If you asked five people anywhere in the US to picture a sports bar, they’d probably all envision pretty much the same scene: a dark, sweat-perfumed hole in the wall populated by raucous men watching either an NBA or an NFL matchup. Historically, sports bars have been dominated by those of the XY-chromosome persuasion, both in terms of their athletic broadcasts and patrons. You’d be hard-pressed to find a single establishment that aired women’s sports (and even if you found one willing to, the channel change might spark a mutiny among your fellow patrons.)
But a new crop of establishments is putting a more female-friendly spin on the traditional business model. Women’s sports bars—as in, those dedicated to highlighting women’s sports—are on the rise in tandem with women’s sports themselves. Women’s basketball is by far the biggest success story thus far. For several seasons in a row now, the WNBA has seen rapid growth in both viewership and attendance. Last summer, WNBA officials even announced the 2025 season had set an all-time attendance record: More than 2.5 million fans had attended games as of August 20, 2025. (For context, the previous record was set in 2002, when the league contained three more teams and held 30 more games in the season.) Star players like Angel Reese, Caitlin Clark, and Paige Bueckers, all former NCAA standouts, have become true celebrity athletes since they made their WNBA debut as first-round draft picks, attending VIP events, scoring lucrative brand deals, and attracting several metric tons of media coverage.
Watching the attitude toward women’s sports shift, it became apparent to Lauren McKenna, a cofounder and co-owner of the New York City women’s sports bar Wilka’s, that there needed to be more places to watch women’s professional games. “You’re kind of fighting for space in a traditional sports bar—[space] to be seen,” McKenna, a fan of the Brooklyn-based WNBA team the New York Liberty, tells SELF. “No one’s willing to hear out a woman or see what they’re interested in, watch what they want to watch, whatever that may be.”
Not your average sports bar
Women’s sports bars—which are often framed by proprietors as a passion project as much as a commercial enterprise—neatly meet that growing demand. Last March, an NBC News analysis found that the number of women’s sports bars in the US was on track to quadruple by the end of the year, increasing from six to around 24 across 16 US states. Several women’s sports bars have opened in New York City alone in recent months, including Athena Keke’s and Blazers in Brooklyn—and, of course, Wilka’s, which is located in Lower Manhattan and first threw open its doors in August.
On a Friday evening in late March, Wika’s was filled with people—mostly women, but some men and nonbinary individuals too—fixated on a row of TVs along the wall broadcasting the NCAA Tournament’s Sweet 16 faceoff between the University of Minne