When Jenny Nguyen invested her life-savings to open a bar that only shows women's sports on its TVs, she wanted to prove that the idea was more than a novelty.

Two years later, her Portland, Oregon-based bar The Sports Bra averages more than $1 million in annual revenue, according to documents reviewed by CNBC Make It. She's become an outspoken advocate for female athletes as her bar attracts packed houses, and she's invested most of The Sports Bra's proceeds back into the business, she says.

Some of those proceeds will likely go toward expansion. In April, Nguyen and Reddit co-founder Alexis Ohanian — the husband of tennis legend Serena Williams — announced an investment partnership to build a franchising plan and open locations into new cities, she says. Her goal: Prove that there's enough enthusiasm for women's sports to support the concept nearly anywhere.

"Oh, man. It's been busy," says Nguyen, 44, who adds that she's working with Ohanian and an advisory team to develop a vision for The Sports Bra's growth. She's wary of rushing into anything and risking "losing the spirit, or the soul, or the quality or all of the things that we value about the Bra," she says.

With nationwide interest in women's sports on the rise, Nguyen says she wants to have The Sports Bra franchisees in "three or four cities" ready to announce by the end of 2024. Her plan is for those locations to open before the end of 2025, as she lines up the next three to four cities that could open franchises in 2026, and so on.

"What's crazy to me is that the Bra opened in 2022 and we've gotten to kind of witness this seismic shift in sports culture right in front of our eyes," says Nguyen.

Building out a potential 'multibillion-dollar industry'

Nguyen isn't alone in believing that there's demand for more bars like hers. The Sports Bra helped kick off a movement, inspiring other bars focused solely on women's sports from Washington to Massachusetts.

Women's sports are projected to bring in over $1 billion in revenue in 2024, a bump of 300% compared to three years ago, according to Deloitte. Female athletes are fighting for wage parity, young stars like Caitlin Clark and Angel Reese are arriving in the WNBA, and women like Simone Biles and Katie Ledecky enjoyed global acclaim at the 2024 Paris Olympics.

Nguyen, who once struggled to find enough women's sports broadcasts to fill her bar's televisions, no longer has to spend her time "scouring" TV listings, she says. Women's sports now comprise roughly 15% of all television sports coverage, according to a 2023 study from sports and entertainment agency Wasserman, which is triple the amount of coverage seen just two years earlier in a separate study.

Women's sports bars could create "a couple of billion dollars worth of U.S. food service revenue over the next five years," says Aaron Allen, founder of restaurant consultancy Aaron Allen & Associates.

"[This] could be a multibillion-dollar industry inside of the U.S., and something that could take off globally ... As women's sports grow, it needs a community, it needs fans and those fans need places to socialize and build community around," he says.

Ohanian is a believer: He and Williams financially support multiple ventures related to women's sports. He hasn't disclosed the size of his investment partnership with The Sports Bra, but he's pledged to donate all of his 776 Foundation's proceeds from the investment to causes that "advance future generations of women athletes."

'It doesn't feel like competition'

Ohanian first reached out to Nguyen last year on Twitter. "It was shocking. I didn't believe it," says Nguyen. "My first reaction was, 'That's fake.'"

After she confirmed that Ohanian's interest was legitimate, the pair emailed regularly, she says. He connected her to resources and advisors, and was also patient enough to wait until she was ready to get serious about expansion, she notes.

Opening a bar in the first place was a big, out-of-character swing for Nguyen, who describes herself as "super risk-averse." Even now, she's insistent on sticking to "pretty conservative" expansion plans, she says.

"I would rather open slower [and] with more intention, than to blast it all out there because so many people want it and have it be watered down somehow," says Nguyen. Growing too quickly risks "not giving the franchisees the full attention and support that they need."

That's probably her biggest challenge at the moment, says Allen: To succeed in new locations, businesses like The Sports Bra need to effectively define and codify the mission, aesthetic and infrastructure that helped them take off in the first place.

"[That can be] the difference between these being one-off, flash in the pan [success stories] and being something that really goes mainstream" Allen says. "It's a very different business to go from one unit to two."

Time is another concern. The rapid spread of similar bars across the country puts pressure on Nguyen to build The Sports Bra into "a national brand" before she's outpaced by a competitor, says Allen. The support Nguyen has received from the women's sports industry — including professional teams, athletes and even competitors who own similar bars — keeps her from panicking, she says.

"It doesn't feel like competition. It feels like camaraderie," says Nguyen, adding: "It's been incredible to have people come out of the woodworks [to] help build and create and join this wild adventure that we're on."

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