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<\/p>\nDon\u2019t ask Carolyn Tisch Blodgett where to eat in New York. Though she was born and raised in the city, she won\u2019t have an answer for you. She never goes out to dinner. Instead, the Gotham FC governor and lead owner mostly eats stadium food.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Not metaphorically. Literally.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI really never go out to dinner,\u201d she tells The Athletic. \u201cI mostly just eat stadium food because stadiums are so much a part of my life and my identity.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tisch Blodgett, her three children and her extended family enjoy the concessions that the Sports Illustrated Stadium hospitality section offers, a tradition that started almost 30 years ago.<\/p>\n
As a kid, Tisch Blodgett spent Sundays at New York Giants\u2019 NFL games with her grandfather, Bob Tisch, the co-founder of Loews Corporation, who became co-owner in 1991. Her weekend started on Saturday, when she baked a Giant-themed cake.\u00a0<\/p>\n
On Sunday mornings, she would wake up early, get dressed to the nines (Mr Tisch expected everyone to dress professionally; he said they all represented the team), and haul her cakes to the family\u2019s box at MetLife Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
\n Carolyn Tisch Blodgett and her grandfather, former New York Giants owner Bob Tisch. (Laurie Tisch)<\/p>\n
\u201cI was always with my grandfather and he saw a lot of himself in me,\u201d she says. \u201cI was passionate about football, but I really was more passionate about what football did to a community, how a team would bring people together through thick and thin.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
The tailgating culture fascinated her so much she asked her mom to get her a Giant-themed RV for her bat mitzvah \u2013 she didn\u2019t do it. Her love for the sport and the community even prompted her to attend Yale in New Haven, Conn., so she could drive home on weekends and be with her family during the NFL season. When her grandfather was in the hospital because of a brain tumor, she\u2019d ask her mother, Laurie Tisch, to buy the New York Times and read the sports pages to him, knowing that it would light him up. <\/p>\n
\u201cShe always had a great interest in sports,\u201d Laurie Tisch told The Athletic. \u201cShe was always very focused, very responsible. I am awestruck by it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
It was the origin story of a hospitality-obsessed operator who grew up understanding game day as a ritual, responsibility, and business.<\/p>\n
Tisch Blodgett is the founder and CEO of Next 3 Ventures, a private equity and venture firm focused on investments across the sports and entertainment landscape. She also serves as a strategic advisor to the Tisch Ownership Group of the New York Giants. Before launching Next 3 in 2020, she spent over a decade working in marketing for some of the top companies in the world, most recently serving as the head of global marketing at Peloton.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In 2023, she led her family\u2019s investment in Gotham, in the club\u2019s limited partnership \u2014 the family\u2019s first involvement in soccer. At the time, Gotham was valued at $48 million as per Sportico\u2019s valuations<\/a>. Forbes<\/a> valued the club at $110 million in 2025. <\/p>\n As the governor and lead owner of the team, she serves as the chair of the NWSL\u2019s executive committee. But the goal was not just to own a team or get involved in the league. It was always to build a club, one with the reach and rhythm of the Giants, translated for women\u2019s soccer and the New York-New Jersey market.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n Tisch Blodgett led her family\u2019s investment in Gotham FC (Elsa \/ Getty Images)<\/p>\n \u201cSports are part of my identity,\u201d she says. \u201cBut what I loved even more than football was what it did to a community. People showed up in rain, in traffic, through good seasons and bad at the Giants. I want to build that in Gotham.\u201d<\/p>\n When the family closed the deal, the confetti had barely been swept off after Gotham\u2019s worst-to-first title run at Snapdragon Stadium in San Diego when they hoisted their first NWSL Championship trophy. There should have been a massive celebration for the underdog champions, but no flights had even been booked for the team to return home.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThere was very little infrastructure at the club,\u201d Tisch Blodgett explained. Year one was basically triage. From computers to staff, they had to build everything from scratch. Year two has been an experiment on steroids to build a world-class club.\u00a0<\/p>\n One of the first things she worked to do when she came on board was to build trust. She asked for the phone numbers of every player and called each one. \u201cThis is how I\u2019ll lead,\u201d she told them. \u201cIf I say I\u2019ll do something, you have my word. You can come to me anytime and give me feedback.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n She now meets regularly with the leadership council and has upgraded medical support and mental health resources.\u00a0<\/p>\n Next, she set out to create the atmosphere for the squad.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThis team deserves to play in front of 25,000 fans and to have every single person you know screaming their name,\u201d she says. <\/p>\n Gotham\u2019s roster boasts plenty of star power: World Cup winners Spanish forward Esther Gonzalez, USWNT midfielder Rose Lavelle and Emily Sonnet; Euro 2022 and 2025 winner with England Jess Carter; Germany\u2019s Ann-Katrin Berger; and Olympic medalists and European and South American champions such as Brazilians Geyse, Bruninha, and Gabi Portilho.\u00a0<\/p>\n \n A World Cup winner with the U.S., Rose Lavelle, center-right, is one of many talented members of Gotham\u2019s roster. (Ira L. Black \/ NWSL via Getty Images)<\/p>\n One of Tisch Blodgett\u2019s main goals is to ensure her team plays in front of sellout crowds as a standard, not an occasion. This past regular season, Gotham averaged 8,892 fans, a 41 percent improvement from 2023. The total attendance was 115,598 during the regular season, a club record. Gotham was one of the four NWSL teams that had seen a rise in attendance this season. Last season, Gotham broke a club record during their playoff quarterfinal game, with 15,540 people attending \u2014 small but steady steps towards opening the second ring of Sports Illustrated more often.\u00a0<\/p>\n Still, Gotham plays across the river from New York City, in Harrison, NJ, and Sunday travel is painful. Rather than shrug, the front office responded with charter buses and shuttles from the city, and a fan-experience redesign that stretches beyond the 90 minutes.