Watch Party PHL, the group dedicated to getting live women’s sports on the TVs of bars around the city, celebrated its one-year anniversary on Sunday with a viewing of the NCAA women’s basketball final at Lucy’s in Center City.
The group, founded by firefighter Jen Leary, has offered spaces for the women’s sports community to gather and enjoy live games, highlighting the fervent fan base to leagues looking for potential homes for expansion franchises.
Its ongoing project is finding a permanent space for the city’s first-ever women’s sports bar, with some fundraising help from its community.
Carolyn Sellick and Sarah-Elizabeth DiBenedetto were among more than 350 people who came to see the University of Connecticut’s comfortable win over South Carolina. They enjoyed the opportunity to watch the game with others.
“It’s a lot more fun to participate in the traditional setting — in a friendly, positive way — kind of rowdy and shouting at the TV, and not being like, ‘Oh, this X-Y-Z man next to me is going to like start punching somebody because his team didn’t win or something,’” Sellick said. “It’s like the good part of being an enthusiastic sports fan, without worrying about the toxic side of it. Not to, you know, paint with a broad brush, but whatever.”
Creating that space where people can come together and fully appreciate women’s sport with the same respect given to an Eagles or a Phillies game has been one of the goals of Watch Party PHL since Leary started working with locations.
“We’ve been all over the city watching every type of women’s sports that is on television, and it just goes to show that if you give women’s sports the outlet, if you put them on TV, if you put the volume on, people will come out and support,” Leary said. “And Philly is out here supporting.”
The first watch party was at Stir Lounge to watch last year’s NCAA final in which the Gamecocks, coached by Philly’s own Dawn Staley, beat Caitlin Clark and Iowa. Viewership for that game on ESPN and ABC was a record-setting 18.9 million, according to Nielsen. Without the huge draw of Clark, this year’s final pulled in 8.6 million viewers, which is still the third-highest number ever, behind 2024 and the 2023 final (9.9 million).
Since Watch Party PHL’s first meetup, there have been 39 watch parties at women-owned, black-owned, and LGBTQ-owned places around the city, including Two Locals Brewing, Love City Brewing and Lucy’s.
“To be surrounded by people, like-minded people, a community that just has such joy for the sport. I feel the way I feel when I go to a stadium to pay to watch a game when I come to this group because the energy is live, the vibe is amazing … everyone is excited,” said Fawn McGee, a group partner and watch bar partner.
Through the events, Leary has also aimed to show Philly’s potential as a market for major league professional sports teams.
“The goal of Watch Party PHL was twofold. It was to bring out the Philly women’s sports community and give them a place to come together to watch women’s sports with the volume on, but also to show the [Women’s National Basketball Association] and the [National Women’s Soccer League] and the [Professional Women’s Hockey League] that Philly is not only a sports town, but we are a women’s sports town, and if we give them a place to watch these teams, they will come out and they will support,” Leary said.
Philly currently has the Philadelphia Surge, a women and gender-expansive pro ultimate frisbee team that just began its third season in the Premier Ultimate League. The city is on the list of 13 candidates to serve as home for the WNBA’s 16th team, coming in 2027 or 2028, an effort recently helped by the deal between the 76ers and Comcast Spectacor to build a new arena in South Philly rather than Center City. Recent reporting says while Philly is a “clear frontrunner”, Cleveland will get that spot, although two more franchises might be added in 2029 or 2030.
“From what I understand and what I’ve been told, the groups pitching to the NWSL and WNBA are well aware of our watch parties and the consistent numbers we’re bringing in, and it’s definitely on their radar,” Leary said. The effort to bring a WNBA team to Philly is currently led by, among others, Comcast and the comedian Wanda Sykes.
A place of their own
While that effort is ongoing, Watch Party PHL has its own expansion plans. Leary, McGee, Lori Albright and Megan DiTolla have launched a GoFundMe campaign to raise the initial funding for a planned women’s sports bar, which the group hopes to open in the city’s Midtown Village, Center City’s Gayborhood, or South Philly in the summer of 2026.
Donations reached nearly $15,000 as of Wednesday. The overall crowdsourcing goal is $50,000 for startup costs.
The country’s first women’s sports bar was the Sports Bra in Portland, opened in 2022. It recently made headlines for acquiring the basketball floor with incorrectly drawn three-point lines from last year’s tournament and turning them into bar tops. If all goes to plan for the bar and many of the other projects across the country, there will be over two dozen women’s sports bars across the nation next year.
DiBenedetto was at her first Watch Party PHL event at Lucy’s on Sunday. She said she typically hates being in loud, crowded bars, but Sunday’s environment felt calmer, more open and inviting.
She also contributed to the GoFundMe campaign last month.
“I was like, ‘This needs to happen,’ ” DiBenedetto said. “It would be really nice [to see] dedicated safe spaces for watching sports and environments providing platforms to people who don’t typically have them. I think it’s really valuable … I was like ‘I would pay 50 bucks for this.’”
