"I’m bringing people together to celebrate and amplify women's athletics."

While Jillian Hiscock says she’s just opening a bar, she's creating a vital space for women's sports fandom to thrive.

I really wanted to watch the U.S. Olympic marathon trials over the weekend. There’s a part of me that’s sad that I couldn’t be in Orlando, that I wasn’t there covering the event in some capacity. Because US women’s distance running is so deep right now. There are so many exciting athletes. So many exciting stories. The most diverse field in history.

So I settled for watching the race on TV, which was thankfully broadcast on NBC (delayed but live on Peacock). I didn’t have to rely solely on a streaming service or pay for one just to access it for a few hours.

This hasn’t always been the case.

I remember just four years ago how I wanted to watch more NWSL games after the Women’s World Cup and the U.S. Women’s National Team won their historic fourth title but I couldn’t figure out how to tune. Or how every time I flipped through the channels, there was a men’s football game or basketball game while the women’s side was relegated to some obscure ESPN channel.

But if we want to grow women’s sports, we need to be able to watch women’s sports. Because there’s no sports without fans.

That’s what my guest today is trying to do. Jillian Hiscock is the owner of A Bar of Their Own, a soon-to-be-opened women’s sports bar in the Twin Cities. It’s one of four establishments exclusively dedicated to showing women’s sports.

(As far as I know. If there are others, please tell me!)

We talked about the path from idea to opening, how community is at the heart of women’s sports, and why opening a bar and restaurant is revolutionary.

Christine 

Tell me about A Bar of Their Own. What's your vision for it? 

Jillian  

It’s a community gathering space. That’s what it started as and that’s what it continues to be. It's just taking the shape of a bar and restaurant. 

The idea has always been rooted in the community that I've been a part of for so long, which is women's sports fans. For so many years, people like me have been gathering in their own spaces because they haven't been able to gather publicly. They're having watch parties at their house or they're maybe convincing some bartender somewhere to turn on a game at a at a bar somewhere. 

But it's been so unusual and uncommon for women's sports fans that don't know each other to be able to watch sports in community. 

Everything I've done in my career professionally has been rooted in community and so it feels like a natural extension to take on this different form of professional work. I’m bringing people together on a common goal and that goal is celebrating and amplifying women's athletics.

Christine

What is your background? What were you doing before this?

Jillian

I worked in higher ed and nonprofits. I started my career doing college recruitment and retention work for systemically excluded populations, so working with first generation, low-income college students, lots of students of color. I did that for 12 years and then I spent six years working in education-based nonprofits doing that same college access and success work, but from a nonprofit lens instead of on a college campus. 

Someone asked me how my work with nonprofits helped prepare me for this. I was like, “Perfectly,” because nonprofits are understaffed and under-resourced and that's basically what opening bar is. How do you do something with no money and no people? You figure it out.

Christine

You said, it’s uncommon for women's sports fans to watch sports together in the community. In previous interviews, you’ve talked about growing up in a sports-minded family, but not having opportunities to watch women excel as athletes. 

Why does that matter? Both in terms of just the visibility of it—being able to see women excel as athletes—but also that other piece around community and being able to watch together, to have friends, neighbors and strangers gather together to do this?

Jillian

It all stems from the idea that representation matters, right? As a young girl, I would turn on TV and watch Major League Baseball games because that was the norm. I didn’t know to expect or want anything different.

I vividly remember being on vacation in Florida in my mid-to-late 20s. I was in a bar that happened to be showing the Women's College World Series and I was like, “Oh my gosh, there's women's sports on TV! This is crazy!” This was just 15 years ago. 

The first part of your question is really around giving that representation to people who maybe don't know that that kind of thing could be possible and allowing people to dream about being a women's athlete and potentially being on TV. If that's possible, what else is possible? A million other things are possible. 

That's why I say to people that you don't have to be a hardcore women's sports fan to come here, to enjoy this place. There's going to be a lot of people who are like-minded and want to continue to advance women's equity, gender equity in general. Being able to be around people like that in a social setting doesn't exist for a lot of people. They don't know where those spaces are. 

And that gets back to the community part of your question, which is, we're all just seeking belonging.

It doesn't feel like rocket science to me. I know there’s journals and research around how to create a sense of belonging but I think what a lot of people are looking for is a place where they ca be themselves. Be their authentic selves, unapologetically.

