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<\/p>\nDebany Davila remembers the night in 2023 that the New York Liberty game never made it onto the sports bar screen. A practicing lawyer, she had moved to New York City from Texas not long before, and had called the sports bar twice that day to ensure it was showing the game.<\/p>\n
When Davila walked in wearing her jersey, ready to cheer on her team, every television glowed with Mets blue and Yankees pinstripes. The disappointment felt familiar.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was petty\u201d, she said, laughing. \u201cI told them, \u2018This is the team that\u2019s going to win something for New York.’\u201d<\/p>\n
It came out half-joke, half-plea, but that moment, small as it seemed, made her wonder: Why wasn\u2019t there a space in New York City where women\u2019s sports were the main event, not an afterthought?<\/p>\n
Fast-forward to 2025, and Davila no longer has to depend on finding the right sports bar \u2014 because she started her own.<\/p>\n
Blazers is more than a sports bar; it is a love letter to women\u2019s sports, born from chance meetings on the dating app Hinge. Today marks the bar\u2019s opening weekend at 308 Bedford Ave. in Brooklyn\u2019s Williamsburg neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Murals of trailblazing women grace the walls, jerseys are worn with pride, and the soundtrack is the roar of fans cheering game-winning shots of women\u2019s sports across the world.<\/p>\n
The women designed Blazers with the intention of welcoming all comers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe wanted brighter colors,\u201d co-founder Chandler Robertson said. \u201cNot the dark, sticky sports bars we grew up with. We want this to be welcoming for everyone.\u201d<\/p>\n
Robertson met Los Angeles-based muralist Corie Mattie by chance while visiting Long Beach, Calif. Mattie, who painted murals of Billie Jean King and Megan Rapinoe in the state\u2019s first women\u2019s sports bar, Watch Me!, brought her magic to Blazers\u2019 \u2018Trailblazer Room.\u2019 The room features hand-painted portraits of Chloe Kim, Serena Williams, Kristi Yamaguchi, Amanda Nunes and more that fill the space, alongside a mirror that reads, \u2018You\u2019re a trailblazer too.\u2019<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n The \u201cTrailblazer Room\u201d at Blazers Sports Bar is meant to inspire customers to believe in themselves. (Kaylen Jackson \/ The Athletic)<\/p>\n
Their bar celebrates the athletes who inspired them, creating a space where every fan can see themselves.<\/p>\n
The menu features cocktails like \u201cPut Me In Coach\u201d (mezcal, ginger, pineapple and lime), the merch racks are lined with \u201cWatch Women\u2019s Sports\u201d gear and bathroom walls are covered with photos from ESPN Magazine\u2019s \u201cBody Issue,\u201d exclusively featuring women athletes.<\/p>\n
Every inch of Blazers was thoughtfully crafted by the founders, who stayed up late painting, designing bathrooms, creating menus and raising money for the renovation.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re putting our own blood, sweat and tears into this,\u201d Davila said.<\/p>\n
Davila met Robertson, a talent agency booker, and fellow attorney Caroline Kane through Hinge in 2023. Both Davila and Robertson matched with and became friends with Kane, who invited them to a New York Liberty game. There, the three bonded through a shared obsession with women\u2019s sports. Most Hinge matches end in ghosting or one painfully awkward drink. This one ended in friendships and a business plan.<\/p>\n
\u201cLiberty games made me realize we need this space. When they\u2019re away, where is that community? It\u2019s exciting to provide a centralized place where fans can come together,\u201d Davila said. \u201cSure, we\u2019d love to be successful, but really, it\u2019s about women\u2019s sports taking center stage. Younger versions of myself, whether that be tourists or locals, should be able to feel this space exists for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
In late 2023, during lunch, Kane shared her dream to open a women\u2019s sports bar. She had been inspired by Portland\u2019s The Sports Bra, the first U.S. bar entirely dedicated to women\u2019s sports, which had opened just a year earlier. Davila was intrigued, but it was Robertson who hit the gas. When Robertson started bartending to learn about the bar world while juggling her corporate work, Davila said she and Kane realized, \u201cOh, s\u2014, she\u2019s serious.\u201d It was then that the trio went all in to create the place they\u2019d dreamed of.<\/p>\n
For a year, they immersed themselves in learning the hospitality industry. They assigned chapters to one another from the book \u201cRunning a Bar for Dummies,\u201d attended workshops and shadowed local bars.<\/p>\n
In March 2025, they found the perfect spot: Old Man Hustle, a former comedy club in Williamsburg. What they had expected to take over a year to materialize came together in a couple of months.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s a thing many women do: We wait until we\u2019re overqualified to do something,\u201d Davila said. \u201cBut we decided to learn as we go. We came in knowing what we don\u2019t know and built a support system around us. Almost anything we\u2019ve encountered, someone has already faced before. And that support, whether online or in Brooklyn, has been invaluable.\u201d<\/p>\n
The trio joins the owners of Wilka\u2019s in Manhattan and Athena Keke\u2019s, which is set to open in Brooklyn\u2019s Clinton Hill neighborhood.<\/p>\n
Blazers used watch parties at different venues to test customer interest, sharing on Instagram and TikTok to grow a social media presence and draw in fans. Those fans responded. One Blazers watch party at Bushwick\u2019s Star Bar for the WNBA All-Star Game drew more than 100 people, underscoring the community\u2019s enthusiasm for a dedicated women\u2019s sports bar.<\/p>\n
