Jenny Nguyen, 43, is the founder and owner of The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon.
When Jenny Nguyen signed the lease to create her dream bar, she wasn't sure it would stay open for more than a few months. But earlier this month, 43-year-old Nguyen's first-of-its-kind establishment in Portland, Oregon, celebrated its one-year anniversary. Aptly named The Sports Bra, it's a sports bar where only women athletes appear on the TVs. Business has been good, despite the niche business model and record inflation sending food and beverage prices soaring. The Sports Bra brought in $944,000 in revenue in the eight months it was open in 2022, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. It was profitable in that first year of business, Nguyen adds. "It turns out, it's pretty universal — that feeling of being a women's sports fan and going into a public place, like a sports bar, and having a difficult time finding a place to show a [women's] game, especially when there are other men's sports playing," Nguyen says. Initially, she wasn't sure the idea would work at all. The vast majority of money and attention historically goes to men's sports only — a big reason why The Sports Bra was reportedly the country's first bar to only play women's sports on TV. It's also not the kind of thing Nguyen would ordinarily do: She describes herself as "very cautious, risk averse." But her obsession with women's sports and frustration with its lack of representation on television screens drove her to empty her life savings — about $27,000 — and give it a try. "Me, personally, I thought the idea was brilliant and that [it was] what the world needs," Nguyen says. "But I had no idea that the world would want it. I just wanted to give it a shot."
How The Sports Bra went from running joke to reality
Nguyen is a lifelong basketball fan who played the sport at Clark College in Vancouver, Washington, before tearing her ACL. She's also a longtime restaurant worker who spent three years as Reed College's executive chef. In 2018, Nguyen and a group of friends wanted to watch the NCAA women's basketball championship game. They went to a mostly empty sports bar and still had to plead with a bartender to switch one of the smallest TVs — which played without sound — from a men's sport to the women's championship game, she recalls. Together, they jumped up and down celebrating "one of the best games I've ever seen," Nguyen says, as a buzzer-beating three-point shot sealed the championship title for Notre Dame. Afterward, she was struck by the normalcy of her situation. "[We'd] gotten so used to watching a game like that in the way that we did," she says, adding that they'd only find better viewing conditions "if we had our own place."
The Sports Bra's walls are adorned with women's sports memorabilia, including a quilted portrait of former female soccer star Brandi Chastain. Source: The Sports Bra
Days later, she channeled her disappointment into a hypothetical: What would she name her bar? "The very first thing that came into my mind was The Sports Bra," Nguyen says. "And once I thought it, I couldn't un-think it, you know? It was catchy. I thought it was hilarious." For years, she joked about it. Then, the fallout from social justice movements like #MeToo and the country's racial reckoning after George Floyd's murder left her wanting to make a meaningful impact on the world and her community. Nguyen, who came out as a lesbian at age 17, says she doesn't always feel welcome at most traditional sports bars. The Sports Bra could help her, and anyone else who'd rarely felt accepted in other sports establishments, feel like she belonged. "I thought about, if we can even get one kid in here and have them feel like they belong in sports, it'd be worth it," she says.
Helping other women's sports bars get started