If I'm at what I call “a men's sports bar,” and there's a women's game on TV, if I start cheering when something great happens, people are going to look at me because nobody else is going to be watching that game except me.

Compare that to watching a game like that at a place like ours or The Sports Bra [a women’s sports bar in Portland, OR] where, when I cheer, I know 15 other people are probably either going to be cheering too or are going to turn from the game that they're watching and come watch the game that I'm watching to see what I'm cheering about. 

It’s not that we all need to fit into some box, but it’s knowing that what we do is a socially acceptable and celebrated thing to do. I don't think that women's sports fans have felt that way in many facets of their of their lives. I know this is true from my own experience. If that's showing up in how you feel about your women's sports fandom, what other areas of your life might that be showing up? 

I’m not trying to make this some huge philosophical thing. At the end of the day, I'm opening a bar, right? I don't want to overstate that, but I know a lot of my friends who are queer and non binary folks, and they've had trouble fitting in because of that. Being a women's sports fan is part of their identity, but it's not the only part of their identity. So what other identities are showing up for people? 

That's one of the things that's been cool for me. There are a lot of people who feel like, I know nothing about sports, but I can't wait to be at a place that celebrates women. It's just celebrating women and what it means to be a woman. If that means I'm going to have to pretend I like sports or figure out how to like sports, cool. Because I think we all just want that right. We all want that place and sense of belonging. 

Christine 

So you're working in higher ed and the nonprofit sector. Where did the idea come from? What made you kind of say, I totally want to do this. I can do this.

Jillian  

Well, I mean, that imposter syndrome around I can do this still lingers every day. You know, like, “Oh my God, can I really do this?” But here we are. We're doing it. 

I left my last nonprofit job in January of 2022. As you know, I’m in Minneapolis and I was working in a youth serving organization that was focused on working with black and brown students. We survived COVID and post-George Floyd's murder, and it was exhausting. We were all tired. We were all just mentally drained. 

I made this conscious decision to step back from my role and give myself some time to figure out what I wanted to do next because I was not showing up well at work, in my relationships. I will always say I was fortunate and privileged enough that my wife said we could be fine for six months and I could give myself some time to breathe. 

I quit my job on a Friday and the following Tuesday, a friend of mine called. She was running the local organizing committee for the Minneapolis Women's Final Four tournament, which was in Minneapolis in 2022, and needed someone to organize all the volunteers. I had never worked in sport up until that point and I took on a contract role and planned and coordinated the 1,900 tournament volunteers. 

So I’m surrounded by all these people who were just so geeked out about women’s sports and the idea Jenny had out in Portland. [Note: The Sports Bra opened in April 2022] Then there was an article that called Minneapolis this women’s sports Mecca. We had the Lynx success. We have had incredible success hosting large sporting events. We all kept asking, “Gosh, who’s going to do this? Somebody’s got to do this in Minneapolis.” 

I’m not lying when I say that never in those months did I think I would be the person to do it. I didn't think one bit about it for months. 

I followed The Sports Bra and was very excited about what they were doing, but didn't cross my mind until October 2022 when another article came out about The Bra and how successful they had been. I was with a group of friends one night and my friend said, “You're the only person that makes sense. You're super connected. You love sports. You're working in sports right now. You should do it.”

It became a joke for several months, not totally serious until March of 2023. I turned 40 and was trying to figure out what I wanted to do. One night, my wife and I said, “Maybe we should do it. Maybe it should be us.”

I scheduled a meeting with Jenny in May of 2023 and basically said, “I need you to talk me out of this because I think I'm going to do it.”

And she said, “Jillian, if I was gonna open up a sports bar anywhere else, it would be Minneapolis. It's the best place for it because you have this culture of women's sports fandom there already. You have all the teams You have the major college You have the professional You have semi-professional. You have everything.”

That was kind of the beginning of the end. 

I finished my consulting work in June and officially filed the LLC paperwork in July. Since then, it's been just absolute gangbusters. 

From July to September, it was a lot of behind the scenes work, starting to look at locations, and creating a business plan. We made an offer on a space mid-September. We launched the website publicly on September 15. We launched our crowdfunding campaign on September 30. We got into the space on December 1. We closed the crowdfunding on December 15 and raised $205,000. 

And now here we are, about a month from opening. It all feels a little bit insane but in a really cool, fun, and exciting way. 

