Minnesota women’s sports fans can finally see their teams, and they’re loving it

ST PAUL, MINNESOTA - MAY 26: Kelly Pannek #12 of Minnesota skates with the puck past Theresa Schafzahl #37 of Boston during the second overtime in Game Four of the 2024 PWHL Finals at Xcel Energy Center on May 26, 2024 in St Paul, Minnesota. Boston defeated Minnesota 1-0 in double overtime. Photo by David Berding/Getty Images.

Before Kelly Pannek helped Minnesota win the first ever Walter Cup of the Professional Women’s Hockey League, she was a star for the University of Minnesota Gophers.

Back then, she flew across the ice at the 2016 NCAA women’s hockey championship at the Whittemore Center Arena in Durham, New Hampshire, scoring the team’s third goal of the night. The Gophers took home their seventh national championship title.

Other than the 3,211 fans in attendance, however, no one saw it.

Gophers fans couldn’t watch the magic happen, unless they traveled 1,107 miles and paid for a ticket to the game. Not until the delayed footage was aired nearly a week later. The State of Hockey was left unaware of the plays that crowned the Gophers national champions. Young girls waited with hockey sticks in hand to watch the game that was not available.

That’s all changing, as women’s sports are riding a wave of support reflected in rich TV contracts, record-breaking attendance, media coverage ranging from the Star Tribune to ESPN, and even a local women sports-centered bar .

“If enough people say something is valuable and important, that’s what I think helps shift the narrative of women’s sports,” Pannek said. “It feels like the overall sports landscape is ready for these women’s leagues to be given the coverage and platform.”

PWHL Minnesota’s high-energy playoff run was fueled in part by a regular season that included PWHL games livestreamed on YouTube and available on local TV.

Interest is reflected in the numbers — the first PWHL game in 2023 hit 2.9 million viewers in Canada alone. The fourth game of the 2023 WNBA Finals averaged 889,000 viewers , a 124% increase from the same game in 2022, according to Sports Business Journal . Caitlin Clark’s WNBA debut drew over 2 million viewers and shattered an ESPN record.

“I was probably among the first sports journalists in this area to aggressively pursue women’s sports stories,” said recently retired Star Tribune sports digital editor Howard Sinker. “People think Caitlin Clark invented women’s basketball. I can go back two generations. The women I covered when they were in high school, some of them are grandmothers now.”

In an April 2024 interview with KARE 11 News , Minnesota Lynx coach Cheryl Reeve said, “The media coverage of women’s sports has been really behind. I think the greatest thing is that people have marginalized us and said it’s not a major sport. ‘Look at the ratings,’ they would point to these things. What are you going to point to now?”

A bar of their own

Women’s sports fans in the Twin Cities are not confined to watching their favorite teams online. Jillian Hiscock opened A Bar of Their Own in March. It’s a sports bar exclusively showing women’s sports.

The walls are covered in jerseys and flags from women’s teams around the state. “Watch women’s sports” is proudly displayed on banners hanging above the bar. Though the theme couldn’t be clearer, the air feels welcoming and inclusive — it’s a place where fathers bring their daughters to watch their favorite teams. A dozen televisions around the room show women’s sports games: volleyball, basketball, hockey. People laugh, eat and drink, and you’ll overhear conversations about Caitlin Clark and A’ja Wilson.

Hostess Kristen Hutchison said the bar has been busy since its March opening. For the NCAA championship game, people lined the street two hours before opening to get a seat inside. All night, there was a three-hour wait to get a table.

Hiscock’s inspiration for A Bar of Their Own grew from the success of The Sports Bra , a venue in Portland, Oregon — the first sports bar in the nation to show solely women’s sports. Owner Jenny Nguyen opened the bar in April 2022 and since then has inspired many more to open around the country, advocating for and increasing accessibility to women’s sports.

Bigger stadiums, streaming all the time

Maya Dempsey, 21, walked past a young girl on her way off the field, clad in her light blue Aurora FC quarter-zip with the team’s crest on the left shoulder.

“Oh my gosh, look ,” the girl said. Dempsey was just a player in her warm-up uniform heading out after a game. To this girl, though, Dempsey was a celebrity.

“We have these games and we get to talk to the community, because we’re for community, by community, and people are like, ‘Oh, my gosh, you’re a celebrity,’” Dempsey said. “We’re just playing soccer. And it’s so cool to see these little girls that are just like, ‘Oh my gosh, I want to be like her,’ or, ‘I want to do what she’s doing.’ We’re just people playing. We’re just women trying to win.”

Minnesota Aurora FC is a pre-professional soccer team founded in 2022. In its past two regular seasons, the team was undefeated, and in 2022 named the USL W League ’s “Organization of the Year.”

Despite the achievements, the games were getting little to no coverage in local news and broadcasts.

Dempsey, a finance major and Division III soccer player at Hamline University in St. Paul, has been with Aurora since its inception her freshman year of college. After training as a player for two years, she debuted with Aurora’s new second team — Aurora 2 — May 19. The first team’s home opener followed at TCO Stadium May 30.

When Division 1 offers fell through during the COVID-19 pandemic Dempsey’s senior year, she found Hamline, where she gets to play 90 minutes and found her way onto Aurora’s lineup.

