Women's sports bars reveal audience patterns digital platforms can't measure

Your content team measures success in clicks, views, and engagement rates. Meanwhile, Jax Diener watches fans drive across town, pay for parking, and stay for 90 minutes because they need something streaming can't provide.

California's first women's sports bar hosts National Olympic Committee delegations, captures sport-specific audience patterns that digital analytics completely miss, and also comes with a podcast studio.

Physical venues aren't just viewing spaces—they're content infrastructure revealing behaviors your dashboard will never show you. She shares her multi-million dollar insights below.

🤿 Below the Surface

Here's what's on deck this week:

• Signal Strength: Why brick-and-mortar often beats digital-only in women's sports

• In the Current: Athlete-centric marketing + fragmented distribution

• Blue Zone: Deep Blue kicks off the holidays early

• Shark Bite: Kara Nortman on the women’s sports market

⚡️ Signal Strength  

How Physical Spaces Transform Women's Sports Fandom

Jax Diener opened Watch Me! Sports Bar in July 2024, creating California's first dedicated women's sports venue. Within months, clear patterns emerged that digital analytics would never reveal.

By the numbers:

• 30-40% higher traffic for soccer versus other sports at Watch Me!

• 11 Olympic events coming to Long Beach, with Watch Me! already hosting delegates from 5 countries

• 2025 NWSL Championship drew record viewership, peaking at 1.184 million viewers making it the league’s most-watched match in history

• The Sports Bra has 70k followers on IG, Watch Me! Has already grown to 20k, and Rough and Tumble has 16k

• Female athletes drive 2x the amount of engagement on social media as their male counterparts

What they're saying: "By existing, we are storytelling, and building our brand. Fan engagement is just really important to our growth and our base." — Jax Diener

Why showing up in-person matters: Understanding your audience is one of the most key elements for any brand–a physical space where fans can engage with each other and your brand is not a new concept by any means. What is novel is the opportunity to do it with a new fan-base, and with the speed at which the women’s sport audience is growing, a shot at this opportunity is something not a single brand should miss.

Women's sports bars quadrupled nationwide in 2025, proving physical spaces capture opportunities and real-time data that digital platforms simply can’t. 

Physical venues don't just show games—they create communities where fans feel comfortable asking questions, meeting athletes, and converting casual interest into committed fandom. That conversion happens through in-person interactions digital platforms can't replicate. Watch Me! and other women’s sports bars demonstrate how to capture and convert dedicated fanbase engagement through actual bodies in seats, not click-through rates.

Brands that recognize physical spaces as content infrastructure—not just viewing locations—gain partnership advantages competitors are still missing.

Read the complete breakdown

📰 In the Current  

We monitor the current so you can ride the wave. Here's what you need to know this week:

• PWHL targets 12-team expansion by season four using Takeover Tour data across 11 cities, proving "time is overrated" as Seattle and Vancouver debut with immediate sellout success.

• Michele Kang launches $25M institute with U.S. Soccer to research female athlete-specific needs from injury recovery to youth development.

• Paramount+ partners with Arsenal's men's and women's teams for cross-promotional content to drive subscriber crossover between soccer and entertainment.

🦈 Blue Zone  

We’re on the sidelines of women’s sports history each week whether it’s with our partners activating on-site, as true fans in the stands, or in spirit while we stream from home.

This year we took time as a team and celebrated the holidays a bit early. It’s amazing to step back and reflect on the progress + impact we’ve made with our partners in this space.

December 11th marks Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment’s 2 year anniversary! And we know year three will be the best one yet.

🌊 Shark Bite

“The overall men’s sports market globally is estimated to be about half a trillion dollars. The women’s sports market, when we started Monarch in 2023, was thought to be about half a billion dollars. It’s now closer to $3 billion.” – Kara Nortman

Founder Angel City, Managing Partner Monarch Collective

Brands evaluating women's sports investments need to understand where physical presence creates advantages digital strategies miss.

– Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment

Interested in learning what Deep Blue is up to? Have an idea? 
Reach us at [email protected].