They used to be places that reeked of testosterone, sweat and male egos, their floors sticky with lager spilled by big boys with big biceps. Well, that’s all changing. As the Women’s Rugby World Cup powers through its early stages, the latest spin-off from the rise and rise of women’s sport is women’s sports bars.

As such innovations tend to, this one started in America when, according to the Economist , a former chef called Jenny Nguyen opened the Sports Bra (ho ho!) in Portland, Oregon in 2022. She did so after having to watch a top women’s basketball match in a traditional sports bar with the sound on mute, presumably so as not to compete with the small talk of the male customers not interested in what was happening on TV.

Jenny had difficulty persuading investors to back her idea a

See Full Page