Raleigh's First Women's Sports Bar Taps Kickstarter for 2027 Debut

Central North Carolina is set to get its first bar built entirely around women's sports, and the founders behind it are asking the public to help fund the buildout before the screens ever turn on. Sabrina McMillan and Amanda Kupris founded HER Sports Club NC with plans to open in Raleigh next year, offering a room where women's games get the sound, the space, and the crowd that typical sports bars usually reserve for men's leagues.

McMillan and Kupris launched a Kickstarter campaign in August seeking to raise $30,000 by September 30, money they say will go toward space design and community outreach ahead of the planned 2027 opening, according to the Kickstarter campaign page. The pair discussed their inspiration and vision for the venue in an appearance on Triangle After Dark, hosted by Judith Retana and Deana Harley, as first reported by CBS 17. The bar is intended as a place to view, appreciate, and learn more about women's sports, and the founders are inviting the public to take part in the journey to opening day.

A Beverage-First Model to Keep Costs Down

Rather than build out a full-service kitchen, HER Sports Club NC plans to debut with a beverage-focused model, leaning on partnerships with local food trucks and nearby restaurants to handle food service. The strategy, detailed on the campaign's project description, is meant to control startup buildout expenses and operational overhead in a business where kitchen infrastructure often represents one of the largest capital costs for a new venue.

It's a practical workaround to a problem plenty of independent sports bar entrepreneurs across the country have wrestled with, and one that lets McMillan and Kupris put more of their fundraising toward the space itself rather than commercial cooking equipment. As CBS 17's Retana reported, the founders envision typical bars as centered around men's sports by default, with women's games routinely pushed to a back screen without sound — the exact dynamic HER Sports Club NC is designed to reverse.

Part of a Wider Statewide and National Wave

Raleigh isn't the only North Carolina city chasing this concept. In Asheville, founder JJ Pope is preparing to open Q-Hall on Coxe Avenue by late summer or early fall, which Hoodline previously reported would make it Western North Carolina's first women's sports bar and lesbian gathering space, according to Blue Ridge Public Radio. Together, the two projects put North Carolina at both ends of a fast-moving national trend.

That trend traces back to Jenny Nguyen, who opened The Sports Bra in Portland, Oregon in April 2022 as the nation's first bar dedicated exclusively to broadcasting women's sports, according to case-study reporting from Square. Nguyen has since announced franchise expansion plans across four additional U.S. cities. By July, roughly 25 dedicated women's sports bars were operating or in active development nationwide, up from virtually none before 2022, per a report from Sportswire Women.

The Numbers Behind the Bet

These venues aren't riding on novelty alone. Deloitte Global projected in April that global revenues from elite women's sports will reach at least $3 billion in 2026, a 340% jump from 2022 levels driven largely by commercial sponsorships. Viewership is climbing just as fast: U.S. television audiences consumed 28.6 billion minutes of live women's sports content in the first half of 2026, an 18% year-over-year increase, following a record 46 billion minutes for all of 2025, according to MediaPost.

Fandom itself is shifting, too. Nielsen research cited in August found that women made up 56%, or roughly 9 million, of the 16 million new U.S. sports fans added over the prior five years. Locally, the Triangle has already shown its appetite: the NWSL's North Carolina Courage set a club season-opener attendance record at First Horizon Stadium in Cary in March, drawing 8,157 fans, according to the North Carolina Courage.

Other Cities Point to a Model That Works

Elsewhere, the concept has already proven it can win over mainstream audiences. A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis, which opened in March 2024 under the motto “All Women's Sports. All The Time,” was named the nation's top local sports bar in USA Today's Readers' Choice awards in May, as Hoodline reported in its piece on the Minneapolis bar's national win. Similar pushes are underway in Detroit and Scottsdale, and San Francisco's Castro neighborhood opened its own version, Rikki's, in June 2025.

For now, HER Sports Club NC's future still hinges on open questions: whether McMillan and Kupris secure a physical site in Raleigh, how smoothly the food-truck and restaurant partnerships come together under the beverage-first model, and whether the Kickstarter campaign reaches its $30,000 goal by the end of September. The founders are betting that Raleigh sports fans are ready to answer.