Christine  

That is very fast. That is incredibly impressive and a little insane! 

Jillian

It really is. But to the people that know me, it makes the most sense in the world. That's kind of how I operate.

One of my contractors said, “You might be the first restaurant owner ever that actually opens the restaurant when they think they're going to open a restaurant.”

Christine

So official opening is March 1?

Jillian

March 1 is the unofficial official opening. We can't make it official until we have our liquor license in hand, which will be hopefully in the next week or two. 

It’s perfect timing for a million reasons. It's the beginning of March Madness, but even more so, Minneapolis is hosting the Big 10 Women's Basketball Tournament again for the second year in a row, so Caitlin Clark mania will be right in our backyard once again. We’re really excited to be open for that tournament that's literally five miles from where we are. 

Christine 

You said you launched a crowdfunding campaign and raised over $200,000 from supporters all over the place? What does mean to?

Jillian

It completely blown my mind. In the end, we had 40 states and four countries. The most common donation was $25 so it wasn’t like people were giving thousands of dollars. We had over 1000 donors. 

I thought the campaign would be well received, particularly by our local community but to have the quite literally a global response was absolutely beyond what I could have ever imagined. But it speaks to this hunger out there.

It was absolutely overwhelming and continues to be overwhelming. Just today I had a lady stop in who had a signed Maya Moore jersey that she wanted to donate. She told the story about how she won it with her mom at a carnival and it's been sitting in her closet. She just knew it was meant to be at this bar. 

Christine

You’ve been saying that this isn't just a space for hardcore women's sports fans and the thing that really strikes me about places like yours and The Sports Bra and Rough & Tumble in Seattle and Icarus in Salem, OR is that they create a place where you can be a casual fan of women's sports because right now, it’s so hard to watch women's sports unless you’re a hardcore fan. And even then, it’s hard.

Jillian

You need a master's degree in streaming services to watch.

Christine

Can you talk to me about that? This idea of having a place where people can be casual fans and how that helps build a fandom base?

Jillian  

I don't care one bit about football, but I feel like I know about football because every sports bar I go into I'm like, Oh, Taylor Swift's boyfriend's playing again cool. But no one has that level of awareness of women's sports because it's not as accessible. 

Don't get me wrong. I absolutely love and am obsessed with women's basketball, volleyball, and all of these sports that have growing, massive fan bases. But I get just as excited about showing surfing, roller derby and gymnastics outside of the Olympics. People are even less aware of those sports and that professional sports at those levels exists because it literally is impossible to watch those sports unless you have fubo and tubi and ubi  and whatever other streaming services. 

That casual fandom only helps grow the game, every game.

Again, it's not about having all hardcore fans. I know plenty of people who begrudgingly go to sports bars with their friends and family because that's where their friends and family want to go. It's not an always cool, uplifting experience for people, right? 

But to be able to be around people that are just as excited about watching some incredible Simone Biles show of strength or get people who have no idea that roller derby is a sport to watch it. Those athletes deserve that recognition and attention just as much as the Britney Griners, Diana Taurasis, and Megan Rapinoes. 

When I think about it from an exposure perspective for a young girl, which is at the heart of so much of what I'm doing, it's like, gosh, I didn't know any of those things existed when I was a kid.

I think about my wife. Her favorite sport to play right now was hockey. She didn't start playing hockey until she was 28 years old. When she was young, she couldn't play hockey at her school. They didn't have it. And she loves it. She excels at it. Had she been playing since she was six like girls do now, who knows what could have happened. 

But for girls to be able to say, I've never thought about surfing or I've never thought about tackle football or flag football, that's the stuff that gets me just as excited as showing the US Women's National Team or the Women's College World Series. 

Christine  

I love name A Bar of Their Own. How did you how did you come up with it? Were there other contenders?

Jillian   

Softball is a big part of our life. I’m a huge fan of the movie A League of Their Own, a bigger fan of the Netflix series. I grew up in a softball family. My wife played Division I at NDSU. We had a huge list of names but we keep coming back to that one.

It was really important to me that people see this place and feel like it could be a place that they felt part of, which is why we did a Bar of Their Own instead of a Bar of Her Own. Yes, it's a women's sports bar but I want men and families and kids to come in here. To grow the women’s game, we have to do this with men. We have to do this with non binary folks and kids. 

