The pop-up dreaming of becoming the UK’s first women’s sports bar: ‘It’s what we need right now’
Inside the loading bay of a former newspaper print factory in east London, Naomi Fitzgibbons and Kate Hetherington are fixing kegs and making cocktails.
This weekend, the co-founders of Set Piece Social (SPS) — an event dedicated to televising women’s sports and one aiming to become the United Kingdom’s first women’s sports bar — are hosting their second pop-up at Hatch in Hackney.
The couple have been up since dawn carrying barrels of beer up and down the spiral staircase leading to a mezzanine floor. With help from a team of volunteers, they have been transforming the rental space into an inclusive women’s sports bar. Across the next two days, they will be screening women’s football and rugby matches, and welcoming women’s sports fans from across London and beyond.
In December last year, at their first pop-up event, Fitzgibbons, who is from Liverpool originally, admits to some pre-match nerves. Hetherington, who is Australian, wondered whether people would actually show up. That worry was hoofed away when a community came out in force to show full support for the pair’s vision. The success of their test event has led them here, to a two-day extravaganza that has been timed to perfection.
It is women’s football weekend, an annual event which puts women’s football into the spotlight during the men’s international break. It is also the start of the Women’s Six Nations, an international rugby competition contested between England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Italy.
On the door welcoming fans in from noon sharp is Betsy Dillner.
The 39-year-old is repping the same black and pink SPS-stamped T-shirts as the voluntary staff. Dillner has been living in London for a decade and wanted to help her two friends’ pursuit of founding the first women’s sports bar in England.
“I’m really excited for them to get this off the ground. As a friend and as a fan, I’m going to try to help them out as much as possible,” says Dillner, pausing to point a fan called Molly to “the second table at the back”. The first game of the day, a Women’s Super League match between Manchester City and Manchester United, is already a few minutes underway.
What would it mean for SPS to open up a permanent spot?
“Not only (would it be good) for women’s sports but as a queer person myself, queer spaces are shutting down left and right,” she says. “The Glory (an east London LGBTQ+ pub and performance venue) which was a treasured space for the queer community, even shut down in December. Sport is an incredible way of bringing people together and having those community spaces cross-generation that are gender-inclusive, queer-inclusive — it is what we need right now.”
The first women’s sports bar in the United States opened in April 2022. In its first eight months, The Sports Bra, based in Portland, Oregon, made just under $1million in revenue.
Jenny Nguyen founded ‘the Bra’ after being unable to find a place to watch women’s sports — a recurring problem for many fans and a problem SPS are attempting to solve this side of the Atlantic.
“I feel like the best ideas are the ones that, when they come to fruition, people are just like, ‘How did we ever live without this?’,” Nguyen, who has offered her advice to SPS and other start-ups, tells The Athletic.
“The first three months… you know, I think I blacked out. I feel like maybe the first two weeks, I worked 20-hour days. There were a couple of nights where it was 4am and I knew I had to be there at like 7.30am, and I was like, ‘Do I sleep here?’.”
Nguyen says she napped at the bar on occasion in those intense opening months. She pays tribute to a strong and dedicated staff, and puts The Sports Bra’s success down to them and a community of women’s sports fans who keep on turning up — and not always in person.
In January, a winter storm forced Portland into shutdown. Nguyen says there are bars and restaurants she knows personally that never re-opened after being closed for a week. The Sports Bra managed to outlast the snow and ice thanks to money Nguyen had put aside but it was unable to stretch to covering her employees, many of whom are living “paycheck to paycheck”, something she says is not uncommon in the food service industry having worked as a chef for 15 years.
This led front-of-house manager Drew Varcoe to launch a GoFundMe page. What happened next was a community of women’s sports fans showed up by raising over $15,000 to protect a unique space many of them had not yet visited.
“In less than 24 hours, we were able to help all 16 of our employees,” Nguyen says. “And there’s some guilt with that because I know that there are businesses that closed down. They did GoFundMe pages and weren’t able to raise the funds, so I will never take for granted that we have such a huge platform and community behind us.”
The Sports Bra is on the map and staying there. The bar has been a clue on long-running U.S. gameshow Jeopardy! and was a recent clue in the New York Times daily crossword — both signals of how Nguyen and her staff find themselves at the forefront of a cultural movement, one SPS are eager to be a part of.
Dillner herself is from Portland and has enjoyed visiting The Sports Bra on trips home. She, like many, feels London is crying out for a similar base for women’s sports fans to gather. SPS are trying to make that a reality and being booked up for the rest of the weekend bodes well.
