Local women’s soccer team Bay Football Club played its first game at Oracle Park Saturday against Washington Spirit. Despite the team’s loss of 2-3, the game drew the most attendees in the history of US professional women’s sports, prompting discussions of moving to SF.

As the Chronicle reports, the excitement among fans at Saturday’s game was palpable. The game drew a record-breaking 40,091 attendees, which was triple the size of Bay FC’s usual draw of around 13,400 fans, as the Chronicle notes. The team’s home stadium, San Jose’s PayPal Park, has a capacity of 18,000.

“It’s not hard to absolutely fall in love with San Francisco, but I also  think that it’s just a wonderful place. I think the diversity of the  population speaks to football, they understand the game and they’ve  loved and supported it, just as our other communities have in Northern  California,” Bay FC co-founder and retired soccer champion Brandi Chastain told the Chronicle. “But I believe that to be true of most of Northern  California.”

Mission Local reports that fans were wearing jerseys from as far and wide as Mexico, El Salvador, Korea, and Barcelona, among the swaths of Bay FC and Washington Spirit swag, and Oakland-born Bay Area sports enthusiast, Too $hort, made a halftime appearance.

Mission Local writes that Washington Spirit team members, who are also accustomed to a smaller stadium, were thrilled by the energy at Oracle Park. “We’re kind of used to 20,000 at Audi Field [in DC], but 40,000 here? It’s unbelievable,” Spirit coach Adrián González told Mission Local. “This is not a coincidence — the players deserve this. Ten, 15 years ago it didn’t happen like this. Look at what you are achieving.”

Saturday’s record attendance has intensified talks of the team moving somewhere with a larger capacity. Lisa Goodwin-Scharff, executive vice president of communications at Bay FC, told the Chronicle that San Francisco is “an option” — one of many the team is considering.

“Our hope is to have our own stadium one day,” Goodwin-Scharff told the Chronicle. “We don’t know where that’s going to be, so our goal right now is to connect with all nine counties of the Bay Area, and we’re doing it with the fans we’re seeing here today. They’re showing up.”

Fans told the Chronicle and Mission Local at Saturday’s game that they'd attend more games if the team were located in San Francisco.

“I think accessibility to Oracle Park versus the PayPal stadium definitely influenced me to come up to the game,” Hunter Martinez, a Menlo Park resident, told the Chronicle. “I think that’s the biggest distinction, two tickets, too. I have to buy a clipper and then exchange for MUNI down there.”

Bay FC’s longtime fans have a different opinion. Season ticket holders, Dina Nadler-Serber and her daughter Henny, told the Chronicle there’s something special about games at PayPal Park due to the stadium’s intimacy. “The good thing about a small park is that you have a dedicated fan base. So it’s really, like, a good community. And we show up as soon as doors open for every game,” Nadler-Serber said.

Bay FC fan Shannon Vanderpol Hennessey told the Chronicle it’s unlikely that regular games at Oracle Park would draw the same numbers as Saturday’s game. “I think part of why people show up for this kind of game is because it’s a one-off or really exciting,” she said. “The vibe of PayPal and all the support in the peninsula and everything is really special, and I don’t know about moving that.”

Image: Racheal Kundananji #9, Caprice Dydasco #3 and Asisat Oshoala #8 of Bay FC, November 10, 2024, Washington, DC.; Timothy Nwachukwu/Getty Images

Previously: Notable Humans: Record-Breaking Bay FC Women’s Soccer Star Empowers Zambian Youth