Female-owned The W Sports bar in the works for Cleveland

CLEVELAND, Ohio – It’s been a winning year for much of Cleveland’s sports scene.

The Cavs have opened the season 15-0. The Guardians won the American League Central and advanced to the AL Championship series. The city hosted an exciting women’s Final Four that rode the sport’s wave of popularity.

Now, you can chalk up another W – as in The W Sports Bar, a female-owned sports bar coming to Cleveland’s West Side and owned by women.

Primary owners are Ally Eclarin, originally from California’s Bay Area, and Cassy Kopp, who is from New Philadelphia, lived in Canton-Massillon and attended Kent State. Shelley Pippin of Brewnuts is a minority partner in the bar, whose target opening date is 2025, though Eclarin noted that is a bit ambitious.

“It’s a women’s sports bar, but for us it’s authentically Cleveland,” Eclarin said. “We wanted it to be authentic to this area. Cleveland is a sports town at the end of the day, and we wanted it to feel like you couldn’t just pick this bar up and put it in any city across the country because how much Cleveland rises for its Cleveland sports teams.

“You can catch anything from women’s basketball to the NWSL to any other major sports team, but also it is going to have spaces for the Guardians, the Cavs. We also wanted to make it home for a woman who is a sports fan where they feel safe in a warm, welcoming environment.”

The two co-founded State Champs, one part streetwear clothing brand with the goal of bringing a lifestyle component to the sports world. They paired that in Kent with an incubation coffee shop that opened in March; the brand started in August 2023.

“We’re big on equity, as in Caitlin Clark, Michael Jordan, Megan Rapinoe, Sue Bird – all these great athletes should be in the same sentence, men and women. That’s always been the plan for us and always been our brand,” Eclarin said.

“The plan was always Cleveland. But being business owners we wanted to have a test market that was a little bit smaller especially since we bootstrapped and did it ourselves in Kent first.”

In April, Cleveland hosted the women’s Final Four, a major sporting event that involved an extensive bid process and lots of planning and preparation. Brewnuts, the doughnuts-and-craft beer bar that Pippin and her husband John own in the city’s Gordon Square neighborhood, was part of a program that promoted where to watch the women’s tournament. State Champs was another. The three women met through that connection.

“Shelley was the beacon of light,” Eclarin said.

“We knew we wanted to go to Cleveland, but we wanted to do it smart with the right person, and the rest is kind of history,” she said.

The shared interests led Eclarin to say: “Hey, we need to do this, we’re the right people to bring this to Cleveland. When the stars align, the stars align.”

And they aligned with a bit of guidance from Pippin, who said when they first got together the State Champs owners asked: “Can we pick your brain about something?”

Pippin knew timing was on their side. The recent fight and light shining on equity for women athletes, along with efforts to attract a National Women’s Soccer League team, didn’t hurt.

“Can I give you my two cents?” she said she told them. “A coffee shop that is dedicated to women’s sports is great, but what we really need is a women’s sports bar. It’s a project I wanted to do for a long time, but I don’t have the bandwidth to do it right now.”

Pippin describes her role as “consultative,” and she’s a good choice. Pippin knows business, understands Cleveland, is well-versed in how to grow an incubator space and utilizes social media smartly.

“We’re going to give that equity and parity to women’s sports,” Pippin said, “but the Cavs are 15-0. We’re not going to not put the Cavs on when they are 15-0.”

It will be an inclusive space by folks “who get that Cleveland ethos,” Pippin said.

“She knows her stuff,” Eclarin said. “This just felt right because we’re all mission-focused.”

That mission will include a menu that will have beer and alcohol centered around Cleveland and Ohio – local breweries and local beers, Kopp said.

“The food – we want people to come in, feel comfortable. And nothing where you have to look down and cut a steak. That way you can keep your eyes on the game.”

Eclarin added: “We made this clear we want this to be a community-driven endeavor.” That means they are utilizing surveys and focus-group feedback to help form the menu.

Bourbon also will have a focus in the “food-friendly” space that will include vegetarian and gluten-free dishes. They plan on hosting a range of events and yes, there’s a good chance customers will be able to get Brewnuts’ famed doughnuts in the W.

“This is a women’s sports bar,” Kopp said, “but first and foremost, it’s a Cleveland sports bar.”