Men in Blazers' Roger Bennett on the growth of US fandom, EPL vs the MLS, and their move into streaming live football matches

0:06Hello, everyone, and welcome back to another edition of Stream Tom Sports. I'm your host, Nick Meacham, CEO of SportsPro. Now, for regular listeners, you'll know Chris is still on leave at the moment, but rest assured he'll be back on the show very, very soon. Now, we've been talking a lot on the podcast about topics like the state of the football and the media industry around it, the FIFA World Cup and its delivery and impact across the globe, and more wider around the business of building sports and media businesses, irrespective of if you're a sports property, a podcast company, or a bona fide media outlet.

0:37So I'm putting a little pressure on myself here, but this pod feels like it could be a really nice crescendo as we roll into the kickoff of the Premier League season this weekend with a wide-ranging conversation with one of the best in the business. My guest today runs one of the biggest independent football media organizations in North America and has been a pioneer and driving force around football's growth in the US since they first launched back in the early 2010s. And they really are a content machine now, which we're going to dig into a little bit, but have produced something like over 200 podcasts during the World Cup through the various channels that they have.

1:11And with that output, so streams increased by over 500 % over that time, which is a mind-boggling number. And it isn't just podcasts. they produce, TV shows, newsletters, alternate broadcast, and live events. So most impressive of all of that is that our guest isn't even American. He is actually a proud Evertonian. So if you haven't worked it out yet, it's the one and only Roger Bennett, co-founder and CEO of the Men in Blazers Media Network. Welcome to the show, Roger. It's lovely to be with you. I am actually American, though I am in Liverpool, my hometown right now but I love I love that you've made Evertonian a national identity because if it was I'd get a passport well look I've been listening to some of your stuff of late I could feel that proudness of your your Everton fandom coming through and all the content you're doing so I thought I'd make a point of it but look I've been looking at your schedule and seeing what you've been up to of late content wise and otherwise seems like you've been quite on a Hictic schedule in the UK of late?

2:12Yeah, we've just finished about an hour ago. A league is back week in which we've really traversed the United Kingdom from south to north. We've been here for a week. We've been in five cities. We've done 11 interviews. Tottenham, Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool, Manchester. Going on and on and on. We've done a live show at the Hill Dickinson with beautiful, beautiful. Everton Football Club and so many of their key players telling their story on the eve of the season. And we also managed to slip in and it was a really fascinating and wonderful experience. Our first ever live broadcast, match broadcast on the Men in Blazers YouTube channel in partnership with Tottenham.

2:59We broadcast their weekend game, their pre-season game against Hoffenheim to North America, which was an incredible moment for us. We learned so much and it was really emphatic. I definitely want to dig into that experience. We do a lot of coverage around the business of sports media and that's always an interesting story when we start to see the spreading of distribution of the live match across different channels. But for those that aren't familiar with Men in Blazers, Roger, just give us a bit of the scene. You guys cover so many different aspects of football, obviously with Roots and the base in North America, but set the scene for us all for those that aren't familiar with the journey and who you are.

3:34Sure. I mean, If you want to get a taste of what we do, just go to our YouTube now, click on the Mikel Arteta interview, click on the Xabi Alonso interview, click on the Eberetti Eze interview. That's what we've dropped on the past three days. And I think ultimately, you know, actions speak louder than words and you'll get. In fact, we talked to Xabi Alonso about the phrase, show me, don't tell me. So go and click on those. You'll get a real sense of what we do. But we started back in 2010, I think, for the purposes of your storytelling, that the project is based on two first mover advantages that we lent into.

4:13The first is we spotted the rise of a deep love of football in the United States when I moved to America in 1994, driven by a love of Public Enemy, the Chicago Bears, John Hughes movies, everything I loved. I moved to Chicago. Everything I loved was there in this incredible giddy kind of chicken wing propelled glorious technicolor. Everything apart from football, which was not to be found. I moved before the 94 Men's World Cup and a study came out that showed that soccer, as they call it there, was America's 60th favorite sport and tractor pulling was number 66. I crap you not. They didn't just not like it.

4:54They truly, truly hated it. And it's been the story of my lifetime. the rise of football in the United States. The Economist, right before the World Cup, revealed that football fandom was now the third biggest sport in the United States. Behind the NFL, that juggernaut, and the NBA, it's a young fan base. It's deeply diverse. You know, it's men's football. It's women's football. There's an enormous Hispanic second and third generation audience. And the second story is one of timing when we started to broadcast and build community. Essentially, we've built piece by piece community, communities now, because it's not just around the Premier League and the US men's national team, which is really the original platform.

