{"id":298747,"date":"2026-07-17T16:19:08","date_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:19:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/298747\/"},"modified":"2026-07-17T16:19:08","modified_gmt":"2026-07-17T16:19:08","slug":"gotham-fcs-queens-debut-offers-glimpse-of-etihad-park-future","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/298747\/","title":{"rendered":"Gotham FC\u2019s Queens debut offers glimpse of Etihad Park future"},"content":{"rendered":"

NWSL club Gotham FC \u201cgot exactly what they wanted\u201d with a sellout crowd for their first match in Queens<\/a>, making it clear why Gotham and NWSL execs \u201care so bullish<\/a> on the team\u2019s impending move<\/a>\u201d to the city, according to Jeff Kassouf of ESPN.com. An announced sellout crowd of 42,175 fans<\/a>, with \u201ca few visibly empty seats,\u201d was at Citi Field on Wednesday for a \u201cone-time spectacle that had not been done before.\u201d A Gotham FC exec said that about 80% of fans with tickets for the match \u201cwere attending their first Gotham FC game.\u201d Citi Field \u201cwas filled with prompts to convert those first-timers into 2028 season-ticket holders.\u201d Etihad Park will become the club\u2019s future home in 2028 when it moves into the soccer-specific stadium. Gotham believes that by the time they move, they \u201ccould secure around 8,000 season-ticket deposits.\u201d That is \u201croughly their average total attendance now\u201d in Harrison, N.J. There \u201cwas pomp and circumstance\u201d on Wednesday to \u201cmake sure those new fans had a good time.\u201d Kassouf wrote there \u201cwon\u2019t be 40,000 fans at every Gotham match in the future.\u201d But added it is \u201crealistic to think that, with the right marketing and continued on-field success, Gotham could regularly make the 25,000-seat Etihad Park look full\u201d (ESPN.com, 7\/16<\/a>).<\/p>\n

COMING OUT PARTY: THE ATHLETIC\u2019s Meg Linehan wrote for Gotham FC owner Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, the Queens Classic was \u201calways intended to be a statement game.\u201d There were \u201clogistical hurdles.\u201d The league and NWSLPA had \u201cto clear the move to a baseball stadium due to the playing surface,\u201d and the league front office \u201cworked with ESPN to clear a new broadcast window to fit in the game at 8 p.m.\u201d Sources noted that there had \u201coriginally been a desire to have the game lead into ABC\u2019s coverage of the ESPYs,\u201d also happening in N.Y. Instead, it aired on ESPN and had \u201ccrossover programming with the award show carpet.\u201d Linehan wrote there are \u201clarge challenges ahead for Gotham to finally crack the New York City market with a move across the East River.\u201d Tisch Blodgett said that Gotham has \u201c\u20182 percent awareness\u2019 in their market\u201d and mentioned her own frustrations with Gotham and the Liberty \u201cbeing erased from the conversation\u201d following the Knicks NBA title earlier this summer. The Queens Classic \u201cdidn\u2019t feel much like an NWSL game in any of the usual ways; there was no clear spot to look for a tifo or a way for supporters to effectively get a chant going.\u201d However, the buzz was \u201cundeniable at the largest scale\u201d (THE ATHLETIC, 7\/16<\/a>).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NWSL club Gotham FC \u201cgot exactly what they wanted\u201d with a sellout crowd for their first match in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":298748,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[37],"tags":[9,24,19203,63,122,124,123,400,6223],"class_list":["post-298747","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-queens","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-city","tag-nwsl","tag-nyc","tag-queens","tag-queens-headlines","tag-queens-news","tag-soccer","tag-womens-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298747","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=298747"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/298747\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/298748"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=298747"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=298747"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=298747"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}