Carolyn Tisch Blodgett Is Focused on Gotham FC. But Giants Await

There’s a future in which the primary face of Giants ownership is Carolyn Tisch Blodgett. That future may not be so far away.

But right now, the daughter of Laurie Tisch and granddaughter of Bob Tisch is focused on her NWSL club Gotham FC extending its current longest unbeaten streak in franchise history and defending its title. The defending NWSL champions haven’t lost since July 4, and sit in first place; the regular season ends Nov. 1. 

Carolyn Tisch bought into Gotham in 2023 with her family and has served as primary owner and governor since. 

Bob Tisch bought half of the Giants from the Maras in 1991 for $75 million. “People laughed him out of town… people thought it would be faster to burn money,” Tisch Blodgett told Front Office Sports last year. “It was a hobby, no one thought of it as an investment.” Today, the team is valued at more than $10 billion after the sale of a minority stake to the Koch family last year.

While the NFL franchise is the most prominent jewel in her sports portfolio (she is a strategic advisor to the team in addition to being a co-owner), it has not been her primary focus given her roles as the governor of Gotham and CEO of investment firm Next Three Ventures. 

The Next Three portfolio includes League One Volleyball, TMRW Sports (parent of indoor golf startup TGL), TGL’s Los Angeles Golf Club, the U.S. Sail GP team, the Women’s Lacrosse League, and Jackpot.com. This summer, Next Three was part of a $100 million funding round for the Premier Lacrosse League alongside investors including Ares Management, Nets owner Joe Tsai, and It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia star and Wrexham co-owner Rob Mac.

Those pursuits have helped grow her influence within the Giants organization.

“She Could Lead the Giants Into the Future”

Tisch Blodgett launched Next Three Ventures in 2021, after leaving Peloton—where she had risen to global head of marketing—following the birth of her third child. Having grown up around the Giants, she started attending games with a different perspective once she stepped away from Peloton, questioning everything from the fan experience to how novel technologies were being used by the franchise.

“At its core, the idea with Next Three was really meant to make us better owners of the Giants,” she told FOS in a new interview. “It was meant to make us understand what the future of sports would look like, what the future of fandom looks like, and how technology would play a role in all of that.”

Kraft Analytics Group CEO Jessica Gelman, who cofounded the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics conference and has known Tisch Blodgett for years, said that combination of experience shows up in how she approaches her work in sports.

“There’s building a brand and then there’s growing a brand. Rarely do people have the skill set to do both,” Gelman told FOS. ”But if you look at Carolyn’s path, she uniquely has that ability. She could lead the Giants into the future, whenever that might make sense to do.”

The idea that Tisch Blodgett could one day lead the Giants is more than a hypothetical. She is already a co-owner, although she declined to disclose the exact size stake she owns.

Her uncle, Steve Tisch, drew major scrutiny earlier this year after emails released by the U.S. Department of Justice revealed his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. In the ensuing scandal, he and his siblings Jonathan and Laurie (Carolyn’s mother) in March transferred their stakes to their children’s trusts, though Steve Tisch will remain chairman of the Giants board. 

In the recent interview with FOS, Tisch Blodgett declined to comment on her uncle.

She prefers to talk about her work with Gotham, Next Three, and where sports fandom and consumer behavior are headed.

“In the next 30 years, what do we think the future of sports will look like?” she said. “And what role can we play in that?”

When she led the 2023 Gotham investment with backing from her mother and uncles, the team won its first championship just a few days later. That title came with a lesson; the team held no championship celebration, something the club apologized for on social media. “No one planned it,” Tisch Blodgett told FOS.

“I got the phone numbers of all 26 players on the team, whether they were staying or leaving, and called each one myself,” she said. “I introduced myself as the new owner and said ‘while I can’t speak for what happened in the past, I’m going to do things differently.’ I learned that from John Mara,” she said, referring to the Giants president and CEO who took over those roles in 2005 following the death of his father, Wellington Mara. John Mara is currently fighting cancer.

“He has always treated every employee in the building like a family,” Tisch Blodgett said. “That’s part of why it’s hard for people to leave the Giants. He makes you feel like you’re part of something bigger, even in losing years.”

After Gotham won last year’s championship, beating the Washington Spirit 1-0, the team held a championship parade that included a stop at City Hall with then-mayor Eric Adams. The team under Tisch Blodgett’s leadership has been making moves behind the scenes too, from hiring former Florida Panthers chief revenue officer Mark Zarthar as team president to announcing a major construction project that will transform the 27,000-square-foot former Red Bull New York training facility in Whippany, New Jersey into the “first dedicated training facility in club history.” That project is expected to be finished in the summer of 2027. 

On July 7, the team announced that starting in 2028 it will play home games in Etihad Park in Queens, where MLS club New York City FC plays. Gotham, which to date has played home games at Sports Illustrated Stadium in Harrison, New Jersey, calls the move a “defining moment.”

Vikings owner Mark Wilf, who is also owner and chairman of the NWSL’s Orlando Pride and MLS’s Orlando City, said that when Tisch Blodgett came to Gotham, “it was a much needed addition to the league.” The two work together on the NWSL’s executive committee, which deals with legal matters and strategic direction for the league. That includes discussion of issues like expansion; in April, the NWSL announced an 18th team that will begin play in 2028. The ownership group will be led by the billionaire Haslam family, which also owns the NFL’s Browns. Tisch Blodgett is chair of the NWSL executive committee.

“She’s been really effective at bridging differences there might be among owners,” Wilf told FOS. “She listens extremely well. She’s able to stitch together what people are saying, put it into a narrative, and help express what ownership priorities are.”

NWSL commissioner Jessica Berman had high praise for Tisch Blodgett as a steward of one of her league’s most prominent teams, calling her “highly engaged, curious, whip smart, super focused on learning the business of the league” on a phone call with FOS.

“Most people don’t ask questions because they actually care about the answer,” Berman said. “I actually believe she asks questions because she wants to learn and wants to know the answer.”

To be sure, there’s no denying that her success reflects structural advantages that have shaped sports ownership for decades. Her family has co-owned an NFL team for over 30 years.

“Connections are massively important in sports,” said Victor Matheson, an economics and accounting professor at the College of the Holy Cross. “Obviously, you have to be good enough to survive, but family fortune opens a ton of doors and provides resources for training and education that are not available to others.”

Tisch Blodgett is aware of her good fortune, and determined not to waste it. Whether she will eventually take on a larger Giants role remains unclear, but there’s now more female NFL ownership than ever before.

“When I was six years old and my grandfather bought the team, did I look around and see a single female owner? No,” Tisch Blodgett told FOS. “Does my five-and-a-half-year-old look around and see female ownership? Yes. It doesn’t feel like an anomaly anymore. It’s just that people in power happen to be female.”