Title 9 Sports Grill’s mission to be a haven for watching women’s sports permeates every nook and cranny. From the more than a dozen TVs mounted on pink and orange walls to the “Play Like a Girl” neon sign against a giant image of retired WNBA star Diana Taurasi.
The Phoenix, Arizona, bar is an impressive turnaround for co-owners Audrey Corley and Kat Moore. Just before Christmas, the space was still Moore and her husband’s hot dog restaurant.
However, they sold the business last year and the new owners did not want to stay in the property. That is when Corley, who owns a popular lesbian bar on the next block, proposed partnering on the city’s first women’s sports-centric bar.
Photo: AP
She had been mulling the idea since reading about the Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon, which opened in 2022, and then seeing a half-dozen similar bars emerge in the past year.
“Then I see, you know, another one popped up here and another one, and then I was like, it’s just time. It has to be,” Corley said before Title 9’s grand opening earlier this month.
Several new bars dedicated to women’s sports have made the mad dash to open in time to capitalize on March Madness, now in full swing. From San Francisco to Cleveland, more than a dozen such bars plan to open across the country before the year is over.
The femme-focused bar scene has made huge strides from three years ago when The Sports Bra was the only one. It comes during an exciting first year during which teams in the women’s bracket would finally be paid for playing in the NCAA tourney. Many credit stars such as Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese for increasing the marketability of female players.
Last season, Reese and Clark’s teams never saw a dollar. Now, the women’s teams would finally earn individual revenue, known as “units.” A unit is money paid to conferences when one of its teams appears in the NCAA Tournament. Teams earn another with every game played.
The most seamless part of transforming her old restaurant into Title 9 has been the built-in community anticipation of having a place to view women’s sports, Moore said.
“The only question I’ve gotten from quite a few men, especially when we first started telling people, was, ‘Are men allowed?’ Yeah,” she said, with a chuckle.
Named for the landmark 1972 law that forbids discrimination based on sex in education, including athletics, Title 9 is filled with tributes to female athletes, from framed photos with QR codes to a cocktail roster with drinks such as the Pat Summitt Sour and Taurasi Goat-Tail. However, the owners emphasize a family-friendly atmosphere where young girls can come celebrate after a school game.
“Even some of the little girls, they could come here and dream of being on the TV someday and actually getting paid for it,” Corley said.
Debra Hallum and Marlene du Plessis were also inspired by the Sports Bra. They made their targeted opening in Austin last week of 1972 ATX Women’s Sports Pub across from the University of Texas campus.
“It is so hard to find a bar or a pub that will show women’s sports,” Du Plessis said. “You always have to call around, ask around to find where they going to show it, and then most of the time you know they will not have the sound on — and we will.”
In Denver, Annie Weaver and Miranda Spencer met playing on opposing flag football teams. A month later, they began drafting a business plan for a similar concept, also inspired by The Sports Bra. Open since December last year, the 99ers Sports Bar is hosting its first March Madness crowds.
They were first considering a name that would play off of Mia Hamm, the 1990s soccer icon who inspired Weaver’s Halloween costume for years. They settled on a name that honors the 1999 US Women’s World Cup soccer team, filled with names and faces that did not get as much attention as Hamm.
The city does not even have any women’s teams in the major national leagues, but it was recently awarded the 16th NWSL expansion team, to begin play next year.
A trifold bracket covered one table, and an impromptu friendship bracelet-making station occupied another.
“I wish I would have had this space growing up,” Spencer said.
The new bar operators agree it is not a trend, but an indicator of a market that has not been served.
Hopefully, anyone looking to open a women’s sports bar is not doing it “just to be trendy,” Moore said.
Corley’s most important advice for any would-be barkeep: “The same way you play sports for the love, open this up for the love.”
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