“The biggest problem we’ve had is having to turn people down when they want a table reservation and we actually haven’t had enough space,” Fitzgibbons says.
“It’s a good problem to have,” Hetherington adds. “A permanent home is the ultimate goal. I guess the first dream would be to take it across the UK (as a pop-up event) and also globally. The reality is we need a lot of capital investment.”
Fitzgibbons says they will do some crowdfunding but even then, with rising costs, it might not be enough to secure the size of space they are going to need.
“We are using these pop-ups as a springboard to drum up interest and it is proof of concept for how popular it is,” she says. “You know how the whole weekend was a sellout and the fact people will come? We are going to use that in our pitches.”
For now, their dream is being supported by fans, friends and family.
“We’re all northern behind the bar,” Claire Saunders-Proudlove shouts over the commentary. The 35-year-old from Salford is a Manchester United fan and is pouring pints alongside her wife of six years, Frankie.
“I saw the rota and was like, ‘Are you joking me? I won’t get to watch the derby?’ but… it’s probably for the best,” she laughs, glancing up at the projector screen with Manchester City leading 2-0 as the game approaches half-time.
“I have known Naomi and Kate for more than 10 years. We have a WhatsApp chat for football talk but there was nowhere we could go and watch it together.”
It was during the Lionesses’ run to the European Championship title in 2022 when Fitzgibbons and Hetherington were struck by the energy around the country that summer.
“We want to create a space for them (the fans),” Fitzgibbons says. “The following WSL season (after the Euros), we were googling: ”Where can we watch women’s sports? Where can we watch the WSL?’.”
Fitzgibbons explains how they would turn up at a pub that had promised to be screening a particular game only for that not to be the case, with men’s sports taking precedence.
“As a woman who enjoys watching football and men’s football as well, I feel like there are less opportunities to go and enjoy that in social spaces by yourself,” says writer and Standard Issue podcast co-host Jen Offord.
“There are loads of times when I want to go and watch a Champions League match by myself in the pub but find it a weird thing to do as a woman on their own. And then when you think of women’s football in particular; there just aren’t those opportunities to watch it in a social setting. That’s why I think this is a really good thing to do. There is a market for it and people are interested.”
Tolu Ogunsakin has her eyes firmly fixed on Saturday’s Six Nations fixtures but has turned up early and acknowledges the need to support all women’s sports, even if, by her own admission, she hates football.
“As a black woman in general, I am used to being in spaces where I am the only minority, and so going to rugby teams, I am used to being only one of two black women and that’s pretty much a standard in any rugby team I’ve come across,” the 28-year-old from Lewisham says.
How does it feel to be at SPS watching rugby?
“I’m at home,” she says with a full heart before celebrating another try scored by France in their 38-17 victory over Ireland.
As the Saunders-Proudloves continue to serve drinks, there are fresh pizzas flowing from Dough Hands in the corner and Contested, a social media start-up who have partnered with SPS for the event, are giving away a T-shirt to every person who downloads their app.
Gail and Sophie Weir are a married couple who live in Woodford Green, and they are standing at the corner of the bar after securing a couple of T-shirts.
“It feels really safe and accepting here,” Gail says. “I think it is really important (what SPS are trying to do) and I think it is really hard to find. Sophie was really lucky it did manage to pop up (on Instagram) because how do you even find places like this?”
Fitzgibbons and Hetherington are trying to provide a permanent answer.
(Top photos: Kate Hetherington and Naomi Fitzgibbons, left, and Gail and Sophie Weir, right; Caoimhe O’Neill/The Athletic)
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Caoimhe O'Neill is a Staff Writer for The Athletic who spent her first three years here covering Liverpool's men's, women's and academy teams. Since moving to London in summer 2023, Caoimhe now covers the Premier League and Women's Super League more broadly, with a particular focus on Luton Town. Before joining The Athletic, the University of Liverpool graduate worked as a Senior Football Writer at the Liverpool Echo. Follow Caoimhe on Twitter @CaoimheSport
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Phillipa M.
· Sat
Great idea, I wish you all lots of success, hope you manage to find a permanent home
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Geoffrey L.
· Sat
Fantastic idea, I’m.a male woman’s sport fan and I wouldn’t ask my local to show it as the Neanderthal instinct raises its head among the idiots. I’d rather watch it at home without the criticism. Green King pubs are obliged to show it but probably in the coldest corner of the room.
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James T.
· Sat
Love this. Can't wait to try it :)
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