No, it’s not feminist athletic wear! The Sports Bra, opened by Jenny Nguyen in 2021, is America’s first women’s sports bar. Nguyen is looking to expand her brand nationwide through franchising. With interest in women’s sports being at its historical peak, how will expansion affect the future of women’s athletic representation?
As most sports bars only show male sports, Nguyen thought it was only fair that The Sports Bra only shows women’s sports. In 2020, the year before she opened the bar, a study was published by Purdue University saying that women’s sports have only gained 0.4% of air time since 1989. In 1989 had a 5% sports air time, in 2019 that amount had only increased to 5.4%. 3.5% of that air time was for the women’s World Cup.
Despite the lack of air time, sports stars like Caitlin Clark are becoming more well-known and peaking interest in women’s basketball in 2024. The most watched basketball game in the last five years was the women’s NCAA championships, with a total of 24.1 million viewers. This is a 289% rise in viewers from 2022 according to ESPN.
The expansion of the Sports Bra is a direct reflection of the population’s new interest in women’s athletics. However, its biggest challenge will be breaking down decades of male-centered marketing to gather interest. “Half [The Sports Bra’s] market is going to be attracting men to those bars to watch and support women’s sports,” said Michelle Potestio, an Ida B. Wells-Barnett High School history teacher and University of Oregon women’s soccer champion. The masculine frame that sports and sports bars are often put in means that men are less likely to watch and support women’s athletics, potentially hindering The Sports Bra’s success.
Women’s presence in sports has been on the rise for years, also shown in Olympic participation. According to the International Olympic Committee, women will make up 50% of athletes at the Paris 2024 Olympics compared to the 2.2% they accounted for at the first Paris Olympics in 1900.
Throughout history, sports have been stereotypically a male-centered pastime. Women didn’t even have professional leagues until the 1940s introduced the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League, according to CSP Global. Holli Prohaska is the IBW’s women’s weight training coach, “there’s a lot of stereotypes — that women’s sports wouldn’t be as worthwhile to watch — that the competition isn’t going to be at a high level,” said Prohaska. “There’s a lot of people out there who think that women can’t do the same things that men can.”
The research supports this.
In a poll conducted by Philip Veliz, a researcher at the University of Michigan School of Nursing, it was found that one-third of the 3,000 participants believed that boys are better at playing sports than girls. Participants of the poll come from all walks of life, many of whom have daughters or sisters, or are female themselves. Denial of women’s ability to succeed in sports is felt by female athletes all across the country including at IBW. “I’ve had a lot of wrestling dads yell at me while I’m wrestling their sons like, ‘she can’t beat you because she’s a girl,’ ” said Zorina Johnson, member of IBW’s women’s wrestling team.
This stereotype has created a large disparity between the number of boys and girls playing sports. Another study conducted by Veliz in 2021 found that boys are approximately 10% more likely to be participating in a sport than girls. Sylvia Scott, head cheer coach at IBW said, “We need to do a better job of keeping women in sports.”
Could the Sports Bra’s expansion be a helping hand in getting more girls into sports?
“I think [playing women’s sports on TV] shows [teenage girls] that they have the ability to play a sport at any level that they want to,” said Prohaska. Expanding the Sports Bra gives women’s sports the well-deserved viewership it’s been lacking for decades, and gives teenage girls better access to stars that inspire and motivate them to pursue athletics. “Patricia Miranda — she was one of the first women to wrestle on a division one boys wrestling team and that’s really inspiring to me,” said Johnson.
Expanding The Sports Bra could also insight the growth of other women’s sports bars. Just two months ago, A Bar of Their Own, was opened by Jillian Hiscock, becoming the first women’s sports bar in the Midwest. The opening of more women’s sports bars increases the viewership and appreciation of women’s sports nationally, giving girls what they need to pursue these passions. “It’s really amazing and it brings me a lot of hope for the future,” said Johnson.