5:38We have a whole women's platform now, really fast growing, the women's game that covers women's football around the world. We have a Hispanic facing platform, VAMOS, which is speaking to that young second and third generation, an enormous audience through their interests, their passion, their communities. So the second story that I'm sure we'll dig into is that we timed it just as this thing. The podcast was born 2010, which allowed you to knit together for the first time a really emotionally connected, deeply involved, deeply invested with each other, community, social media, making it a two-way conversation.

6:19And then podcasts, moving into YouTube, moving into digital, going into, you know, we cut everything we do by sea, land by air as we talk about it, you know, on TikTok, on Instagram, kind of make sure, you know, we have a television shows on a number of channels covering every kind of 24-7, 365 opportunity wherever a football is being kicked around the world by men or women. We want to be there. And that's been the story of our rise. It's taken a long time, but we are there. And the World Cup, as you said, 2026 was really the apogee. So obviously you started, as you said, in 2010, big focus on really focusing around the North American marketplace, particularly from an audience development perspective.

7:04You're talking about football as a sport with a big focus on the Premier League, especially as at the heart and center of all of that. How have you found that? How quickly, I guess, did you see the uptake on that content when you did launch? Was it a eureka moment from kind of day one, or did you have to grind it out in those first early stages to get momentum with it? I wrote a book about this, The Drop Before the World Cup. We Are the World Cup. 1994, as I say, the World Cup was like a circus. Until this one, the best attended of all time. But it was like a circus that came and left. 1994 was in Chicago.

7:40We were in the FA Cup semifinal. 365 channels on my cable television. Not one was shown the biggest game in Britain alive. And I had to ultimately phone my father in Liverpool and hold the phone against, he held the phone against Radio City, the radio broadcaster. That was in the days when long distance calls were really, you know, bank breaking. And so the story has been slow and steady. Really 2006 was when I first noticed it. Before then, Satanta, that fantastic pioneering live broadcast channel, had broadcast one game on a Saturday, 7.30 in the morning. And it was largely expats, the crew gathering together in a DC bar where I lived, you know, feasting on Luton Town against Sheffield Wednesday as if it was Boca River.

8:30And it was very hard to access what's happened. And the narrative is about the internet connecting Americans to happenings at Anfield from Alabama or to Leicester City from Los Angeles, as closely as if they live by the team's stadia. Before that, we were getting sent in the mail press clippings from the Liverpool Echo to follow along. So the internet allowed fans access to information, cable and then streaming has really accelerated it. You can now watch more live football in New York City than you can even in England. Every single Premier League game is accessible, but every game from around the world now, as the streaming wars have really been driven at the arrowhead, the emotional communities of football.

9:16Everyone's willing to pay$9 on multiple platforms or so it seems. And so those EA Sports, FIFA, the game, kind of connected, sensitized the young audience. That's been an incredible driver in a serious way. The silent hand that's grown an understanding of the Star Wars cantina of players, teams, leagues, for a whole young audience. The success of the women's team has been a phenomenal story. Women's football, the U.S. women's team, gave America what it cried out for, a team that wins. America loves winners. All of these things have come together to build an incredible audience. And then the Premier League starting to be broadcast by NBC remarkably in 2013 has been game changing.

9:59And Americans have been able to follow along with that telenovela acted out live week on week in between World Cups. And that was really the missing link. So we spotted that young audience who were becoming deeply connected. And podcasts were really the missing connection. They allowed a community to form emotionally connected to each other, as I said earlier. Twitter was just breaking through so they could engage with everything in a deeply kind of call and response UGC way. And so it happened quickly and slowly. The podcast was on ESPN to begin with. Bill Simmons then brought it onto Grantland, which gave it a platform, a muscle, a hilltop with which to really engage a sizable audience.

10:44And so we grew fast, but then we do a lot of live shows culminating in the World Cup where before games we did the equivalent. We drove during the World Cup across America in a large Home Depot orange bus city to city doing these college game day style live broadcast before games. Seattle, 5 ,000 people coming together, 8.30 in the morning, coffee in one hand, beer in another. Marshawn Lynch, the Seattle Seahawk, joining us on stage. And then we marched to the match, 15 ,000 fans behind us. That took gigging, live show after live show after live show, reinforcing that deep connection. So I'd say it was quickly and then slowly grind, grind, grind.

