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.
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