How Physical Venues Give Women’s Sports Fans the Connection They Crave
Being in-person is the kind of audience engagement digital just can’t capture
When marketing teams try to connect with their audiences, they often default to the usual suspects:
→ Social media platforms (straightforward to scale)
→ Streaming services (offers a wide reach and intel on user behavior)
→ Podcasts (grants access to large, engaged audiences)
These plays make sense if you’re operating in an established market with longstanding, predictable audience behaviors. But in rapidly growing spaces like women's sports, opportunities go far beyond these go-to strategies—and in-person experiences can create authentic, irreplaceable connections.
Jax Diener, founder of California’s first women’s sports bar, has seen those connections firsthand. Prior to opening Watch Me!, she spent 20 years in content production, most recently at Living Spaces, managing an in-house studio and digging into both traditional and digital content creation.
This background helped her hone in on a few key audience behaviors when she launched her own business. At Watch Me!, the U.S. Women’s National Team matches brought in the crowds, as did WNBA games. Rugby matches attracted a surprisingly large Long Beach fanbase. And most importantly, Jax saw that in-person interactions were energized, communal, and positive—a far cry from many online sports communities.
Digital platforms often lack the camaraderie and psychological safety of in-person venues. Someone watching a YouTube stream alone won't pause to ask how rugby scoring works, but someone sitting at Watch Me! can turn to their neighbor during a match and strike up a conversation.
Traditional content strategy chases scale through digital channels. Physical venues capture audiences, build communities, and create revenue streams your digital dashboards can't measure.
Key Takeaways:
Physical venues are great at revealing sport-specific audience patterns (for example, soccer drives 30-40% more traffic than other sports at Watch Me!)
Multi-revenue infrastructure design that combines bar operations, event hosting, and podcast studio rentals, generates predictable income
League partnerships create organic credibility—USC Women's Basketball and Billie Jean King appearances generated media coverage and social content without spending on marketing
Creating Safe Spaces for New Audiences
Within months of opening Watch Me!, Jax saw clear audience behaviors emerge. The U.S. Women's National Team matches brought in crowds, followed closely by WNBA games and rugby which attracted a surprisingly large Long Beach fanbase. More importantly, physical venues designed for women's sports create psychological safety that traditional sports bars don't provide.
Jax spent decades going to traditional sports bars for NFL games, always feeling uncomfortable. Now she runs a space where fans feel safe asking questions. "I don't know rugby, it's now my new favorite sport, but I will ask people in here, ‘hey, what are the rules?’ And that's so important that people can feel safe to do that here, versus a traditional sports bar where maybe they don't feel comfortable doing that."
That difference matters for brands trying to reach audiences in emerging sports categories. You're competing against years of cultural conditioning that made certain sports feel inaccessible—and made certain venues feel unwelcoming. Physical spaces like Watch Me! dissolve that barrier through intentional community building rather than content alone.
The Benefits of Physical-First
Jax built Watch Me! around three pillars that don’t consume overlapping resources. Each one takes advantage of what only a physical space can provide. This model also addresses hospitality's core challenge—unpredictable income—while still creating unique content opportunities that bridge the gap between in-person community and digital reach.
Real Feedback in Real Time
Watch Me!'s venue provides real-time feedback loops. When the U.S. Women's National Team plays, capacity constraints become the limiting factor, while Angel City home games means the bar stays quieter because season ticket holders attend in person. Sparks away games have the venue filled with fans who want communal viewing experiences.
Within the first six months, a few trackable metrics emerged:
Soccer drives 30-40% more traffic than any other sport
Basketball creates consistent midweek engagement
Softball, volleyball, and rugby generate reliable but smaller audiences
PWHL brings dedicated fans despite being newer to the market
These patterns let Watch Me! staff appropriately for different events, build content calendars around high-traffic sports, and pitch leagues with actual attendance data rather than projections. Digital analytics show clicks and views—physical venues show who drives across town and stays for 90 minutes.
Content and Community Credibility
The LA Sparks chose Watch Me! for their team’s draft lottery nine months after opening.
USC Women's Basketball partners with the bar for team events.
Billie Jean King visited and signed the wall—not for a formal appearance, but because the space represented something worth supporting.
These partnerships didn't happen through cold outreach alone. They happened because Watch Me! demonstrated a dedicated fanbase and engaged audience. When you can tell a league "our soccer nights generate X capacity and our basketball nights generate Y capacity," you're offering a space primed for digital content.
“I'm trying to bring women's pro sports to Long Beach,” Jax proclaims. “I have no business doing it, but I'm doing it in the background. The three sports I'm aiming for are softball, volleyball, and ice hockey. I've talked to people in all of those leagues and I'm not giving up.”
Jax actively pursues "home base" designations from women's sports organizations. Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach declared Watch Me! their home base for their Welcome to the Party podcast with Billie Jean King. She is even seeding the bars participation in the 2028 LA Olympics as it brings nine events to Long Beach. The venue has already hosted National Olympic Committee delegates from five countries working with the Long Beach Mayor's Office.
Off-Peak Opportunities
When crews began lugging equipment into the bar to shoot content, Jax’s production background perked up.
“It was very clear to me right off the bat when I saw that. We needed to make a podcast studio,” says Jax “It's available on Mondays when we're closed anyway, and could be available up until probably 2 o'clock on a Tuesday through Friday before we open.”
The studio is now operational and accepting bookings to support three audiences that want to rent during off-peak hours:
professional athletes with existing podcasts seeking professional production environments
aspiring podcasters (including Cal State Long Beach students five minutes away) who need equipment and space
content creators wanting women's sports bar aesthetics as production backdrops
Watch Me! complements bar operations by generating predictable income during traditionally slow periods through the studio’s bookings. With a studio and a gathering space for women’s sports enthusiasts, brands have two-fold opportunities to activate through placement in podcasts and a dedicated physical audience.
First Movers Keep Moving
The 2028 LA Olympics will create immediate content and revenue opportunities starting 12-18 months before competition. Watch Me!'s podcast studio will be operational as international delegations, athletes, and media arrive, positioning the venue as a content hub during the Olympic preparation phase.
This timing creates compounding opportunities that digital-only strategies won’t be able to tap into.
Flag football enters the Olympics for the first time in 2028, and Jax has been tracking this growth throughout LA County. Each emerging sport, from rugby to hockey, represents audience development opportunities that physical venues capture before digital platforms recognize the demand.
Brands evaluating women's sports investments need to understand where a physical presence adds onto the advantages of a digital only approach.
Regional preferences vary dramatically from national media coverage patterns:
→ Long Beach's rugby fanbase wouldn't have been discovered through digital analytics alone—it emerged from watching who actually showed up week after week.
→ The geographic positioning between LA and Orange County revealed a hockey interest that contradicted assumptions about California sports culture.
Venues like Jax’s sports bar 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; it’s something you can’t get just watching the game on the couch.
