Philadelphia needs a women’s sports team

During Women’s History Month in March, I announced on social media that I was hosting a new event in Philly, a monthly party where we’d watch women’s sports games. Admittedly, I was nervous. Would anyone come? Philly does not have a Women’s National Basketball Association (WNBA) team or a National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) team of our own. Not yet.

But overtaken by the wave of interest in women’s sports right now, I felt it was time for Philly to join in. And the crowds have come out.

On May 16, we held our second event at Stir Lounge, an LGBTQ bar in Rittenhouse Square. So many people want to watch women’s sports in Philadelphia that we’ve already outgrown our current space; next month, we are taking it outside. On June 9 at 3 p.m., we are throwing a block party at 1705 Chancellor St. to watch the Phoenix Mercury play the Dallas Wings.

Clearly, this huge interest in women’s sports shows that Philadelphia is ready for a professional women’s sports team of our own.

I’ve been hosting events in Philadelphia for nearly 30 years. In that time, I helped produce the AIDS Walk, a yearly event to raise money for HIV/AIDS organizations in the region, and was part of the team that created Gay Bingo, a fun, campy monthly fundraiser for From All Walks of Life (now the AIDS Fund) in 1996.

From 2002-2004, I helped with the wildly successful monthly dance party, G-Room, “where gay boys go with the queer girls they know,” and I have run many fundraisers for nonprofits including ACT UP Philly, Philly Pride, Haiti Relief, and Red Paw Emergency Relief Team.

My background in events helps, but that is not why these watch party events have been successful. This moment in women’s sports is unique. This year, Deloitte forecasts that the women’s sports industry will make more than $1 billion for the first time. Women’s sports fans are more engaged than men’s sports fans, and fans who follow female athletes are three times more likely to attend games.

It wasn’t always this way.

I played professional football for the National Women’s Football Association during its first season in 2000-2001 as a defensive safety and special teams member. While my time with the league was short — just a season and a half — I saw firsthand all that goes into supporting a women’s professional sports team.

I started out traveling over five hours each way to Medford, Mass., to play with the New England Storm when they were the closest team to Philadelphia. After training camp, New York formed a team, the Sharks, so I started traveling to Long Island for games.

Finally, in October 2000, Philly started a team of its own, the Philadelphia Liberty Belles. Granted, the practice field was still a good hour away in Warminster, but it was our team. We were proud to represent this city.

From tryouts in October 2000 to the day we won the league championship game in July 2001, we had to pay for everything: uniforms, travel, even our own championship merch. My teammates worked all day at jobs in retail, public safety, nursing, and counseling — and then had to travel long and far to practice. We took time off work for games and fundraisers. And we didn’t make a penny playing the game we love.

I always say that I was born too soon. What I wouldn’t give to be a bit younger and play women’s football today. Flag football was recently announced to be a part of the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles, and Pennsylvania could soon have varsity girls’ high school flag football teams.

Timing is everything.

Today, women’s sports are booming in popularity. In April, the University of Iowa women’s basketball team played their first game of the season in front of a crowd of 55,646 fans, nearly doubling the NCAA’s former single-game attendance record. After Caitlin Clark was drafted to the WNBA, her debut with the Indiana Fever was the most-watched WNBA game in almost 23 years, with an average TV audience of 2.13 million viewers.

The New York Liberty — the closest team to Philadelphia — had more than $2 million in ticket revenue for their first game of the season, a WNBA record. The 2024 NCAA women’s basketball championship had more viewers than the men’s teams for the first time ever, according to ESPN. And it’s not just basketball. NWSL teams are selling out matches, and tickets to games for the 2024 season have risen almost 50% from last year.

After the 2024 WNBA draft — which a record-breaking 2.45 million people watched — Clark sold more jerseys in one night than the entire Dallas Cowboys roster last season. (Go Birds!)

All of this is proof that people want to watch and support women’s sports.

I started Watch Party PHL to give Philly a place to go to watch women’s sports with a community of fans. I also wanted to show a potential local ownership entity that Philly is not just an amazing sports town — it’s a women’s sports town.

To be sure, Philadelphia has a semiprofessional ultimate frisbee team for women, trans, and genderqueer athletes in the Philadelphia area that started competing in 2023. But one ultimate frisbee team is not enough for a thriving sports town.

And there is a business case for a professional women’s team in Philadelphia. We love sports here. In 2017, Philadelphia broke the NFL record for draft attendance, and in 2019, more than 49,500 soccer fans bought tickets to see the U.S. Women’s National Team play against Portugal at the Linc. Viewership for women’s sports is at an all-time high, with record ratings, sellout crowds, and skyrocketing merchandise sales. Why not get Philadelphia on board?

Plus, Philly has the star power. Hometown heroes are already making the games they play better.

South Carolina women’s basketball coach Dawn Staley is a Dobbins Tech graduate, and she’s said Philly is “ready” for a WNBA franchise. Current WNBA players Natasha Cloud, a Delaware County native and St. Joesph’s alumna, and Kahleah Copper, from North Philly, have been vocal about Philly’s need for a team.

At our first watch party on April 7 at Stir Lounge for the NCAA women’s basketball championship, Staley’s South Carolina Gamecocks played against Clark and the Iowa Hawkeyes. I polled the room of roughly 100 Philadelphians. Just about everyone was rooting for South Carolina, because Staley is the coach and Philly roots for Philly.

And Philly is ready for a women’s sports team of our own. Watch Party PHL is proof of that.

There is a confirmed WNBA expansion bid in Philadelphia, but the group behind it has repeatedly refused invitations from The Inquirer to state publicly who is involved. So please — whoever you are — take our money!

Philadelphians will buy tickets for women’s games. We will buy the teams’ merch. We will show up and cheer on female athletes. All we need is a team to support.

Jennifer Leary is a firefighter, former player in the National Women’s Football Association, and host of Watch Party PHL, a monthly women’s sports watch party. She has a master’s degree in strategic communication from American University.