Rikki’s Bar: Where Pride, Sports, and Community Unite
Rikki’s Bar is breaking barriers as the first of its kind in San Francisco, putting the spotlight on women’s sports and creating a safe, inclusive space where women athletes and fans are front and center. In our Q&A with co-founder Danielle Thoe, we’re exploring how Rikki’s is helping to redefine belonging in sports where collective investment and shared values drive community forward.
Back in 2017 I started hosting small watch parties for big women’s soccer matches with friends. I had to call bars in advance to see if they had certain channels, I brought my laptop or logged into my personal streaming accounts, and got turned down many times. As women’s sports took off coming out of the COVID-19 pandemic it seemed like the right time to build a space to watch women’s sports. It was an idea I was passionate talking about to friends and after meeting Sara through the SF Spikes LGBTQ+ Soccer Club I found a partner ready to join me and turn that talk into action!
Your ownership model was intentionally developed to support your mission. Why did you decide to structure the option for fans and community to directly invest via a crowdfunding campaign? How has that shaped the way you’re building and launching the bar?
As first-time business owners the crowdfunding route provides us capital to bring the space to life but it also ties people to Rikki’s who will benefit through our success. The financial investment of our community shows us we have a viable business plan but it also allows us regular touchpoints with customers. We get to share our progress in working to open and we’ll provide regular updates along with revenue share payments throughout the coming years. There will be some customer investors who come to the bar weekly and are excited to bring all their friends – and they benefit from bringing people to Rikki’s. And if there’s someone who believes in what we’re doing but maybe they haven’t thought of us recently, an update might prompt them to make a visit.
There’s a growing trend of sports fans evolving from spectators to stakeholders, investing in teams, venues, and now places like Rikki’s. What excites you most about this shift, and what do you think it says about the future of sports culture and business?
Women have been excluded from sports for much of human history, from basic fitness and recreational levels on up through professional sport. We are still relatively early on in the history of women’s sports and so we still get to define our values, write our origin stories, and determine what the women’s sports community looks like. It is incredibly exciting to be a small part of this. And whether it’s the WNBA more fully acknowledging LGBTQ+ players and fans in the league (and making money because of it!) or every single NWSL supporters group coming together to support trans athletes, we get to keep building this inclusive women’s sports community and show that there’s money to be made by doing what is right.
Is there anything else you’d like to share about your journey in making Rikki’s Bar a reality or what you’ve learned along the way?
While Rikki’s is named after Rikki Streicher the name represents the much larger community of women, especially queer women, who have pushed boundaries in making both sports and community more inclusive spaces. From Billie Jean King in tennis to Seimone Augustus in basketball and Lori Lindsey in soccer, queer women are often at the forefront of progress in women’s sports and we celebrate all of them!
Read more about the growing trend of fan-owned sports organizations and teams in our related article, Harnessing the Power of Fans Through Crowdfunding.