The Dub in downtown Kansas City bustled on Saturday night with sports fans clad in Kansas City Current teal and Nebraska red.
The Current game against Gotham FC played on most of the televisions, and after Kansas City’s commanding 2-0 victory, the screens switched to two other National Women’s Soccer League matches.
The remaining TVs were tuned to the Nebraska Cornhuskers-Michigan Wolverines football game, a concession to the owners’ friends and family who had come down from Omaha to celebrate the bar’s preview night.
The space was packed, but when The Dub finally opens to the public this Thursday at 2 p.m., co-owner Monica Brady hopes to see a line out the door.
“It’s gonna be loud, it’s gonna be exciting,” said co-owner Monica Brady. “We’re just gonna be throwing it back.”
In most cities, it’s hard to find a bar that reliably shows women’s professional and college sports — even while women’s leagues have seen fan bases grow tremendously over the last several years.
Although TV distribution deals have made women’s games easier to watch, and breakout stars like Caitlin Clark in basketball and Ilona Maher in rugby are drawing more attention to their sports, women’s games are far less common to catch at local watering holes than men’s football, baseball, basketball, or even golf.
Bars like The Dub on West 9th Street aim to fill that gap. It’s part of a trend of women’s sports-dedicated bars inspired by the overwhelming success of The Sports Bra in Portland, which opened in 2022.
A Bar of Their Own in Minneapolis, Jolene Jolene in Atlanta, Rikki’s in San Francisco and Babe’s in Chicago have all opened their doors in the last few years, and The Dub hopes to make Kansas City into a hub of its own.
“The community just keeps growing, it feels like weekly, there are so many more bars putting their feet in and wanting to open around the country,” Brady said. “There is a need and a demand for this across the country, not just in Kansas City, and that’s really exciting.”
It took more than a year of setup and renovation to turn the old downtown site of the Australian cafe Banksia Bistro into a gameday-ready bar. Brady and co-owner Rachel Glenn credit a group chat of women’s sports bar owners for helping them troubleshoot issues, find graphic design help and generally keep them going through the process.
Brady and Glenn reoriented the building’s counter space, put in a bar, redid a back room in a nod to professional locker rooms and generally brought the space up to code — Brady said it needed a lot of work to meet safety standards that hadn’t been in place when Banksia first came in. Some of The Dub’s building materials arrived later than planned, as did their chosen upholstery fabric for chairs.
“There were just little things that were never showstoppers,” Brady said. “Just things that push the timeline back just a little bit — but we’re here now, and everything is fabulous.”
Kansas City provided a support network in the meantime. The Dub held pop-up events around major women’s sporting events at Strange Days Brewing, Friction Beer, Gael’s Public House, Q Kansas City and other locations, selling branded merchandise and drumming up interest for the bar’s opening.
The finished space features the bar’s signature seafoam green in bar shelving, wall paint and chairs. A door directly across from the bar’s entrance has “LOCKER ROOM” painted above it, and leads to a second room with additional seating and locker-style cabinets.
A side patio has more seating under a sunshade. Every seat has a sightline to one of the large TVs.
Brady and Glenn put out a public call for trophies to display around the bar. And a giant antique scoreboard — purchased from a vendor who reached out to the owners — presides over one room.
Even the bathrooms remind visitors what The Dub is all about, with a framed picture of Brandi Chastain’s iconic sports bra moment after the United States’ 1999 Women’s World Cup victory next to a team photo of the 1896 Stanford University women’s basketball team.
A pennant on one wall declares the bar to be “Pro Black, pro brown, pro weed, pro gay, pro choice, pro trans, pro hoe.” Brady and Glenn were adamant that the bar be a safe space for LGBTQ+ people, and sought out bar staff who would help make The Dub inclusive
The menu features a range of cocktails, mostly riffs on classic favorites, including The Jewel Box, a vodka drink named after Kansas City’s first drag bar. Beer, wine and mocktails round out the drink menu, while food from the cold kitchen — no grill or fryer — includes a hummus plate, sandwiches and salads.
For Brady, a successful first day would capture some of the building enthusiasm for women’s sports.
“We hope that we’re full, we hope that everyone’s energized and everyone’s excited to be here,” she said. “We really just want to give everyone the best experience they can have.”
The bar narrowly missed opening in time for the WNBA playoffs, which wrapped up Friday night, but it will be ready to serve customers during the NCAA soccer and volleyball tournaments.
And it will likely attract crowds for the National Women’s Soccer League playoffs, which will heavily feature the Kansas City Current in the middle of a record-breaking season. The Dub also hopes to bring in visitors at the end of the month, when CPKC Stadium hosts the U.S. Women’s National Team friendly against New Zealand.
