Jenny Nguyen's frustration with the lack of visibility for women's sports at traditional bars led her to open The Sports Bra, the world's first bar exclusively dedicated to airing women's sporting events.
With three seconds left on the clock, the score knotted up at 58 — the fifth tie of the fourth quarter — Notre Dame had the ball and a chance to win its first women’s basketball title. The inbound went to Arike Ogunbowale, who muscled through the defense, dribbled twice as she moved down the sideline, and hoisted and sunk a three-pointer to seal the game against Mississippi State on April 1, 2018.
Tucked in a corner of a sports bar in Portland, Oregon, Jenny Nguyen and her friends erupted in joy and slapped high-fives while the rest of the patrons looked over in confusion. All the theatrics from the NCAA women’s basketball championship game took place on a TV with no sound. The other two-dozen-plus TVs in the bar were tuned to regular season men’s baseball and basketball games. Watching those dramatic games with no sound was among a long list of challenges in watching women’s sports at bars. But this time, it served as a tipping point for Nguyen and ended up launching an entire movement. “I was frustrated with the situation, and I blurted out, ‘The only way we’re ever going to experience women’s sports in the way it should be is if we had our own place,’” she said. Four years later, in April 2022, Nguyen did just that: She opened The Sports Bra, thought to be the world’s first bar that exclusively airs women’s sports. Getting The Sports Bra off the ground wasn’t easy. There were vocal naysayers who said the venture was doomed to fail, claiming “nobody watches women’s sports.” Plus, funding was hard to come by as banks tightened up their lending during the Covid-19 pandemic and Nguyen was an unemployed chef and unproven entrepreneur. So she emptied out her savings account and turned to Kickstarter on Valentine’s Day in 2022. The Sports Bra hit its goal of $48,700 eight days later and ultimately ended up raising upward of $105,000. Eight months after opening, The Sports Bra surpassed $1 million in sale
BUSINESS ENTREPRENEURSHIP WOMEN's SPORTS THE SPORTS BRA BAR ENTREPRENEURSHIP SPORTS VIEWING
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