As the 2026 WNBA Playoffs heat up to the semifinal round, one thing is clear. That means women’s sports are heating up.
The business of women’s sports is in jeopardy as total viewership records are surpassed. When Nike released Indiana Fever star Caitlin Clark’s first signature sneaker, the Caitlin 1, it sold out in less than two hours. Meanwhile, advertising spending on women’s sports has increased 120% since 2022, according to a Nielsen report, and according to Deloitte, women’s sports are expected to generate about $3 billion in global revenue in 2026, triple the amount from two years ago.
Few entrepreneurs are capitalizing on the growing national interest in women’s sports like Jenny Nguyen, owner of The Sports Bra, a Portland, Oregon-based sports bar that focuses solely on women’s sports.
Nguyen, 46, spent her life’s savings (about $27,000) to open her dream business in April 2022, CNBC Make It reported in April 2023. Despite its niche premise, the bar quickly brought in nearly $1 million in revenue and turned a profit within its first eight months. Since then, Nguyen says he has now earned more than $1 million a year.
As Americans’ interest in and willingness to spend on women’s sports continues to grow, Nguyen decided to launch a crowdfunding effort on May 18th aimed at expanding Sports Bra into a national franchise. Her goals were twofold. First: Open a larger store in Portland to accommodate more customers and host events to generate additional revenue. Second: By 2030, the company will open about 40 franchised stores nationwide, modeled after Portland’s larger store.
The campaign raised nearly $1.24 million from more than 1,400 people in about two months. This reflects the current economic weight of women’s sports and their fans. Nearly half of new investors on Republic, the platform Nguyen used, chose a minimum investment of $250 for the campaign.
“It’s really, really exciting for the general public to understand what we’re doing and be part of the women’s sports movement,” Nguyen said.
Amid all the excitement, Nguyen is walking a tightrope. She’s trying to grow her sports bra quickly so she can capitalize on its popularity without overextending the budding business. Doing so could jeopardize the brand she has poured everything into building.
“We had no idea” whether the sports bra would be a success.
At first, Nguyen wasn’t sure if the idea of an all-women’s sports bar would work.
A lifelong basketball fan and trained chef, she says she was inspired by what she now calls a “pretty universal” experience: struggling to find women’s sporting events on sports bar TVs, in her case the 2018 NCAA Women’s Basketball Championship Game. She came up with the name for her sports bra years before actually trying to launch her business, she told CNBC Make It in April 2023.
“It was catchy. I thought it was funny,” Nguyen said.
She said social justice movements during the coronavirus pandemic, particularly the #MeToo movement and protests after the killing of George Floyd, made her take her ideas more seriously. At the time, she thought sports bras could become a place where people like herself, who felt excluded from traditional sports facilities, could feel like they belonged.
“Personally, I thought this was a great idea and something the world needed,” Nguyen said. “But I didn’t think the world wanted it. I just wanted to try it.”
“Moonshot” goal: 40 locations in 4 years
Sports bras started out as an outlier, but a lot has changed since then. Front Office Sports, a sports business news website, puts the number of women’s sports bars in the United States at 27, and points out that the total will quadruple in 2025 alone.
The increase in bars for women’s sports comes against a backdrop of declining discretionary spending in the United States. According to market research firm YouGov’s 2025 U.S. Eating Out Report, 37% of Americans will report eating out less frequently in 2025, while alcohol sales are stagnant, especially at bars, as more Americans cut back on drinking.
In some ways, sports bars are especially vulnerable. While they typically have to pay commercial license fees required to host major sporting events, which can range from $1,100 to more than $300,000 per year depending on the facility’s legal occupancy limits, many other bars don’t have to pay them.
Sports bras themselves are not immune. Revenue in 2025 fell 18% from a year earlier to $1.02 million, according to financial disclosures filed with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission on Aug. 6. And Nguyen’s facility hasn’t had a profitable year since 2024, when it announced franchise plans as part of an investment partnership with Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian’s 776 Foundation in April.
Now, with product sales steadily increasing and a growing roster of high-profile business partners from the WNBA to Nike, Nguyen says she’s confident in her brand’s staying power. Additionally, Nguyen says she’s reinvesting in the business as the company builds a team to oversee franchising and expansion. Traditionally, that investment starts to pay off when a new store opens and starts generating its own revenue. So far, Sportsbra has franchised locations in five cities: Boston, Las Vegas, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Portland, Maine, with the St. Louis store expected to open by the end of October.
Nguyen plans to generate $75 million in annual revenue from 40 locations over four years. She’s quick to point out that this is the best-case scenario, calling it a “moonshot” number based on the $25,000 in annual revenue the original Portland location brings in per seat. That location seats up to 40 people, but larger venues in Portland and across the country can accommodate more than twice that number of customers, she said.
Nguyen knows that in order to reach his revenue goals within four years, he needs to get a lot of things right, starting with the rollout of his first five franchised stores.
“Everyone is paying attention. If[the first five locations]don’t launch well, in four years you’ll be kissing 40[locations]goodbye,” she says.
The dangers of rapid expansion: “It’s important to ensure success.”
Interest from sports fans has helped The Sports Bra grow into a national brand, attracting a wide range of visitors and investors, from Ohanian to former WNBA player and co-owner of the league’s Atlanta Dream, Renee Montgomery. It also opens the door to increased competition, one of the many obstacles Nguyen acknowledges could derail ambitious growth plans.
Nguyen said all of Sports Bra’s first five franchise locations have faced delays in opening, from permitting issues to sourcing kitchen equipment to extended construction schedules. As inflation, tariffs, and ongoing global conflicts increase the cost of doing business for small businesses across the country, these delays mean longer wait times for additional revenue streams to kick in.
Franchising often has other pitfalls as well. This is especially true when done quickly and at scale. The popularity of an independent business can be difficult to replicate across multiple new locations, especially if the parent company doesn’t have enough infrastructure or trained staff to maintain consistency and quality. Expanding your franchise prematurely can destroy your entire business, with many franchises closing or damaging your entire brand.
Especially in the case of sports bras, an industry-standard brand’s instant franchise failure could not just derail Nguyen’s expansion plans. That could raise questions about whether a business model centered solely around women’s sports and their fans is broadly viable across the country.
“It’s about making it successful,” Nguyen said, adding that franchising success often comes from the franchisee selection process. “When we choose franchise owners, it’s based on their love for our mission, values, and purpose for Bras. Without that, this wouldn’t work.”
Her expansion goals are quite ambitious: 40 stores in four years, in part because she doesn’t want to miss out on the opportunity by being too passive, she says. And while she broadly supports the growth of a community around businesses that support women’s sports, she says the company is competitive enough to want The Sports Bra to enter new markets and quickly differentiate itself and become a dominant player.
In short, she wants to win.
“I don’t mean to downplay the fact that we were first to market, so to speak, and that people continue to respect sports bras,” Nguyen said. “How do you keep setting the bar so high and trying to get[your competitors]to raise the bar and then try to do the same thing yourself, back and forth, back and forth? I’m wicked for that.”
