Last night, more than 40,000 fans packed Citi Field in New York. They were surrounded by reminders of Mets legends, but they weren’t there to watch baseball. They were there—through a flash thunderstorm and air-quality alerts—to watch two women’s soccer teams face off on the field.
Gotham FC, the New York/New Jersey National Women’s Soccer League team, and the Washington Spirit demonstrated the appetite for women’s sports fandom in New York. The league’s biggest star, Trinity Rodman, played for the Spirit, and incoming superstar Sam Kerr made her latest Gotham debut after the team recently pulled off a coup by signing her away from Chelsea.
The game, dubbed the Queens Classic, broke New York’s all-time women’s sports attendance record, set when 28,000 fans watched Coco Gauff play at the U.S. Open in 2023. While fans have been packing stadiums across the country for the World Cup all summer, now the women’s professional league had its own stadium moment. And Gotham beat the Spirit, 1-0.
I was watching from Citi Field, alongside Gotham owner Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, who bought the team in 2023. Her family co-owns the New York Giants, and she decided to extend their sports legacy from football to women’s soccer. Tisch Blodgett and I walked the 100-level of Citi Field, where we saw thousands of fans thrilled to be taking part in this historic event. Lines for Gotham merch were running as long as an hour. Screens proclaimed this a record-setting night for women’s sports. The apple next to Citi Field’s scoreboard had swapped out the Mets logo for Gotham’s.
“We took a big financial bet. We took a big life bet,” she told me.
But as much excitement as we saw for the team last night, Gotham has faced some headwinds in building the kind of fandom that has been growing across the NWSL. Teams in Denver and Kansas City have had sold-out crowds throughout the season. Gotham hasn’t been hitting those attendance benchmarks at its usual stadium. “We’ve invested as much, if not more, than every other team in the league, and our results weren’t really coming. It was frustrating, looking at all these other markets: Why are they getting sell-out crowds? Why are they continuing to raise their attendance, and we’re kind of not?” Tisch Blodgett was asking.
New York is an amazing sports market—but it can also be challenging. There’s an endless variety of entertainment competing for potential fans’ time, money, and attention. Gotham’s biggest hurdle was that it played at a stadium in Harrison, New Jersey. The team had many loyal New Jersey fans, but had a harder time convincing others to get on the PATH train.
Last night, 70% of the 42,175 fans who bought tickets had never been to a Gotham game before. They came in from Long Island, Connecticut, Westchester, and Queens—all new metros for the team. Gotham has made moves to keep these fans; it will move to Etihad Stadium in Queens, right across the street from Citi Field, for its 2028 season. Its challenge will be to keep these fans’ attention between now and then.
“For us within the league, this is an amazing reminder of—yes, we can do this in New York,” Tisch Blodgett said last night.
These exhibition-style games have proved to be a huge hit with fans. The Professional Women’s Hockey League sold out Madison Square Garden in April. Women’s sports fans want—and deserve—a world-class game-day experience. Whether they’re building their own arenas or capitalizing on some of the world’s most iconic venues, teams are figuring out how to make that happen—so the fans keep showing up.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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