Originally published in TrailblazeHERS in Sports, Issue 2 | November 30, 2025
Anya Dalal
On August 23, 2025, more than 40,000 fans filled Oracle Park to watch Bay FC play, shattering the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL) attendance record and making one thing clear: women’s sports are not a niche, but a scalable opportunity.
But Bay FC’s story didn’t start with that record-breaking crowd. From its inception, the club was built as a serious business venture in a sports market that investors increasingly recognize as undervalued. It began over two years earlier, with the Founding Four U.S. Women’s National Soccer Team legends- Brandi Chastain, Leslie Osborne, Danielle Slaton, and Aly Wagner- who shared the vision to bring top-tier professional women’s soccer to the Bay Area and to build a durable enterprise.
That driving idea attracted sophisticated investors early. One of the team’s first backers was Sheryl Sandberg, former Chief Operating Officer of Facebook (now Meta). As the Bay Area competed against other cities to secure an NWSL franchise, having women involved in ownership and investment was essential. In an exclusive interview with TrailblazeHERS in Sports, Sandberg explained that, through a partnership with Sixth Street, a global private equity firm based in San Francisco, the group assembled a bid that signaled both enthusiasm for women’s sports and confidence in the long-term economics of a professional franchise like Bay FC.
“It was very important to have some female investors,” Sandberg said. Many people wanted “our area to win this franchise.” While she hadn’t spent a lot of time thinking about sports, “once I heard about it, I wanted our area to win, too.”
As the Founder of Lean In and Lean In Girls, her motivation wasn’t solely rooted in representation. It was clear to Sandberg that this was a business investment, and sports are a big business. Bay FC was positioned in a uniquely strong market: the Bay Area, with a deep soccer culture, strong corporate sponsorship potential, and the growing interest in women’s sports in the community as both entertainment and enterprise.
Sandberg’s involvement came through intentional outreach from “a whole bunch of mutual friends,” she said. “Different people got in touch with me to see if I would be interested in doing it.” Through those connections, Bay FC began to take shape, backed by individuals who believed women’s professional soccer could thrive commercially if built with the same seriousness as any other major sports franchise.
Launching Bay FC, however, was anything but simple. Sandberg described the process as building “a startup within a league.” Unlike other professional sports, the NWSL has restrictive draft rules, making it difficult for expansion teams to acquire elite and top-tier players and coaches immediately. “It's actually quite hard for new teams to get good players,” she explained. “There's a pretty restrictive salary cap, and so there is not a lot of room to pay more to get better players.”
Despite these constraints, Bay FC built momentum quickly, on and off the field. In its inaugural season, the club qualified for the NWSL playoffs, becoming the second expansion team in NWSL history to do so. The Oracle Park match later served as tangible confirmation of the Bay Area’s interest in and support for women’s sports, as well as investor expectations.
“That moment showed us that there was a huge population who was interested in attending,” Sandberg said. With the team’s home base at PayPal Park in San Jose (roughly 45 miles south of San Francisco), the game revealed “there was potentially a broader fan base if we could pull from different parts of the city and further north.”
For Sandberg, however, the value of Bay FC encompasses much more than simply attendance numbers. She often cites a striking statistic: roughly 80% of women leaders played sports growing up.
“What we need to know and what we need to believe is that women can do anything,” she said. “We have kids we take to these games, and these kids look at these females playing soccer, as if they're the best athletes in the entire world. And that's awesome, but that only happens when there are female sports teams.”
When asked how she defines “winning,” her answer extended well past the scoreboard. “Winning is winning by actually winning games. Winning by showing girls what professional sports can look like for them. Winning by building a great business…We define winning across multiple metrics, which I know is not just the games, but it's all of that together.”
Unlike Title IX, which mandates equal opportunity in all aspects of education, there is no legal requirement for private capital to fund women’s professional sports; investment is voluntary.
As of December 2025, Forbes estimates Bay FC’s valuation at $170 million, with annual revenue of approximately $21 million, making it one of the NWSL’s most valuable teams. Sixth Street’s reported $125 million investment also underscores the broader shift that women’s sports are no longer framed as charitable causes but as credible, scalable businesses.
Sandberg has long argued that investing in women is not only the right thing to do. It’s the smart thing to do. After the release of the recent “Women in the Workplace” report with Lean In and McKinsey Consulting, Sandberg wrote, “Now more than ever, companies need to remain committed to advancing women. It’s not about special treatment — it’s about leveling the playing field…This is not just a matter of fairness; it’s an economic imperative.”
Sandberg’s return on investment is further amplified by the intentional building of the Bay FC brand. By selling their merchandise at major retailers like Dick’s Sporting Goods, the club ensures visibility far beyond match days. Jerseys and scarves appear along the same aisles where families shop for cleats and equipment, embedding the Bay FC brand into everyday lives in the region. Bay FC is evidence of a broader transformation underway in women’s professional sports, from symbolic progress to sustainable enterprise.
Image Credit: https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/06/03/bay-fc-hosts-first-public-event-welcomes-andre-iguodala-as-investor/