'There's going to be these tiers that we do, based on how you want to engage and interact with the actual network itself,' he confirmed. Image Credits:Digg However, the founders stressed they're not anti-AI. They expect to use AI to help in areas like site moderation, including de-escalating situations where someone starts to stir up trouble. In addition to verifying humans, the founders envision a service where moderators and creators financially benefit from their efforts. 'I do believe the days of unpaid moderation by the masses — doing all the heavy lifting to create massive, multi-million-person communities — has to go away. I think these people are putting in their life and soul into these communities, and for them not to be compensated in some way is ridiculous to me. And so we have to figure out a way to bring them along for the ride,' Rose said. As one example, he pointed to how Reddit trademarked the term 'WallStreetBets,' which is the name of one of the forums created by a Reddit user. Instead, Rose thinks a company should help creators like this who add value to a community, not try to take ownership of their work as Reddit did. With the combination of improved user experience and a model that empowers creators to monetize their work, the founders think Digg itself will benefit. 'I want to believe the business model that will make Digg successful is one that aligns all those stakeholders. And I think it is very, very possible,' Ohanian said.
Associated Press
5 days ago
- Business
- Associated Press
Sha'Carri Richardson joins new women's track and field league as owner-advisor
Olympic gold medalalist Sha'Carri Richardson has joined the new, team-based women's track and field league Athlos as a founding owner-advisor. Fellow sprinter Gabby Thomas and long jumper Tara Davis-Woodhall have also become owner-advisors of the league, set to launch next year after the World Athletics season. Athlos was started by Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian, who also has ownership stakes in women's soccer teams Angel City and Chelsea and is married to tennis great Serena Williams. The first Athlos event took place last year in New York City and featured 35 athletes. The prize purse was $500,000, with 10% of the proceeds going to the athletes. Another standalone event is set for New York's Icahn Stadium in October before the new league kicks off with meets across the country and a series-ending championship. 'Gabby, Sha'Carri, and Tara represent a new generation of athletes who have put this sport on their shoulders and deserve to be compensated for being the standard-bearers,' Ohanian said in a statement. 'We were focused on bringing them into the League as founding owners to ensure we're building a League that our athletes will love.' ___ AP sports:
