Name: How I raised $50K in 9 days to open a bar showing only women’s sports
Uploaded: 2023-03-01
Duration: 12 min 12 s
Description: Jenny Nguyen was sick of watching women’s games on mute at sports bars, so she opened her own. The Sports Bra bar in Portland, Ore. shows only women’s sports. In just 9 days, she raised $50,000 to open the bar.

Jenny Nguyen was sick of watching women’s games on mute at sports bars, so she opened her own. The Sports Bra bar in Portland, Ore. shows only women’s sports. In just 9 days, she raised $50,000 to open the bar.

How I raised $50K in 9 days to open a bar showing only women’s sports

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The Sports Bra bar in Portland, Ore. shows only women’s sports.

How I raised $50K in 9 days to open a women's sports bar

How I Raised $50K In 9 Days To Open A Bar Showing Only Women’s Sports

My name is jenny Win. I'm the founder and owner of the sports bra here in Portland Oregon. It's a women's sports bar. When you walk into a sports bar, traditional sports bar, you expect 24 7 coverage because there is 24 7 coverage of men's sports. Statistically 95% of all sports that are on tv or men's sports. And so our goal here is to take the 5% that is on tv and just put it on blast. I just knew I wanted to feel familiar. I wanted people to walk in and just feel like it was a regular sports bar. It's just a lot of decor stuff, memorabilia and that kind of that warmth of being in a familiar sports bar kind of dark, a little bit cozy. But then you change what's represented, you change what's on the tv. These are women's team flags. All the athletes are female athletes. That kind of stuff. When people say women's sports aren't popular. It's because people aren't seeing it. It's a bit of a catch 22. It's like, well nobody's watching women's sports. Well, no women's sports remain shown. It's really difficult. It's really difficult. It's like you have to be in an Internet detectives in order to find where to watch women. I was trying to stream the national team game the other day at work with some friends and we couldn't find it. I love the idea that if this place was packed, people driving by walking by talking about it would see that there are women's sports fans and they would see it. They'd hear about it and they'd be like, oh, people are into it. It shouldn't be a novelty, but it is a novelty. There's been women's athletics that have been agreeable on media for years. You know, women's tennis has always been an agreeable sport, you know, that people watched. And I think what, what I saw happen is that I saw women's basketball. Uh and ESPN really developed a strong relationship and we began to see more and more women's basketball. Um you also have that sec, you have the PAC 12, you have so many of those networks now that need more content. And so there's much more women's content available for about 14.5 years. I played pickup basketball with this hodgepodge group of women, we shared a love of sports and so we would go out before or after, um pick up and try to watch games and it was always a chore, you know, always trying to find Bar that was big enough to take a group of 12 and then also who would change the channel for us. And then not only that, but some of the people in our group are vegan, those dietary restrictions are really hard to find at sports bars. And then a large portion of our basketball group are queer folks or non binary folks. And so looking the way we do kind of feels unsafe in a lot of the traditional sports bars, There was one particular moment that stands out in my mind when it kind of clicked and it was in 2018 when our basketball group went to go watch the N. C. Double A women's championship. And I think there was like three seconds left, the game was tied and eric takes one dribble and launches a three pointer right at the buzzer and it goes in. So here we were like a dozen of us just going crazy on our own. I threw my hat across the bar and while I was standing, I realized that no one else in the entire bar was watching our game. So everybody's staring at us like we're absolutely bonkers. Anyway, we're leaving the bar and we're kind of like milling around the parking lot still kind of just high off of the game. And I was just like, oh my God, that was the best game I've ever seen. And one of my friends was just like, yeah, it would have been so awesome if the sound had been on, I hadn't realized that we'd watched the whole game with no sound. Right. Then I said, the only way we're ever going to watch a women's game in its full glory is if we had our own place. And I remember driving home and I was like, oh, we had our own place, what we call it, you know? And the very first name that popped into my head was the sports bras. It just made so much sense. All you're doing is you're taking a sports bar and you're changing the channel on the tv. So it's like a tiny switch and then it just became an inside joke. Whenever we went out to sports bars and we were frustrated with something, we'd be like, oh at the sports bra, this game would be on, oh, it's a sports bra. You know, they have gluten free buns for my burger with the sports bra. We'd never run out of toilet paper in the women's restroom or like all the things that, you know, sports bars kind of fall short on all the time. We got to talking about how when we were kids, if our parents had taken us to a place like a sports bra, how much of a difference that would have made in our lives to have a place that we walked into and felt represented or felt seen once I launched the Kickstarter, it was the first time that I put it out into the world. And by day three I was getting emails from all across the country right away. I had people coming up and being like, thank you for doing this, thank you for being an asian woman who opened a business and then people coming up and being like, oh a lesbian owned bar. I didn't think about it. I was just so focused on the sports bra and getting this off the ground. I created a space that I want to be in. So it is me in the end, but when I was conceptualizing it, I didn't think about it like that. I just wanted it to be a place that I felt good. I thought being a chef would help and I think it has, I mean, I think it's helped me like 0.5% 99 point whatever, 95% I don't know anything about. That was hard reaching out to people asking for help learning as much as possible. I mean, the learning curve for me was like a straight up and down wall for like the last year, I would say doing things with intentionality was really huge for me. And so I thought about how women's sports is underrepresented. And then I thought about what else is underrepresented. And if you want to create a space that's for everybody, you gotta try to represent everybody if we can do that through our menu. If we can do that through our physical space, let's do it. At the very beginning, I reached out to like network streaming services, All these things to get permission to play a bunch of different things that on top of trying to open a business was a lot of work. I felt like it was somebody else's full time job to try to find content. So just women's sports is a national sports media company and they have like hundreds and hundreds of hours of digital media on Youtube. So I reached out to them and I just told them about the sports bra, this concept and they're like, we love what you're doing, what do you need from us. And I was like, I'd love to have your digital content and they were like, okay, what else? Like literally that's how it went and like my heart like burst out of my chest. And then I reached out to ESPN and the same thing happened. I was on a call with seven like female executives from ESPN W and they were just over the moon with the concept. But once the word got out, the roles got reversed, then it was networks streaming services, all of these other things reaching out to us asking us to play their stuff at the very beginning, we definitely had some issues with haters. There was some like right wing blog that came out and I probably got like 45 1 star reviews saying things like oh they wouldn't let me in because I had a beard or oh they spent my burger when they found out I was a man or you know, like just all kinds of ridiculous stuff. One of them said that I held them down and made them watch the W. N. B. A. Playoffs. I would read the comment, I'd be like, oh what do I say back to this guy. And as I was thinking it like 16 other people responded with like way better things than I could have said. And I was just like, Oh the community has got this and that's how it's always been. We were able to be there on their opening night and I think that that was the moment that you could see that Portland was here to lift jenny and her organization up. I get tingles when I think about that night because the line went around the corner, there's definitely a community that just kind of I think was already here and now has a place to gather at the bronze, which is really nice. It feels like a place that I feel really comfortable in a place where I can be myself and watch things that actually are interesting to me and have that not be something that is viewed as an inconvenience to other people, but it's celebrated. People ask me jenny, why hasn't anyone done this before? Seeing how difficult it was for me to get open and get the content and all the, all the stuff that we need to make it a success so far. I don't think it would have been possible five years ago with the content that was on tv or with the investment or the interest in women's support. And I think timing was just right now for it to happen. I honestly think in the next 10 years women's sports could overshadow men's sports as far as popularity goes. I think a company like the sports bra is proving too many other companies within Portland's or outside of Portland that you can have a successful business focusing on women's sports. You know, like the, the NWSL championship game was played on broadcast on CBS and like a ton, almost a million people tuned in and that's a really big deal. So like, it's nice to finally see that. I think the kind of powers that be in sports economics are paying attention to women's sports and starting to recognize the value and we don't need to question whether it's a good idea or not and just commit to supporting women in athletics for real cultural change to happen. And I think women's sports is about cultural change, real cultural change takes, you know, according to Gloria steinem takes about 100 years. And so I think we're about halfway through that as women's sports are shown over time, we get a chance to fall in love with the athletes the same way that we do for men's sports. You know, so we can show women's sports and we can be able to prove that women will watch, men will watch families will watch women playing sports. I've had, I don't know, maybe 70 people reach out asking to open a sports bra in their town or city, um, multiple investors, just hordes of interest. Um, but besides that I've had people reach out who want to open their own thing. That is a women's sports bar. I've had sports bar owners reach out and ask how they can incorporate more women's sports into their sports bar. And so all of these things to me is part of the mission jenny. And the people around this saw a need and they're like, well, we're not gonna wait for anyone to do it, we're just gonna make it happen. So much of what we experience is, what is in existence, right? It's hard to know what the possibilities are if you can't see it. And so I think that having created this space when people come in here, I feel like it opens up a whole new set of possibilities to introduce a women's sports bar where the culture is built around celebrating and empowering and supporting women's sports. It's about time take one