Women’s sports is truly having a moment with incredible female athletes like Caitlin Clark, Simone Biles, and Alex Morgan, just to name a few. According to Deloitte, women’s elite sports are expected to yield $1.24 billion in revenue this year. Media coverage has roughly tripled Wasserman purports, bringing women’s sports to 15% of total sports media coverage. Social media and streaming services have contributed greatly to the increase in revenue and hours watched of women’s sports.
A handful of bars are capitalizing on women’s sports momentum across the US. Watch Me! Sports Bar, the first women’s sports bar in California and fifth in the Nation, had a wildly successful grand opening last Friday. Hundreds of people from across Southern California gathered eagerly in Long Beach to attend this historic event.
The mood was celebratory and people (mostly women) were reuniting with old friends and making new ones as they waited in line to get a spot at the bar on opening day that coincided with the Summer Olympics Opening Ceremonies.
Matison Card, who waited in line for hours to get a table in the bar, said she was there to support her partner who works at Watch Me! Her partner, Kolby Lemasney, who recently came out as gender non-binary, has found a safe place to work with an uplifting community. “Watch Me! is a great place for non-binary people to be able to use their proper pronouns and a safe place for them in sports,” Card added.
As sports have been built on the gender binary, oftentimes non-binary people find themselves unsafe in these spaces. Card was elated that her partner has found a safe place in sports even if they are not playing anymore. “They [Lemasney] played collegiate basketball and were an award winning shooter so it’s really cool to see them get involved in sports in a different way,” she commented.
Ida Valez excitedly waited with her wife, both sporting matching “Kamala Harris 2024” shirts and large smiles, to support the grand opening. Valez said: “It’s about time we had a bar that is just dedicated to women’s sports in Long Beach.” She reminisced about frequenting women’s bars in the past, but she lamented that they did not have a focus on women’s sports nor did they show them on the television. “Watch Me! will show [women’s sports] from across the country and the world,” Valez asserted.
Valez delighted in the fact that women’s sports are being elevated and women are starting to be paid more in sports. She noted that we are taking a “step in the right direction” with US Soccer leading the way with equal pay being guaranteed regardless of your gender. She hopes that this will become the norm and that women in all collegiate and professional sports will be paid fairly.
Monica Blumenfield and Maria DeSantis, former rugby players, attended the grand opening and stated that Watch Me! will be a place for everyone, not just the LGBTQ+ community. “The lesbian community has definitely latched on to it [Watch Me!], but it is really a place for everybody,” Blumenfield said. She compared it to a women’s only gym where everyone can feel safe and comfortable exercising.
Blumenfield’s name was listed on the Watch Me! Hall of Fame at the grand opening as an athlete in the Belmont Shore Women’s Rugby Club. Many other local female athletes were celebrated on the large poster as you entered the bar as well. Inside of the bar, the walls are lined with encouraging murals inscribed with “BE THE CHANGEMAKER!” in large block letters.
Samantha Cruger, another eager new patron of Watch Me!, expressed that she was joining the large crowd at the monumental event as “you have to be part of history when you can, and this is a great history to be a part of.”
Cruger believes that Long Beach is an excellent location to open a women’s sports bar as it already has a very welcoming environment for the Queer community with its LGBTQ+ Cultural District and its popular annual Pride parade. She hopes that the bar’s location will attract and welcome the Queer community from surrounding cities as well.
Co-owners and wives, Emme Eddy and Jax Diener, employ a team of all women and gender non-binary folx to run their new establishment and that does not appear to be an accident. They have been clear in many interviews that they opened this bar to create a safe space to celebrate, elevate, and encourage women in sports.
At the opening ceremony, Diener stated in a speech to the crowd: “Women actually do support women. We’ve created this inclusive space for you, the community. You all will shape it. We look forward to seeing how it evolves over time.”
