• Carolyn Tisch Blodgett said she sets an example for the brand by integrating her family and work.
• She said bringing her children to big games helps encourage working parents "to be their full selves."
• Blodgett spoke to Deputy Editor Nathan McAlone at Business Insider's The Long Play.

Attend a Gotham FC game, and you can expect to see Olympic gold medalists like Rose Lavelle, Emily Sonnet, and Tierna Davidson in the spotlight.

What you may not expect is children taking over the pitch by 10 pm after each game.

"It's kind of like a Gotham daycare on the field," said the club's lead owner and governor, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, whose three kids are part of the crowd.

Under Blodgett's leadership, the club has become the reigning champion of the National Women's Soccer League (NWSL) and one of the hottest brands in the rising tide of women's sports.

Bringing family to work is a key part of the brand's success, she said at Business Insider's "The Long Play" event on Thursday.

Blodgett is also the CEO and founder of Next 3 Ventures, a New York-based investment firm focused on sports, tech, and media. She is a member of the NWSL board and serves as chair of the executive committee.

Integrating work and family can help working parents "show up as their full selves," she told Deputy Editor Nathan McAlone.

That's why her husband and three children show up to all the big games — she said her six-year-old is obsessed with the team's goalie, and ran onto the field to celebrate when the team won the NSWL championship last year.

"You need to walk the walk. If I showed up to every game and pretended that my kids didn't exist, and no children were around, I think players might not feel as comfortable," she said.

The end goal is not only to build a winning team but to shape a brand that fans can connect with, increasing attendance, engagement, and ultimately, revenue.

Blodgett, formerly the global head of marketing at Peloton, said she takes a page straight from the Peloton playbook by focusing on players' personalities to cultivate fan loyalty.

"So much of people's relationship through their favorite sports team is through the players," she said.

For instance, one of the biggest stars in women's soccer, Alex Morgan — Olympian, World Cup Champ, and a mom — has more than 9 million Instagram followers. The San Diego Wave, her most recent club before retiring in 2025, has fewer than 1 million followers.

Morgan has also been outspoken about the challenges of being a working parent, advocating for more systemic support for athletes who become moms.

Balancing a career with parenthood isn't only a problem for athletes — it's also increasingly a point of friction for women in leadership roles across industries, including finance and tech.

But athletes can face specific challenges, such as navigating long seasons of travel and training at sports facilities that haven't historically offered childcare benefits.

Blodgett's bet is that everyone wins, from the players to brand leadership, if you build a culture of normalizing parenthood at work.

In July, the Gotham FC made history by playing before a sold-out Citi Field crowd of more than 40,000, a record-high attendance for a women's sporting event in New York City.

For Blodgett, business (and sports) has long been a family affair: her family has helped run the NY Giants since 1991. For most of that time, the vast majority of investment has gone toward male athletes, she said.

Her hope is to eventually bridge the gap until enthusiasm for women's sports becomes so pervasive that it won't be interesting to talk about.

"I think you'll have less panels like this saying, 'wow, let's talk about the future of women's sports' because women's sports will just be another chapter in all of sports," Blodgett said.

As Gotham FC's governor and lead owner, Carolyn Tisch Blodgett is capitalizing on the moment: she's turning a championship soccer club into a breakout New York brand with the reach, relevance, and staying power to lead the next era of sports.

Tisch Blodgett — shared her approach to investing in women's athletics, including leveraging fandoms and AI technologies, as part of Business Insider's The Long Play.

Interviewed by Nathan McAlone, Business Insider's deputy editor covering media and advertising, Tisch Blodgett said that her marketing background has been invaluable for building strategy in the business of sports.

• Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, a co-owner of the New York Giants and Gotham FC, is using AI to cut costs.
• "There's a lot of parts of a sports team that are just expensive to operate," Tisch Blodgett said.
• Tisch Blodgett shared how she's turned around Gotham FC at Business Insider's The Long Play.

New York Giants and Gotham FC co-owner Carolyn Tisch Blodgett is betting on AI to transform women's sports into a major moneymaker.

"If AI can make you more efficient, that totally changes where women's sports can go," Tisch Blodgett said at Business Insider's The Long Play event on Thursday afternoon.

Tisch Blodgett, who's the lead owner of Gotham FC in the National Women's Soccer League, sees AI as a way to reduce the costs of running a sports business without cutting corners.

"There's a lot of parts of a sports team that are just expensive to operate. It's expensive to operate a stadium, it's expensive to operate a ticketing team, expensive to operate a marketing team," Tisch Blodgett said.

Those struggles are heightened for women's sports, which historically haven't gotten the same level of investment as men's sports.

"The revenue was not high enough to really justify building out an entire business team, and the business model just didn't really work," Tisch Blodgett said of women's sports.

Tisch Blodgett made a name for herself by starting sports-focused venture capital firm Next 3, which has invested in Gotham FC, the Los Angeles Golf Club in golf league TGL, Premier Lacrosse League, and lottery ticket site Jackpot.com.

The Gotham FC owner has had a front-row seat to running sports since she was a kid: Her family bought half of the NFL's New York Giants in 1991. The Tisch family runs Loews Corporation, a hotel and insurance conglomerate worth about $22.9 billion.

Under the Tisch's ownership, the Giants have won two Super Bowls. Tisch Blodgett has already matched that title count in the three years she's owned Gotham FC — though building a winner hasn't been easy.

Building a champion by gathering feedback

Tisch Blodgett felt firsthand the challenges that women's sports teams face after taking over Gotham FC in 2023. The New York-based team had talent, as it went on to bring home its first title months later.

But success on the pitch hadn't translated to a winning business. Gotham FC didn't have its own business office when Tisch Blodgett took over, and players shared a practice field with a club team of 16-year-old boys.

While Gotham FC had "a great product on the field," Tisch Blodgett said, "attendance was really low" due to a lack of awareness.

"It was clear that the people that came really liked it, but it was very small," Tisch Blodgett said of Gotham FC's fanbase in 2023.

Tisch Blodgett has since flipped the script. This July, Gotham FC sold out Citi Field in Queens, drawing over 42,000 fans in what she said was the biggest women's sports event ever in New York City.

Gotham FC announced in July that it would call Queens home starting in 2028 — a major upgrade from its current stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, which is difficult to reach from New York City by public transit.

One key to Gotham FC's success has been gathering feedback. Tisch Blodgett, who led marketing for fitness giant Peloton before starting Next 3, said learning from fans "makes the whole business smarter" and has been crucial to the soccer club's growth.

"Fan feedback is incredibly important to me — it's how we run our organization," Tisch Blodgett said. "After every game, we send out a survey to every person that attended, essentially saying, 'Did you like it? Would you recommend it to a friend?'"

Gotham FC's Net Promoter Score — which measures how likely customers are to recommend the brand to a friend — rivals Apple, Tisch Blodgett said.

"It makes every person in the organization understand what we're building towards in a much more efficient way," Tisch Blodgett said.