There’s a great photo of me, age 5 — dirty face, blonde hair down to my shoulders, a serious look. Like my teammates, I’m wearing a light blue jersey emblazoned with the team name: The Kicks. But perhaps the most noticeable thing is that I’m the only girl. It’s me and about a dozen boys. The photo from the following year looks the same. The year after that, too.
Thirteen years later, the University of Florida didn’t have a women’s soccer team when I started college there. They got one a year later. And there certainly was no viable women’s professional league, so my hopes of playing past high school were nonexistent.
Finding ways to play was difficult, but finding ways to actually watch women’s sports was just as bad, if not worse. Sports fan and Philly native Chivonn Anderson recalls traveling Europe and watching soccer everywhere, then returning to Philly and arguing with a bartender to put the 2019 Women’s World Cup Final on TV. A game the US women were not just in, but one they won, 2-0.
The reason the bartender gave for not switching the channel was that the Phillies were playing the Mets — a run-of-the-mill midseason Sunday night game.
For Anderson, that interaction planted the seed of one day opening her own bar dedicated to women’s sports. Last month, wearing a Washington Spirit jersey, I sat in the warm glow of the pinkish-red walls inside Marsha’s sampling Mom Mom’s pierogies, a cheesy pimento hotdog, and drinking a Switch Hitter (bourbon, plum, and lemon), while a Korea Open women’s tennis match played on TV and Chappell Roan’s “Pink Pony Club” blared from the speakers.
Decorations were sparse, though a big, bold, beautiful painting of the bar’s namesake, Marsha P. Johnson, an iconic figure of the LGBTQ+ rights movement and a leader during the 1969 Stonewall Uprising, keeps watch over the bar. A Phillies Pride flag and a cheeky Tennis Girl poster adorn the back wall, but there is a lot of women’s sports memorabilia in storage that Anderson said she would love to find a home for on the walls.
But regardless, her dream was realized. She was officially opening Philly’s first women’s sports bar — a bar for women and fans of women’s sports.
At Marsha’s, at least half a dozen people were wearing “Everyone Watches Women’s Sports” T-shirts. Countless others were sporting Eagles, Phillies, or 76ers logos. I talked to two women at the bar, one who said she hadn’t played sports since she was a child, but loves watching, and the other who had played professional volleyball overseas, and came back to coach at Temple. Both of them were thrilled to be there. Two other women at a high-top table nearby told me how Philly needed this — a bar like Marsha’s — and how it was about damn time.
In 1999, a month after I graduated from college, Brandi Chastain was on magazine covers around the world after ripping off her shirt to celebrate a World Cup-winning penalty kick. More people talked about her being in a sports bra afterward than the actual USWNT victory.
Data driven
Fast forward 20 years, and it’s amazing how things have changed.
The 2023 women’s World Cup had 2 billion viewers.
In 2023, 3.4 million people tuned into ESPN to watch Coco Gauff win the U.S. Open, which means over a million more people were watching the women’s final than watching Novak Djokovic in the men’s that year (that match garnered 2.3 million viewers). Zooming out even more, five of the top 10 most-watched tennis matches ever involved Serena Williams. Men’s tennis great Roger Federer has properly noted that Serena Williams is, indeed, the G.O.A.T. Fellow great Andy Murray has corrected numerous sports journalists who’ve failed to recognize the Williams sisters’ records.
In 2024, when South Carolina took on Iowa, it was the first time that a women’s NCAA basketball final had a larger TV audience than the men’s, according to ESPN. Then, I felt like women’s basketball had broken through some invisible barrier — finally — and I started seeing men and boys wearing Caitlin Clark jerseys, everywhere.
» READ MORE: Women have taken over the NCAA Tournament | Marcus Hayes (from 2024)
The Olympic Games in Paris boasted of finally achieving gender parity on the playing field, which it defines as having set a quota to distribute competition spots equally to female and male athletes. The four most-watched days of those 2024 Games just happened to coincide with women’s gymnastics events. Simone Biles is an icon. I struggle to name a male gymnast.
So while you’ve got more women playing than ever before, and more people watching than ever before, a sports bar that prioritizes women’s sports was nonexistent — until the Sports Bra, the first women’s sports bar in the U.S., opened in Portland, Ore., in April 2022. And now, Reddit founder Alexis Ohanian — who also happens to be Serena Williams’ husband — has invested in the Sports Bra, hoping to help it franchise and open locations in cities like Boston, Indianapolis, Las Vegas, and St. Louis. Which means it’s not only a good idea. Women’s sports is also a really good business.
» READ MORE: Before Philadelphia had a WNBA franchise, it had the Rage
A sense of community
Like Anderson, Marsha’s owner, I’ve tried calling ahead to local bars to see if they would be airing a women’s match. I’d usually just end up watching on my laptop at home, with a $7 Peacock subscription or a friend’s ESPN login. Jen Barnes, the owner of the Rough & Tumble Pub, a women’s sports bar that opened in Seattle in October 2022, told Vogue, “You need a master’s degree in streaming services to be able to be a women’s sports fan.”
According to AdWeek, at the beginning of 2025, there were only six bars across the country dedicated to women’s sports. That number is expected to quadruple by the end of the year. And that’s exciting as a woman who happens to be a sports fan, but especially for a woman who is a big fan of women’s sports.
Having recently moved to Philly from D.C., one of the first things I did was meet my friend, Meredith Edlow, at a Watch Party PHL event for the Eagles’ home opener against the Cowboys. What I didn’t know until I got there is that this was for women sports fans. And it was standing room only, there were hundreds of women there — watching the game, drinking beer, ordering food, and excited to be out with other women doing the same. The camaraderie was incredible, and the experience was so much better than watching at home would’ve been.
So a few weeks later, when I found myself photographing the media event/soft open at Marsha’s for The Inquirer, I was blown away by the interest and attendance, but not totally shocked. Two nights later, when Marsha’s opened to the public, that same friend who had invited me to the Watch Party texted that she never made it inside Marsha’s after waiting in line for over two hours to get in. “Excited to come check it out some other time,” she said. “Excited that it exists.”
The hype is real, and it’s exciting to see. Not only is Philly a great sports town, but it’s also proving itself to be a great women’s sports town. And I’m glad I’m here for it.