This lady is on to something...

First sports bar to show only women's events opens in PNW

Before you flip out, consider that KIRO Sportsradio in Seattle reports 51 percent of the bars customers are men.

April 1st, the first day fo the women's NCAA final four, the Sports Bra opened in Portland OR at 2512 NE Broadway.

In a rather smaller intimate storefront, the bar appears to have taken off. According to MyNorthwest.com, owner-founder Jenny Nguyen (who has been a lifelong basketball player) only four percent of women's sporting events are televised by some sort of sports network.

She was inspired a few years ago when she and some friends went to another sports bar to watch the women's NCAA Finals, and out of 30 TVs none were showing it. The bartender changed one of them for her so she could watch.   KIRO says she joked the only way to watch women's sports would be to have her own place.

  That joke led to her starting up the bar

After nearly two weeks the bar has a lot of business, and shows everything from WNBA, to Portland Thorns pro soccer, a lot of college softball, golf and any other women's sports that are being televised.

97.1 KXRX logo
Get our free mobile app

She told KIRO the hardest part of running the bar is finding enough women's events on satellite and cable to fill up the screens for most of the day, referring back to the statistics that 96 percent of televised sports are men's.

The bar, she says, is open to everyone, and she hopes it serves as an inspiration for female athletes who sometimes give up playing after college or especially high school because they think there's no future for women professionally. She hopes to change that by showing the events.

Considering that ESPN shows cornhole (bean bag toss) and people playing poker, we'd rather watch college softball--especially since our daughter is playing club and it's a blast to watch.

And remember...Ngyuen says 51 percent of her clientele are men.

 

CHECK IT OUT: 100 sports records and the stories behind them

 

More From 97.1 KXRX