It is a relatively new trend in sport -crazy America: women’s sport bars. In other words: bars where you can watch women’s sport. No bars where men are banned at the door – a more often heard misunderstanding. According to NBC News At the end of this year, the US will count two dozen women’s sport bars, no less than three times as much as a year earlier.
At the end of 2023 I spoke with the woman who came up with the concept: Jenny Nguyen. She described how she wanted to watch a women’s basketball game in a bar in 2018 with a few girlfriends. To her frustration, they were directed to a quiet TV corner. Because yes, who was interested in it womenbasketball? There is only one way to look in a bar in a bar, Nguyen thought: open a bar himself.
Four years later the Sports Bra was opened in Portland. A bar with five screens, where women’s sport from all over the world is broadcast: Rugby from New Zealand, the Tour de France Femmes from France, the Special Olympics from Berlin, Golf from Japan. The bar did well beyond expectations, Nguyen said. “In the spring and summer we attract 1500 visitors every week. That is quite impressive, since we only have forty seats and are open five days a week.”
I didn’t write about it at the time, because I wanted to wait and see how this trend would develop. Some women’s sports, such as basketball, are very popular in the US, but that offers no guarantees for entrepreneurs who want to do something with women’s sport. A recent tour of Front Office Sports It shows that not all women’s sport bars are doing as well as The Sports Bra. Banks, for example, are skeptical when it comes to financing.
Last month I received an email that The Sports Bra will expand. In four other American cities, a women’s sport bar will soon be opened, as part of a franchise: Boston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas and St. Louis. That is thanks To a collaboration with Alexis Ohanianfounder of Online Platform Reddit, husband of former tennis star Serena Williams and large investor in women’s football. Last year he put an unnamed amount in The Sports Bra.
Would such a concept also catch on in the Netherlands? Around the time I contacted Nguyen, I presented that question by e -mail to the few sports bars in the Netherlands. If only men’s sports or women’s sports are shown there, I asked. And is the combination Sport and Bar profitable in the Netherlands? Two of the bars that I played.
Jaap van Ham, founder of Papa Jim Sportsbar in Tilburg, where mainly men’s sport is looked at, wrote that a sports bar on men’s sport is already quite a challenge in the Netherlands, “because the sports viewing culture in our country is not nearly at the level like that in the US”. There you will hardly find any catering location without sport, he wrote, in the Netherlands you will hardly find a location with.
To get out of the costs, not only sports competitions are shown in Dad Jim, but also quizzes and karaoke evenings organized, and beer pong for students. At the end of his mail, Van Ham came with a bright spot. Perhaps the women’s sports bar had a chance of success in Amsterdam or Rotterdam, because many expats live there?
Men are welcome in Bar Lenie, Marijn Hermans emphasizes.
Photo Hedayatullah Amid
Peter van Leeuwen, founder of the Hollywood Sportsbar in Rotterdam, not far from De Kuip, wrote that sports bars in Europe are not nearly as large as in the US, but that sports fans are increasingly looking up outside during major tournaments. His bar tries to preserve both men’s and women’s sport, but experience shows that they are particularly interested in men’s football and Formula 1 races. Because it is difficult enough to get a regular sports bar in the Netherlands profitable, he considered a women’s sports bar “really one step too far”.
Apparently the time is now ripe for it, because this week in Rotterdam the first women’s sports bar in Europe will open: Lenie. Although it is a one-month pop-up, focused on the European Football Championship in Switzerland, it is to open a bar at a fixed location if there is sufficient interest, founder Marijn Hermans (34). “Hospitality brokers are already looking for a building,” she says. “I’m just going to make it a success.”
Hermans came up with the idea when she read an article about The Sports Bra two years ago. Such a bar stands for everything she likes, she says. “A place where my love for sports, women, the café and the power of community come together.” She contacted Nguyen, who responded enthusiastically about the idea for a women’s sport bar in the Netherlands. “The Netherlands also needs this,” she wrote.
When Hermans was in a sold -out Wembley Stadium at the end of 2024 during the international match between England and the US, she was strengthened in the idea that there is a lot of interest in women’s sport. You just have to make it visible and channel, she thought. First of all by broadcasting it on television-and not only on YouTube, such as with the Champions League final between Arsenal and Barcelona recently-but also by creating a place where fans of women’s sport can meet.
Hermans hired a wine bar, started a crowdfunding, and visited a number of expats in the area. Could she count on them if she would open a women’s sport bar? Yes, was the answer. And shall we immediately run bar services?
Marijn Hermans.
Photo Hedayatullah Amid
She named the bar after Lenie van der Jagt, who scored the first goal in 1956 against West Germany during an international match of the national women’s team. “That I can still experience this,” responded 82-year-old Van der Jagt.
In the coming weeks there will mainly be European football football in Lenie, but Hermans also hopes to be able to take a tail of the Tour de France Femmes and Wimbledon. Because in conversations with male journalists she is more often asked whether men are welcome in her bar, she wants to emphasize that that is the case. “Everyone who loves sport is welcome,” she says. “We don’t wonder whether women can watch men’s football? I like to help that strange thought vineym out the world.”