When Carolyn Tisch Blodgett's family bought half of the New York Giants more than 30 years ago, her grandfather paid $75 million — and people thought it would be faster to burn the money than spend it on a sports team.
Sports ownership used to be treated as a rich family's hobby. Blodgett now runs an investment firm built entirely around the idea that it is an asset class, with institutional capital, professional standards and, in her words, "more liquidity" than it ever had.
"Now we're sitting here at Bloomberg talking about sports investment. The landscape has changed."
Blodgett is founder and CEO of Next3Ventures, governor and lead owner of Gotham FC in the National Women's Soccer League, and a co-owner of the New York Giants.
I listened to the full interview so you can skip it.
Here are the 4 principles that matter.
👤 Guest: Carolyn Tisch Blodgett, Founder and CEO of Next3Ventures, Governor and Lead Owner of Gotham FC, and co-owner of the New York Giants
🎙️ Hosts: Carol Massar and Tim Stenovec, Bloomberg journalists interviewing at the Power Players Summit in New York
📰 Published: 10 September 2026 on YouTube (Bloomberg Podcasts)
🔴 YouTube | 🟣 Apple Podcasts | ⏱️ 7 min
Key Takeaways
Her grandfather paid $75 million for half the Giants over 30 years ago, when people thought burning the cash would beat the investment
She says sports ownership has moved from hobby to professional asset class since then
Higher valuations raise the bar on how a team has to be run, but she warns against treating a franchise as a purely financial product
She does not believe AI threatens the product on the field, because sport's value is in its live, unscripted nature
She has watched Chinese robot-battle videos and still calls a robot's win "wishful thinking," not a threat
Gotham FC's bet was that US soccer fandom needed a domestic product to convert World Cup excitement into, not that soccer itself needed convincing
She runs sports the way Peloton ran instructors: the loyalty was never to the equipment, it was to the person
1. From Hobby to Asset Class
Asked to describe the future of sports investing, Blodgett opened with her own family's history in the business.
"When my family got involved in the New York Giants, this was over 30 years ago, and it was really thought of as a hobby." Her grandfather paid $75 million for half the team, and "people thought it would be faster to burn the money than spend that on a sports team"
The landscape has changed: more professional investors, more institutional capital, and, in her words, "there's more liquidity." But she is careful not to call rising prices simply good or bad
Higher valuations bring higher standards for how a team is run — professionally, like any other product
Her caution is that a franchise is a community asset first. "What can't happen in sports, is that teams are run as purely financial products." She does not think that has happened yet, but says it is the risk that comes with more institutional money
2. AI Won't Replace the Product
Asked directly whether artificial intelligence threatens the value of live sport, Blodgett drew a firm line.
"I think we're a long way away from seeing a moment where it's not interesting what the product is on the field because AI has changed it." She expects AI to make scouting and fan development more efficient, not to replace the games themselves
Asked, half-joking, whether AI players or robots are coming, she pointed to competitive-robot videos out of China as a curiosity, not a threat: "it does beg the question." Pressed on whether that rules it out, she said, "I'm not saying no, but it feels very far away right now"
Her case rests on what sport actually sells: unpredictability and human nature, not just the final score. "You don't know what the outcome is going to be. You learn about the human nature of each of these players"
On why fans fell for Erling Haaland's World Cup story, she drew the contrast directly: "the robot doesn't have a story." A machine, unlike a player, has no narrative for a fan to attach to
3. The Gotham Bet on Soccer
Blodgett was not surprised by how well the World Cup landed in the United States — she said it was the premise Gotham FC was built on.
Part of the bet, when she came in as a new Gotham owner, was on the growth of women's sports generally, and on the World Cup and Olympics specifically arriving on a calendar she could plan around
The US had fan demand for soccer every four years but no domestic product built to hold it in between. Gotham's pitch, in her telling, is converting a World Cup fan into someone who can watch "World Cup winners right here in your own backyard"
Her firm's investment process does not start with the sport. "Most of our investments, we don't go in kind of sport first." She looks for product-market fit — a product a group of fans already loves — before asking where there is room for disruption, in media or in fan development
4. The Peloton Playbook
Asked how her marketing years at Peloton shaped her approach to sports ownership, Blodgett described a lesson she said the company's founders believed from the start.
She ran marketing at Peloton during its growth years. People told her constantly that the product had changed their life — but pressed further, "it wasn't about the bike. People have been making indoor bikes for years. It was about the instructor"
Peloton's strategy was building instructors into stars with their own brands, on the theory that the relationship with a person, not the equipment, was what grew the company
She has carried that directly into Gotham and the Giants. A fan's relationship with the team is "not just about the brand and the history" — it is about specific players, like Giants quarterback Jackson Dart, and about the excitement of a new coach
Bonus Insights
She ran the conversation almost entirely without hedging on one point: robots have no story, and stories are what sports sells. She raised Erling Haaland's World Cup run unprompted as the kind of narrative a machine cannot produce
Blodgett is a member of the Tisch family, long-time owners of the Giants, and the host noted following the team across four brothers and a father as a lifelong fan before the interview began
Her throughline is that professionalizing sports ownership is fine, and even necessary, as long as the people running teams remember the product was never really the game on the field — it was always the people playing it.
Products, Companies & Tools Mentioned
Next3Ventures (Blodgett's investment firm in sports, media and entertainment, which she founded and runs as CEO)
Gotham FC (The NWSL club Blodgett governs and co-leads; built on a bet on women's sports and US soccer fandom)
New York Giants (The NFL team her family has co-owned for more than 30 years, since her grandfather paid $75 million for half of it)
Peloton (Where Blodgett ran marketing during its growth years, and the source of the instructors-as-stars strategy she now applies to sports)
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