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 been swapped out the Mets logo for Gotham’s.