\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cThat is very much in our DNA; we try new things because there\u2019s no path we\u2019re following. It would be much easier if there were. We need to keep experimenting and see what works,\u201d she says.\u00a0<\/p>\n Since the start of the 2024 season, Gotham doubled down on elevating the fan experience. The club has built a matchday atmosphere that works just as well for parents wrangling toddlers as it does for groups of friends looking for a full-day outing. From pregame fan fests \u2014 complete with face painting for kids and a pride game drag brunch\u2014 to lively halftime activations and an open invitation to \u201cspend your afternoon\u201d at the stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n In terms of business, since she took the helm, Gotham\u2019s partnership revenue increased sixfold in under 24 months, the fastest growth in the NWSL.\u00a0<\/p>\n That\u2019s not because the club sells more advertising space on jerseys; it\u2019s because the assets connect a brand to a mission and then prove it with data. Dove came on to be part of the \u201cKeep Her in the Game\u201d campaign, Gotham\u2019s youth initiative aimed at the cliff where girls drop out of sports \u2014 especially around age 14. CarMax doubled its commitment after its media-mix modeling showed Gotham near the top for sales efficiency. Additionally, Gruns, LaCroix, Align, Tylenol, RWJBarnabas Health, Flamingo and Lendistry came as sponsors since 2023.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n \u201cWe\u2019re trying to become the first global women\u2019s sports brand,\u201d Tisch Blodgett says. That\u2019s why she put together a team in the front office, led by former NWSL midfielder, now general manager, Yael Averbuch West. \u201cThe road will be bumpy. Sometimes it\u2019ll feel like we\u2019re going backwards, but now everyone knows what we\u2019re building toward.\u201d<\/p>\n She\u2019s realistic about the league, too, both its potential and its math. <\/p>\n \u201cNo team is profitable today. The league isn\u2019t either. But we (owners) all believe in this, and we\u2019re investing. But sustainability has to come,\u201d she says. That\u2019s why she spends so much time on league work. If Gotham is the product, the NWSL is the platform. One fails without the other.\u00a0<\/p>\n The mantra at Gotham is \u201calways building, never finished,\u201d she says.\u00a0 Players joke that, once in a while, \u201cfinished\u201d might be nice. But building is the point.\u00a0<\/p>\n Before the NWSL, women\u2019s professional soccer in the U.S. lived through a series of ambitious experiments and abrupt endings. <\/p>\n The first major attempt came with the Women\u2019s United Soccer Association (WUSA), launched in 2001 amid the afterglow of the U.S. women\u2019s national team\u2019s 1999 World Cup triumph. Despite its promise, the league folded two years later. A second chapter arrived in 2007 with Women\u2019s Professional Soccer (WPS), which carried the torch until financial instability and internal disputes brought it down by 2012. <\/p>\n Between and around those efforts, smaller semi-professional circuits such as the W-League and the Women\u2019s Premier Soccer League (WPSL) kept the game alive, sustaining the infrastructure, players and ultimately giving rise to the NWSL, which is celebrating its 13th season this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n As the league grew, so did its valuations and ambitions.<\/p>\n Tisch Blodgett has grand plans for Gotham, but those do not involve building their own stadium, which has been the latest trend in the NWSL. Kansas City has a new home in CPKC Stadium, and 2026 expansion teams Denver Summit and Boston Legacy are following suit.<\/p>\n \n Carolyn Tisch Blodgett (second from the right) hopes to continue to build Gotham\u2019s presence at Sports Illustrated Stadium. (Asli Pelit)<\/p>\n \u00a0At the last regular-season home game, Tisch Blodgett spoke about how the new naming sponsor (Sports Illustrated) helped fans feel more at home on game day than before, when it was called Red Bull Arena, which Gotham shares with MLS\u2019 New York Red Bull franchise.\u00a0<\/p>\n She does not deny that scheduling control is real leverage, but she is also realistic. \u201cFacilities are part of it,\u201d she says. \u201cBut before we dream about 25,000 seats, we have to make sure the top deck is always open because demand warrants it. There are steps between here and a ribbon cutting.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n Game day for Tisch Blodgett is a ritual. She learned that choreography in the Giants\u2019 owner\u2019s box, where her grandfather set the tone. Family first, but invites matter. There are seating charts involved. She wears one of \u201cmany, many\u201d blue suits in Gotham teal that are not Giants blue, and still laughs about her vegetarian childhood order at the stadium: a hot-dog bun with ketchup and sauerkraut. No, that is not a food group. Yes, she survived.<\/p>\n The family piece is genuine, not a marketing ploy. The cousins\u2019 text thread lights up on game days. The hope is that Gotham becomes for this generation what the Giants were for the last: a weekly anchor that outlasts standings.<\/p>\n Nine-year-old Carolyn looked around Giants Stadium and saw a knitted community in every home game, rain or shine.\u00a0Forty-year-old Carolyn looks around Sports Illustrated and sees the same thing.\u00a0<\/p>\n Perhaps she\u2019s no longer baking the pregame cake, but she knows the assignment hasn\u2019t changed. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Don\u2019t ask Carolyn Tisch Blodgett where to eat in New York. Though she was born and raised in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":31744,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[19202,9,2683,11,10,19203,15000],"class_list":{"0":"post-31743","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-new-york","8":"tag-gotham-fc","9":"tag-new-york","10":"tag-new-york-giants","11":"tag-new-york-headlines","12":"tag-new-york-news","13":"tag-nwsl","14":"tag-womens-soccer"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31743","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=31743"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31743\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31744"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31743"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31743"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31743"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/11\/GettyImages-2211495750-scaled.jpg\")
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