At the Sports Bra, the diverse menu accommodates a myriad of dietary restrictions—you can easily order dairy-free, gluten-free, and vegan options—and nonalcoholic drink options. “We try to source from local women-owned and -operated businesses as much as we can,” says Nguyen.
Even if these bars show only (or mostly) women’s sports, they aren’t designed just to attract women. “These are not just places where only women congregate; this is where people who care about women’s sports get to go watch and be engaged in on a whole other level,” says Lough. As a result, many of the women’s sports bars actually have a pretty diverse clientele.
Take, for instance, Rough & Tumble’s customer base, which Barnes estimates is 55% women, with a huge trans and queer community. The Sports Bra has a balanced female-to-male ratio, and is an all-ages, family-friendly bar that allows minors until 10 p.m. And A Bar of Their Own is an all-ages, queer-friendly space with crowds that are about 70% women and 30% men on any given night. “We very intentionally created our space so that it could be family-friendly, because we want young girls and boys to be in here seeing women’s sports on TV as the norm,” says Hiscock.
So while most are openly LGBTQ-friendly, they’re not exclusively queer or lesbian bars. As Hiscock describes it, “We firmly believe that queer women need a space to belong, but we’ve been very adamant that we’re not a queer bar because we really want people of all walks of life to be able to watch women’s sports in a safe space.”