“We had no idea it was gonna turn into what it did at all,” Dempsey said. As she made her way through Aurora tryouts, Dempsey watched each roster announcement on Instagram with a growing dread. These girls were good.

Goalie Sarah Fuller, University of North Texas. Defender Kelsey Kaufusi, Utah State University. Division I athletes.

There is absolutely no way that I’m going to make this team, she thought.

But she went back for her second tryout and got called back to train with the team for a week.

When Dempsey was told she made it as a training player, she was given a backpack and gear boasting Aurora FC’s teal, flash red and midnight blue. The team’s North Star logo, blocky lettering and borealis crest were created by Nicole Meyer , one of three members of an all-women creative team behind Aurora’s branding.

In May, practices were already in full swing, daily for two hours on top of weekly strength and speed training. First and second teams practice at TCO, where they have a locker room, a training house and a weight room.

Aurora 2 plays at Concordia St. Paul’s Sea Foam Stadium , which can hold 3,500 fans. MLS Next Pro’s United 2 plays at National Sports Center Stadium with a 5,000-fan capacity, though the men’s team has been around since 2021.

“I really, really hope that we can get some people out,” Dempsey said.

The biggest obstacle to achieving equity in athletics is sheer accessibility, e.g., it’s not easy to watch a game, according to Dani Young, Aurora FC’s vice president.

Sports Innovation Lab dives into Google search results of women’s sports teams. For two-thirds of Women’s National Basketball Association teams, top searches involve how to find tickets or how to watch a game. By contrast, you won’t find the same results on the men’s NBA side, where finding a game is as easy as turning on the TV.

Sports Innovation Lab says the lack of accessibility on the women’s side becomes a “vicious cycle” — low reach and network investment leads to a perception of low fan interest, which in turn reinforces the lack of funding and coverage.

Young, Aurora’s vice president, is a former National Women’s Soccer League player initially picked up by the Portland Thorns . When she competed, professional games were sometimes played in high school stadiums.

“Nobody wants to go to a game at a high school stadium,” Young said. “It’s not professional. But then on top of that, the accessibility of being able to watch games on TV or see what coverage is happening, that was never there.”

During its first season, Aurora had a deal with WCCO-TV for home games only — but not every game. Aurora later moved to FOX 9, allowing coverage of every home game — but still, no away games. Now, the team is in the process of reworking its deal with FOX 9 to create a streaming service so fans can access all the games. And they want to pursue bigger deals.

“Bigger deals lead to more eyes,” said Jillian Davis, Aurora FC’s publicist.

Outside of the U.S. women’s national team and United 2, Dempsey doesn’t often watch soccer.

“I just feel like a lot of the reason why I didn’t watch or have a role model or whatever growing up is literally because it wasn’t anywhere,” Dempsey said. “Like, there was no one where I’m like, ‘Oh my gosh, she’s doing amazing things and creating pathways for us to go through.’”

Aurora 2’s inception season speaks to the level of interest in women’s soccer in the Minnesota sports community.

“People have always wanted to watch it,” Young said. “It’s just never been covered that well.”

Davis, the Aurora FC publicist, started working for the team in November.

Even in just the time Davis has been there, women’s sports have been on the rise. In the past five years, women’s sports coverage has nearly tripled as more people turn to streaming services to watch their favorite women’s teams. And although she hasn’t been in her position long, she’s already noticed a spike in public interest.

“I’m getting more calls,” Davis said.

Sinker, the recently retired sports editor, said the Aurora “became impossible for us to ignore, because they were drawing almost capacity crowds to the Vikings practice facility where they played. And I think that surprised everybody, including themselves.”

Davis said people have always cared about women’s sports, even if access was limited. In August, Nebraska women’s volleyball broke the all-time attendance record for a women’s sporting event with 92,003 attendees.

The problem isn’t lack of interest, but streaming services and other media platforms assuming a lack of popularity in women’s sports and neglecting to cover them as a result. The minute women’s sports were made more accessible, the spike in interest became tangible.

Davis wants to keep that momentum going. In November, Minnesota Aurora submitted a bid to join the NWSL. Getting accepted would allow the team to go professional by 2026.

Davis said that interest in women’s sports will only continue to grow. But she said that this momentum for women should beyond sports. She wants to create a pathway for women everywhere, in every profession. She said that once other women find their voice, awareness and change will come.

Paving the way for the next generation

Hamline Elementary’s field day May 3 meant Dempsey was on the field again, but not for Aurora. For an hour and a half, Hamline athletes went to the local elementary school to amp kids up about athletics.

Having female athletes available as role models can shape the trajectory of an elementary schooler’s life. After all, Dempsey tried out for varsity her eighth grade year because of her sister, who captained the team.

“I just feel like it’s becoming so, so big,” Dempsey said, “and I feel like Aurora has definitely paved that in Minnesota, at least.”

Young agrees. Though athletic coverage equity still has a long way to go, she feels that it’s hit a “tipping point.”

Maybe those Hamline Elementary students will join their middle and high school soccer teams. Maybe they’ll frequent A Bar of Their Own to watch women’s sports. Maybe they’ll grow up in a world where women’s leagues are given the attention and funding they need to prosper.