The New York Giants are worth $10.1 billion. The Tisch family has owned half of them since 1991. And it took an Epstein scandal to force a succession plan into motion.
Let that sink in.
This week, Steve Tisch — along with his siblings Jonathan and Laurie — formally requested the NFL’s approval to transfer their remaining 23.1% ownership stake in the Giants to their children’s trusts. The move follows the release of Department of Justice documents showing Steve Tisch’s name appearing more than 440 times in files connected to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, including emails discussing women Epstein was arranging for him.
Steve Tisch has not been charged with any crime. But the reputational damage was done — and suddenly, a family that had been sitting on one of the most valuable sports franchises in the world needed a plan. Fast.
Here’s what I want you to notice: this succession wasn’t designed. It was detonated.
I work with family-run businesses every day. Founders, patriarchs, matriarchs, second-generation heirs, and the advisors caught in between. And I can tell you with absolute certainty — the Tisch story is not an outlier. It is the rule.
Families avoid succession planning the way people avoid writing wills. It feels like rehearsing your own funeral. So instead, they wait. They transfer shares gradually, quietly, in small increments — as the Tisch family had been doing since 2023 — without ever having the real conversation about who leads, who decides, and what happens when the patriarch or matriarch is no longer the right person in the seat.
Then a crisis hits. And suddenly those quiet, incremental transfers aren’t enough. The family is scrambling. The institution — whether it’s an NFL franchise or a third-generation manufacturing company in Ohio — is exposed.
The Tisch situation has three lessons embedded in it that every family business owner needs to hear:
LESSON ONE: Wealth doesn’t buy you governance.
The Tisch family has extraordinary resources. Lawyers, advisors, bankers, accountants. And yet there was no clean succession structure in place when scandal hit. Steve Tisch will reportedly remain as chairman of the board even after transferring his ownership stake. He’s giving up the financial interest but keeping the title. That is not succession. That is optics management.
Real succession planning separates ownership, governance, and management — clearly, legally, and ahead of time. Not when the cameras are already rolling.
LESSON TWO: The next generation inheriting power is not the same as earning it.
Much has been made of Carolyn Tisch Blodgett — Steve’s niece, founder of investment firm Next 3, lead owner of Gotham FC, and by all accounts an accomplished businesswoman in her own right. She may be exactly the right person to steward this franchise into its next chapter.
But here’s the uncomfortable truth about family business succession: being capable and being chosen are two different things. When ownership transfers happen under duress — rushed, reactive, crisis-driven — the next generation gets handed power without the family ever doing the hard work of deciding why that person, why now, and what the governance structure looks like going forward.
I’ve seen this destroy families. Not because the next generation was unqualified. But because the process was never legitimate in the eyes of the other stakeholders — siblings, cousins, longtime employees, board members — who felt excluded from a decision that affected all of them.
LESSON THREE: A crisis doesn’t create your succession problem. It reveals the one you already had.
The Epstein documents didn’t cause the Tisch succession crisis. They exposed a governance vacuum that had existed for years. The family had been making incremental ownership transfers since 2023 — but without a clear, communicated plan for what the end state looked like, who would lead, and how decisions would be made by the next generation.
That vacuum is what makes a crisis catastrophic rather than merely difficult.
Families who have done the work — who have clear family charters, defined governance structures, next-generation development plans, and open conversations about values and legacy — can absorb a crisis. Their structure holds. Families who haven’t done that work find out the hard way, often publicly, that incremental transfers and estate planning documents are not a substitute for real succession strategy.
The Giants will be fine. The franchise is too valuable, the brand too strong, and the next generation of Tisch family members too capable for this to be existential.
But the lesson here isn’t about the Giants. It’s about the thousands of family businesses — worth far less than $10 billion, with far fewer resources and far less margin for error — that are one crisis away from the same scramble.
The question isn’t whether your family will face a moment that forces hard decisions about leadership, ownership, and legacy. It will. Every family does.
The question is whether you’ll have built the structure to handle it before that moment arrives — or whether you’ll be racing to build it while the world is watching.
The Tisch family had 35 years and $10 billion. They still weren’t ready.
What’s your excuse?
I specialize in working with family business owners on succession strategy, governance, and next-generation leadership. If this story hit close to home, let’s talk.
