39 What If Women’s Sports Have Found Their West Coast Headquarters? With Jen Barnes
Seattle’s Rough & Tumble is a sports bar centered on women's sports and women sports fans that also happens to be a really fun place for any sports fan to watch a game. Founder Jen Barnes joins Pacific Time to talk about representation, cultural power, and why the West Coast might be the birthplace of a new era in sports fandom.
Summary
Women’s sports are exploding in talent, investment, and fan enthusiasm—but legacy sports culture and sports media haven’t kept up. When Jen Barnes couldn’t even find a bar willing to turn on a big match for her favorite women’s soccer team, she set about solving her own problem by building a space that centers women’s sports every day of the year. The result is a cultural phenomenon reshaping Seattle and inspiring national attention.
Women’s sports are exploding in talent, investment, and fan enthusiasm—but legacy sports culture and sports media haven’t kept up. When Jen Barnes couldn’t even find a bar willing to turn on a big match for her favorite women’s soccer team, she set about solving her own problem by building a space that centers women’s sports every day of the year. The result is a cultural phenomenon reshaping Seattle and inspiring national attention.
In this conversation, we explore how women’s sports intersect with civic life, identity, West Coast culture, and even political representation. Jen shares the challenges of scaling a purpose-driven business, the rapid growth of women’s sports investment, and what true parity might mean for athletes, fans, and society.
Highlights
- The “lightbulb moment” that sparked Rough & Tumble
- Why representation matters in sports, the way way it matters in business and politics
- The West Coast as the birthplace of women’s sports culture
- How a sports bar became a civic movement
- Women athletes as cultural leaders
- What broadcast parity would unlock across society
- The next 5–10 years of women’s sports growth
- How to design public spaces for inclusivity
About Our Guest
Jen Barnes is the founder and CEO of Rough & Tumble, a pioneering sports bar dedicated to women’s sports. Based in Seattle, Rough & Tumble has become a model for gender-equitable sports culture, community-building, and women-led entrepreneurship.
Jen Barnes is the founder and CEO of Rough & Tumble, a pioneering sports bar dedicated to women’s sports. Based in Seattle, Rough & Tumble has become a model for gender-equitable sports culture, community-building, and women-led entrepreneurship.
Related Resources:
- Rough & Tumble Sports Bars in Seattle (Ballard & Columbia City)
- Women’s sports viewership on the rise | Nielsen
- Women’s sports market growth: A $2.5 billion opportunity | McKinsey
- Dick, Kerr Ladies F.C. - Wikipedia
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A Few Spicy Questions: What if women’s sports expose how fragile our ideas of “merit,” “markets,” and “tradition” really are? What if sports fans who are women aren’t a minority at all?
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Thank You To:
- Guest: Jen Barnes
- Producer: Tim Wohlberg
- The Women Athletes I’ve Most Admired: Laura Goff, Amelia Amrofell, Kerry Reding
- Maggie Rogers for providing an appropriately innovative female soundtrack to this week’s production process
