{"id":296783,"date":"2026-07-15T17:29:10","date_gmt":"2026-07-15T17:29:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/296783\/"},"modified":"2026-07-15T17:29:10","modified_gmt":"2026-07-15T17:29:10","slug":"gotham-fc-is-hosting-the-largest-womens-sports-event-in-nyc-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/296783\/","title":{"rendered":"Gotham FC Is Hosting the Largest Women’s Sports Event in NYC History"},"content":{"rendered":"

Gotham FC is set to host 40,000 fans at Citi Field for the Queens Classic \u2014 a Championship rematch, five hours of pregame festivities, and so much more. <\/p>\n

Something is happening in Queens tonight. And it\u2019s bigger than a soccer game.<\/p>\n

On Wednesday night, Gotham FC hosts the Washington Spirit at Citi Field in what has been dubbed the Queens Classic, a rematch of last year\u2019s NWSL Championship, played under the lights at the home of the New York Mets, broadcast nationally on ESPN, and attended by what is shaping up to be the largest crowd in the history of women\u2019s sports in New York City. More than 40,000 fans have already secured their seats, and the lower bowl is sold out. This is not a regular-season match that simply got moved to a bigger venue; this is an event.<\/p>\n

The vision started simply enough. Other NWSL clubs \u2014 Bay FC and Chicago \u2014 had staged one-night-only matches at baseball stadiums with impressive results. Gotham\u2019s leadership took notice and started having conversations. The Mets and Citi Field came to the table not as a reluctant landlord but as an enthusiastic partner, eager to host the first women\u2019s professional sporting event in the building\u2019s history. The World Cup was coming to the region. The timing was too perfect to ignore. And with Gotham having just announced their permanent move to Etihad Park in Queens beginning in 2028, the borough connection gave the whole thing a narrative weight that made it feel inevitable.<\/p>\n

\u201cBetween the Mets, Citi Field, the NWSL, the NWSLPA, our leadership \u2014 so many people just really coming together to make this happen behind the scenes,\u201d Laura Petro, Gotham FC\u2019s VP of Brand Marketing and Fan Experience, told Boardroom. \u201cJust really sharing in that vision and excitement for what this night could be.\u201d<\/p>\n

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As with any first, it wasn\u2019t without its challenges. \u201cIt\u2019s a big undertaking for our team to fill the building and make sure it\u2019s an incredible experience,\u201d Petro said. \u201cA lot went into it behind the scenes.\u201d But what kept it moving was a shared vision in the significance of what they were building together. \u201cEveryone was just so willing to collaborate, figure out what needs to be done to make this happen because of really that shared belief. It just speaks volumes to the collective excitement for a project of this scale.\u201d<\/p>\n

The collective excitement, it turns out, extended well beyond the organizations involved. From the moment the Queens Classic was announced, fans responded enthusiastically. The ticket sales didn\u2019t just break Gotham\u2019s own records; they put the event on track to become the largest women\u2019s sporting event in New York City history. \u201cWe\u2019re obviously incredibly proud of that,\u201d said Petro <\/p>\n

What that night looks like, in practice, is something that would make most major professional sports franchises take notes.<\/p>\n

The experience doesn\u2019t start at kickoff. It starts in the afternoon, when an expanded Footy Fest takes over the road beside Citi Field\u2019s Seaver and Stengel entrances. Sam Mewis \u2014 World Cup champion, former USWNT midfielder, and editor-in-chief of the Women\u2019s Game \u2014 hosts the whole thing, which runs through the evening and includes live DJ sets, a beer garden, brand activations from Dove, Panini, Bank of America, RWJBarnabas Health, and a lineup of partners that reflects exactly how seriously the business community is taking this moment.<\/p>\n

Also in the afternoon, and with the FIFA World Cup semifinal underway, Gotham will stage a watch party in collaboration with U.S. Soccer and the World Cup 2026 New York-New Jersey Host Committee. So before a ball is even kicked in the Queens Classic, thousands of people will have already spent the afternoon watching the world\u2019s biggest soccer tournament together, in the same building where they\u2019re about to watch the reigning NWSL champions take the pitch.<\/p>\n

Additionally, just before the match begins, Julie Foudy and Abby Wambach will record a live episode of their podcast Welcome to the Party, with Chelsea defender and one of the most decorated players in women\u2019s soccer, Lucy Bronze. And then there\u2019s the Torch Lighting ceremony \u2014 Gotham\u2019s signature pre-match tradition \u2014 which on this night will feature Mewis, Foudy, Wambach, four-time WNBA champion and five-time Olympic gold medalist Sue Bird, seven-time NBA All-Star and New York native Donovan Mitchell, and culminate in journalist, activist, and Presidential Medal of Freedom recipient Gloria Steinem.<\/p>\n

Read that list again. That\u2019s not a pregame ceremony; that\u2019s a statement.<\/p>\n

On the pitch, the matchup more than delivers. The Spirit, featuring Trinity Rodman and Jayden Shaw, are the exact opponent you want for a night like this. The rematch of last year\u2019s championship doesn\u2019t need any extra hype. \u201cYou have some of the biggest stars in the NWSL under the spotlight,\u201d Petro said. \u201cIt was definitely something our team pushed for and was excited about.\u201d Add in Rose Lavelle, the reigning Championship MVP, playing in front of 40,000 people in her home city, and you have a sporting event that can hold its own against anything happening in New York this summer.<\/p>\n

And with the World Cup already having a heavy presence in the region, the timing wasn\u2019t accidental. \u201cIt was very deliberate,\u201d Petro said. \u201cAs we started to look ahead to the World Cup and as we were thinking about that coming to our region, obviously being one of the professional teams in the region, the reigning NWSL champions, we of course wanted to find a way for Gotham to show up during the World Cup. \u2026 We want to remind them there\u2019s world-class soccer here all year round. You don\u2019t have to wait four years to get into it.\u201d<\/p>\n

That might be the most important sentence of this entire event. The World Cup has done something remarkable for soccer\u2019s profile in North America. Gotham is betting that some of those people, caught up in the moment, will walk into Citi Field on July 15 and find their next favorite sports team. And for many of them, that\u2019s exactly what will happen. <\/p>\n

The goal, ultimately, is simple. \u201cAwareness,\u201d Petro said. \u201cAt the end of the day, we want to introduce Gotham to as many new fans as possible and celebrate this moment with the fans who\u2019ve already been cheering us on, but also help people discover that this could be your next new favorite sports team, and you might not even know it yet.\u201d<\/p>\n

Forty thousand potential first-timers. A championship rematch. A pregame experience that runs five hours. And a building that has never hosted anything like this before.<\/p>\n

The seats are going fast. If you\u2019re not in that building Wednesday night, you\u2019re going to spend Thursday morning wishing you were.<\/p>\n

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Griffin Adams<\/p>\n

Griffin Adams is the Senior Manager, Content Operations at Boardroom. He’s had previous stints with The Athletic and Catena Media, and has also seen his work appear in publications such as USA Today, Sports Illustrated, and MLB.com. A University of Utah graduate, he can be seen obnoxiously cheering on the Utes on Saturdays and is known to Trust The Process as a loyal Philadelphia 76ers fan.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gotham FC is set to host 40,000 fans at Citi Field for the Queens Classic \u2014 a Championship…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":296784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,113014,19203,63,122,124,123],"class_list":["post-296783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nj-ny-gotham-fc","tag-nwsl","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/296784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}