Six Bars. The Whole Country.

Two years ago, there were six places in America built for

. This year, that number quadruples — and Raise the Bar is one of them.

In 2022, Jenny Nguyen opened The Sports Bra in Portland because she was tired of watching the NCAA Women's Basketball Championship on a muted screen in the corner. Banks wouldn't lend her the money — they called the concept a "novelty." So she used her own savings and a Kickstarter campaign instead. Eight months later, that "novelty" had done nearly $1 million in revenue, with lines around the block.

That was the whole category. One bar. One founder. One bet.

By 2023, there were only a handful more — six dedicated women's sports bars in the entire country. Six places, in a nation of 340 million people, built for a fan base that shows up in numbers the industry keeps underestimating.

By now that number has quadrupled.

The wave that's already moving

• A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis raised over $200,000 from more than 1,000 donors across 48 states — proof that the demand for this isn't local, it's national.

• Rough & Tumble opened in Seattle to crowds big enough to prove the model works in a major tech hub, not just a scrappy startup city.

• 1972 Women's Sports Pub opened in Austin — named for Title IX — just in time for March Madness, drawing lines out the door.

None of these cities waited for permission. None of them had a template. They built anyway, and the market answered.

The number behind the number

This isn't a string of nice local stories. It's a market correction. Global women's sports revenue is projected to hit $3.04 billion in 2026 — up from $692 million in 2022. That's 340% growth in four years. The WNBA alone added 17 million fans in a single year and now has the largest women's sports fan base in the country, at 119 million. This isn't a niche audience discovering itself. It's a mainstream one that's been underserved.

Six bars couldn't hold that. Twenty-four might not either.

Where Columbus fits

Columbus is a market this wave hasn't reached yet — a city with a founding Pro Volleyball Federation franchise, a Big Ten powerhouse next door, and a Final Four coming to Nationwide Arena in 2027, sitting without a single home base for the fans who'll show up for all of it.

The addition of the 2028 NWSL expansion team further validates Columbus as the premier next market for a women's sports bar. This professional soccer franchise provides a sustained anchor for fan engagement, underscoring that the city's sports ecosystem is rapidly evolving to prioritize and celebrate women's athletics at the highest level.

Raise the Bar is built to be part of the second wave, not a copy of the first. Same conviction The Sports Bra had in 2022 — that this isn't a novelty, it's a market — applied to a city with the infrastructure and the fan base already in place.

If you're an investor in Baltimore, Portland, or anywhere else trying to figure out where to put your money and expertise this year, this is the moment in the category's history it's happening in: early enough to matter, proven enough to not be a guess.

We're not asking you to believe in an idea. So many other founders already did the believing. We're asking you to help us build the next chapter.

Stay close — we'll be sharing more on how to get involved as we move toward opening our doors this year.