New Women’s Sports Bar To Open In Philly
GO caught up with Watch Party PHL founder Jen Leary to get the scoop on her plans for Philly’s new women’s sports hub, The Stoop Pigeon.
Featured image courtesy of Watch Party PHL
Philadelphia is known for its delicious cheesesteaks, rich history, and very…passionate sports fans. The city is home to the Eagles, Phillies, 76ers, Flyers, and, in 2030, is set to welcome the first WNBA expansion team in 29 years.
While women’s teams may not take over every TV at every sports bar in the city, there is a powerful movement pushing women’s sports into the spotlight—not just from players, but from loyal fans. It’s a push that is rippling across the globe, with the WNBA hitting record-setting 1.3 million viewers for the 2025 season and the NWSL’s viewership increasing by 61 percent. Women’s sports bars and watch parties have been popping up around the country. In Philly, Marsha’s broke ground earlier this year as the city’s first queer women’s sports bar. Now, a familiar face is throwing her hat in the ring.
Jen Leary, the founder of Watch Party PHL, is graduating from her incredibly successful watch parties to a bar space of her own. As the owner of Philly’s soon-to-be premier women’s sports hub, The Stoop Pigeon, Jen plans on pouring a “Dawn Staley Pale Ale-y” for everyone in the community.
“The goal is to build women’s sports into the sports fandom of Philadelphia for generations to come,” she told GO.
Having been an athlete her entire life, including a career as a player in the National Women’s Football Association, women’s sports have always been part of Jen’s core. After noticing a serious lack of places for women’s sports fans to gather, she began hosting watch parties.
“There was no place in the city showing the games period. After trying to find a place to watch it with people, I just decided to start throwing watch parties myself and [it] took off like wildfire.”
At Jen’s first watch party, 150 people showed up to watch the South Carolina Gamecocks, coached by hard-to-defeat Philly native Dawn Staley, take on the Iowa Hawkeyes for the NCAA Championships in March 2024. “That rolled into the WNBA season, which rolled into the Olympics.” Watch Party PHL began hosting up to five watch parties a month over the course of the 2024 Olympic Games. “It’s just been like that ever since.”
Jen, a lifelong Philadelphian with the Eagles’ winning Super Bowl score tattooed on the back of her calves to prove it, is looking to show the world Philly is more than the town that greases the lampposts so Phillies fans don’t climb them after a big win.
“We’re known as being a sports town, but we’re also a women’s sports town…[The Stoop Pigeon] is going to be so much more than a bar.”
In order to truly facilitate a community venture, the new spot will also welcome guests during the day for coffee and as a coworking space. Jen also plans on hosting live podcasts, panels, and events.
Jen notes that several women who paved the way for women’s sports call Philly home, and they will be honored with both a mural in the hub, as well as having drinks and snacks named after them. The menu will feature an “Ora-ncini ball,” in honor of beloved Philadelphia basketball and tennis player, Ora Washington, as well as “Vivian Stringer fries,” as an ode to the Pennsylvania native and award-winning basketball coach.
Women’s sports history will be featured in the cocktails as well, such as Jen’s plan to make a “Mighty Mac Margarita,” in honor of Pennsylvania’s Immaculata University, home of the first women’s college basketball team.
The Philadelphia-centric hub honors the old town in every aspect, including the name.
“Pigeons are very iconic to Philadelphia,” Jen said. “Philadelphia was the first place they came. They’re known for when they leave, always knowing their way back home,” a great analogy for Philadelphia sports. Philly native basketball players Kahleah Copper and Natasha Cloud, whose jerseys patrons will find hanging on the walls of the Stoop Pigeon, are constantly referencing Philadelphia as their home.
The “stoop” part of the bar’s name is also representative of Philly’s casual, stoop-hanging culture. “We say in Philly all the time, ‘We’re stooping. We’re hanging out on the stoop, stooping,’” creating the perfect name that both honors Philadelphia and invites locals to make watching women’s sports a new Philly tradition.
Jen is looking forward to opening by Spring of 2026 and seeing fans walk through the doors for the same annual NCAA tournament that inspired the original watch parties. Having already “blown their fundraising goals out of the water,” the team is just looking for the perfect space to host the new home of the women’s sports world, with a goal to have a space locked down by January.
“Philly is its own country, right?” asked the owner. “It needs to be authentic to Philly, and the only way to do that is to build it around the communities and with the communities in Philly.”
Although the goal is to grow the fandom of women’s sports, the Stoop Pigeon is still expected to be a Philadelphia institution, designed to join the community and share celebrations of the city. They’ve already made plans to be open to celebrate Philadelphia’s tricentennial along with the rest of the town, as well as to be open to watch some men’s sports such as FIFA and the PGA tournament.
“We want to be a part of that because the more people we get in here, even if they’re men’s sports fans, we can get them to our hub and get them sucked into women’s sports,” says Jen.
And local sports fans have a lot to look forward to in Philadelphia. Not only will the WNBA finally be repping Philly, everyone’s favorite three-on-three basketball league, Unrivaled, will be heating up Philly’s Xfinity Mobile Arena on January 30, before returning to the league’s home in Miami. Jen is welcoming the teams with open arms.
“They brought Unrivaled here and gave them a Philadelphia experience, and they were sold. I believe that once we have this hub, once Unrivaled gets here, once the WNBA gets here, people are gonna see that,” Jen said. “We have to show them that A, the WNBA made the right decision, [and] B, that there is infrastructure and community here that will support them.”
Philly is also hoping other leagues will want to join in on the fun.
“We’re working with the bid team for an NWSL team. We’re looking for Love, and Athletes Unlimited, and all these other women’s sports teams to succumb to Philadelphia.”
But in the meantime, they’re proud to be the home of what they have.
“It doesn’t matter where you’re at. If you’re from Philadelphia, you’re always gonna come back to Philadelphia sports. It’s just in you.”
The Stoop Pigeon is planning to open by May of 2026, but if you can’t wait, join their online community on Instagram at @WatchPartyPHL.