We originally had A Bar of Her Own but I use my best friend's husband as an example. He's a very straight white man and he loves women's soccer. I kept saying, “Ethan wouldn't go to a place like that.” He just wouldn't because he wouldn't feel like it was for him.

We had a couple of other contenders but as soon as we hired a graphic designer and she came back with logos, I knew this was it. 

Christine  

Have you received any pushback?

Jillian 

Do you mean haters? No, none of them. They all love us. Laughs.

Absolutely, we have encountered haters. Jenny gave me a heads up about her experiences and I've also talked a lot with the other women's sports bar owners in Seattle and Salem. 

There’s so much transphobia it makes me nauseous. That's the most common one. I just don't have the brain space to engage with most people, particularly the haters, ones who I know I'm not going to change their mind.

There have been a handful of people who I have responded to, encouraging them to think differently. Here are some facts that might challenge your thinking and encourage you to think about things differently. When I get the “nobody watches women's sports,” let me share with you the Wasserman report that just came out that shows the value of women’s sports.

The other piece I think is funny is the people that say, “Can you imagine if a man opened a men's sports bar?” Have you been to a sports bar lately. There are men's sports bars literally everywhere in the country and nobody's upset about them. We just don't call them that. 

Christine  

It sounds like you've talked to Jenny and the other bar owners. Are you in touch regularly, bouncing ideas off of each other almost like a mastermind group or support group? 

Jillian 

When I was getting started, I tried to be really careful about my outreach. I knew Jenny Nguyen doesn't have time for Miss I-Want-To-Open-A-Sports-Bar-In-Minneapolis. The further we got in the process, the more conversations we would have. I was just blown away by how forthcoming and welcoming she was with information, which I think also just goes to show like women just operate businesses differently. 

I operate best in community and in collaboration and to know that, when I reached out to Jenny to figure out how to stream the WNBA app and ask if she has someone I can contact, she's like, “Talk to this person. They'll help you figure it out.”

It's been really incredible to not only build up this community of supporters but of other women business owners that are doing this thing. The number of times that I've been told that I have to do something a certain way by people that have no idea about owning a woman's sports bar—because, let's face it, there are four of them. I will call Jenny or Kelly or Jen and say, “Do I have to do blah, blah, blah?” and they tell me, “No. You do whatever you want.”

The very first night I got into the building on December 1, I texted both Jenny (from The Sports Bra) and Jen (from Rough & Tumble) a selfie of me inside the building. To have these people to share that excitement with and who understand what all this means has been really, really awesome.

My goal is to someday have a passport of all the women's sports bars around the country. People have to get a stamp at every one to get some kind of some fun gift or something.

Christine  

I really love the idea of having a passport. 

Jillian 

Right? I don't know exactly what it looks like yet, but when I have extra brain space to figure that out, I will think about it more. Someday when I'm not sitting on the floor painting the wall while I'm doing interviews because I'm painting the walls right now.

Christine 

You have to convince someone to open one in New York.

Jillian  

There is one that's coming. Althea's NYC. Actually, there was another place we contacted because we were interested in their name and that was in Brooklyn. It’s only a matter of time. It’s like super team center in New York between your soccer and your WNBA teams.

Christine 

I know you’re currently getting ready to open but do you see future locations down the line?

Jillian 

When I first talked to my realtor about what we wanted to do, he was like, “Well, when you get your second location,” I was like, “Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, buddy.”

Honestly, it feels insane to even think about that. Would I love it? Absolutely. We need more of these spaces. We need these spaces in every city. 

I stole this line from Kelly out at Icarus in Salem, OR. When they opened in Salem, she said, “Did I think it was crazy to open a women's sports bar in Salem, Oregon, where there's no professional women's teams, and there's no major college. Absolutely. But I'm stubborn enough to believe that this idea should exist everywhere, and be able to be successful everywhere.” 

I completely agree with that. It's easier when you have a major sports team or two and a major college. The support I received from the Lynx and the Gophers and the Aurora and all those other teams absolutely makes my life a lot easier.

But I'd love to see one of these in every stinking city, particularly every city that has a major women's sporting team in it. Because I think those fans are hungry and they're ready for something like this to exist.

The fans ARE hungry. We need more spaces like this.

Roadtrip to Minneapolis, anyone?? Or Portland or Seattle or Salem?

Thanks for being here. More soon.

Christine