Everyone is welcome at Rikki’s bar in San Francisco, but only women’s sports will be on the TVs. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

Tennis is the women’s sport I watch most often. I’ve been doing so since I was a kid. I’m a player, so I’m sure that’s a big component of my draw to the television.

But, boy—or should I say, girl—how things have evolved through the decades.

Women’s sports are no longer an oddity, a rarity, or something to be considered as an afterthought. More women (and girls) are playing sports at an early age, are becoming elite athletes, and are making a living doing so.

But how often do you see these games on TV at a sports bar? Rarely.

The Sports Bra in Portland opened in 2022 as the first women’s sports bar in the United States. This means they only show women’s sports on those big screens.

Fast forward to this past June and now San Francisco can boast of having a women’s only sports bar—Rikki’s.

Men are welcome at these bars, just like women are welcome at male dominated bars that predominately air men’s sporting events.

One wall at Rikki’s is a tribute to women’s sports teams in the Bay Area. (Image: Kathryn Reed)

It was incredible to sit at Rikki’s with my beer and fries listening to fans. Soccer was on the tube. I know little about the sport—doesn’t matter the gender playing. Hearing whoops and yells as someone made a goal or when an attempt missed the net was exciting. These people knew their sport—didn’t matter the U.S. was not competing.

That’s the thing about sports—they are unifying. They unify across genders, ages, abilities, races, and nationalities.

A problem, though, is it’s hard to unify in public when your sport and gender can’t be found on TV. NBC News reported there were only six women’s sports bars in the country at the start of the year, with a projection of 24 by the end of the year. That’s progress worth toasting.

People want to watch women’s sports. In fact the 2024 NCAA women’s basketball final had more viewers than the men’s finals. The WNBA had 54 million viewers last season. The 2023 Women’s World Cup soccer broke viewing (and attendance) records.

It was the inability to find a place to watch women’s soccer and basketball that led Danielle Thoe and Sara Yergovich to open Rikki’s. The bar is named after Rikki Streicher, who died in 1994. Streicher was a co-founder of the Gay Games Federation, and owned bars in The City.