Two weeks before opening weekend, Blazers hosted nearly 80 guests at their new, permanent location to watch Gotham FC and Washington Spirit in the NWSL Championship. Guests wrapped around the front and back rooms of the bar.<\/p>\n
Kalani Byrd, 31, first heard about Blazers on TikTok and decided to attend the NWSL watch party.<\/p>\n
\u201cI always wondered why there wasn\u2019t a women\u2019s sports bar,\u201d she said. \u201cIt means everything to me that women\u2019s sports are finally being centered.\u201d<\/p>\n
Eric Barnosky, 34, echoed her sentiment: \u201cI don\u2019t know why it\u2019s taken so long. Both women and men would love to come to this space,\u201d he said. \u201cThe U.S. women\u2019s national team has been fighting for equal pay for years; they\u2019re winning World Cups and drawing more TV viewers than men\u2019s teams. You can\u2019t argue economics.\u201d<\/p>\n
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\n Blazers co-owners Caroline Kane (far left) and Chandler Robertson (far right) are thankful for their community\u2019s support, but want to see more bars like theirs open. (Kaylen Jackson \/ The Athletic)<\/p>\n
Robertson, co-founder and bar manager, sees the fans\u2019 appetite.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt almost every watch party, we\u2019ve had people walk in and not be able to get a seat,\u201d she said. \u201cIf we\u2019re past capacity, we need more women\u2019s sports bars.<\/p>\n
\u201cBarclays sells out 19,000 seats for Liberty games, and the audience in the market is nowhere near what three women\u2019s sports bars can provide. I want to see a women\u2019s sports bar in every neighborhood in New York City; everybody should have this. It\u2019s not about competition. We all want more spaces for fans.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Blazers\u2019 owners are also part of a nationwide group chat of women\u2019s sports bar owners, started by Jenny Nguyen, founder of The Sports Bra. Their conversations range widely.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of it\u2019s general bar problems,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cSome of it\u2019s women\u2019s sports\u2013related, but someone is always willing to chime in and answer a question. It\u2019s so intentional, and we have received so much encouragement from people. They were just like: \u2018You can do it, keep going. Come on, if we can do it, you can too.\u2019 Hearing that constantly really helps push us.\u201d<\/p>\n
Blazers is opening at a pivotal moment for women\u2019s sports. McKinsey & Company reports that women\u2019s sports grew 4.5 times faster than men\u2019s between 2022 and 2024, yet they still receive only 15 percent of total sports media coverage. The NWSL says the 2025 season averaged 228,000 viewers per game, up 61 percent from last year; the NWSL\u2019s 2025 Championship Game topped an average of 1 million viewers for the first time.<\/p>\n
WNBA Finals viewership was at a 25-year high, according to Front Office Sports. The 2024 NCAA women\u2019s basketball championship drew 18.9 million viewers, surpassing the men\u2019s game for the first time, according to Nielsen. The success of The Sports Bra in Portland \u2014 now expanding into Boston, Indianapolis, St. Louis and Las Vegas \u2014 proved that dedicated women\u2019s sports spaces can thrive.<\/p>\n
Playing women\u2019s sports in the bar is not as simple as flipping on ESPN. It\u2019s navigating a maze of streaming rights.<\/p>\n
\u201cCable? Easy. But Peacock, Paramount+, YouTube TV \u2014 you need express permission for everything,\u201d Robertson said. \u201cWe have ten streaming subscriptions, and it\u2019s still not enough.\u201d<\/p>\n
For Blazers, navigating the programming maze is part of the mission. The team works to secure commercial licenses so fans can actually watch live games that would otherwise be buried on obscure platforms or unavailable altogether.<\/p>\n
Blazers\u2019 founders view this as part of the larger fight for fairness. Women\u2019s sports will have reached equity when a game from the WNBA, NWSL, or PWHL is as visible and accessible as any NFL or MLB matchup.<\/p>\n
Heading into the bar\u2019s opening weekend, Robertson envisions moments of pure joy: a goal scored, the bar erupting with cheer, strangers bonding over shared fandom. Kane hopes for a collective sense of accomplishment.<\/p>\n
\u201cI rarely let myself reflect and be like, you did it,\u201d she said. \u201cI hope we all get the feeling of, \u2018We did it.\u2019 Now the community has this space.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Debany Davila remembers the night in 2023 that the New York Liberty game never made it onto the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":62589,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[98,100,99,9,24,8915,19203,63,23,11452,15000,16355,33205],"class_list":{"0":"post-62588","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-brooklyn","8":"tag-brooklyn","9":"tag-brooklyn-headlines","10":"tag-brooklyn-news","11":"tag-new-york","12":"tag-new-york-city","13":"tag-new-york-liberty","14":"tag-nwsl","15":"tag-nyc","16":"tag-sports-business","17":"tag-wnba","18":"tag-womens-soccer","19":"tag-womens-college-basketball","20":"tag-womens-hockey"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62588","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=62588"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/62588\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/62589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=62588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=62588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=62588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}