11:33I laughed. I watched the Odyssey the day after the World Cup with my family when I came home. And I was like, you know, Odysseus, he just had to slay some giants. We just had to hang out on a Trojan horse for a couple of days. Watching football grow in the United States, it took even longer than 10 years. But we're there now and it feels glorious. I've talked to the guys at NBC a lot and they really do point out that the Premier League rights and the deal they did back then was hands down their best basic best move that they've made in terms of the live sports base outside of the top tier stuff but anyway it wasn't just that they did it it was the way they broadcast it it was the first time football had been broadcast in a polished intelligent accessible that what they did was really nuanced nick and it was it changed everything and it really opened my eyes when i went to new york i think it was in probably something like 2010.

12:29I went with a colleague for an event out there and he said he was an Arsenal fan. He's like, let's come with me to this bar. I'm like, it's eight in the morning or six in the morning. I think it was maybe five or six in the morning. What do you mean go to a bar at five or six in the morning? And we went in and there's dozens and dozens and dozens of Arsenal fans all lined up around the TVs with their shirts on. And just opened my eyes to what sport is like in the US where it is from six in the morning through to right to the absolute long as you can keep your eyes open, particularly on the Saturday.

12:59It's quite extraordinary. Nick, what you're saying is so, I mean, there's layers to that, by the way. One of the Premier League success breakthrough realities was that it wasn't in prime time. You know, MLS has been trying to break through in prime time for years. You're against the NBA, you're against the buzzsaw of the NFL. Al, you will not break through in primetime. The genius part of it, it's inadvertent of the Premier League is they're coming on at 7.30 in the morning, East Coast. There's no competition. And we always joke, part of the success is Americans love any excuse to daytime drink.

13:35And football, nothing gives you that at the weekend. I like Premier League football. It is the joy of my weekend, getting, you know, as soon as the football starts, being, you know, hundreds of Americans send you screenshots of their cell phones with the alarm and the alarm will always say, work, wake up eight o 'clock in the morning. Weekend, wake up for Premier League 7 a.m. Like people are getting up earlier to watch football at the weekend. But there's truth in that. The fact that it didn't, it kind of crept in, didn't have to compete in prime time while delivering the best, you know, the biggest, which Americans love.

14:11They love the biggest and the best. And it's that accessibility and the intelligent accessibility that NBC created with Rebecca Lowe that really did change everything. I want to touch a little bit more on fandom before coming back to a little bit the initiative with the live streaming side of things. But just let's keep on that thread around football in the US. Just where do you see it today? Particularly what we followed especially is that big moment where MLS decided to go all in with Apple from a broadcasting perspective seemed to be quite a huge strategic decision, a financial decision, I should say, to really back the MLS.

14:48But it has definitely, well, from everywhere I can see, hasn't worked out the way that I think anyone really wanted it to with them obviously exiting that relationship. do you think what's this well how do you see that both the premier league situation comparatively with the mls and what mls is trying to do now to i guess raise its profile again look um football in america means many many things and that's its complexity when it comes third in the economist study you know the nfl is the nfl we know what that is the nba is the nba football is leaguer mx It's National Women's Soccer League. It's definitely Premier League.

15:26Oh, my Lord. It's like a big, massive driver. It's Champions League. It's U.S. Women's National Team. MLS is in there. If it was a band that we're talking about, Premier League is the lead singer. My God, it's a beautiful-looking lead singer as well. MLS is probably the bass player. The Grateful Dead used to let their bass player sing a song, sing Friend of the Devil every kind of concert or two. It plays an important role. It's all hyper-local. It's come so far, so fast in my lifetime. It's just over 30. It's spotted head start to the biggest leagues, the biggest tournaments, the biggest clubs in the world.

16:07And there's some delirious communities here, Nick. Incredibly distinctive, incredibly meaningful to the fan bases and singular. You know, it's impossible to look at what LAFC have built. You know, this incredible Hispanic fan base. We just did a live show with them and it was beautiful and it was meaningful and it was real. I watch it on the television. I want to leap through the screen. You know, several of these fan bases, the National Women's Soccer League too, the same. But the Premier League is the juggernaut. The Champions League is the juggernaut. A couple of years ago, Alexander Sheffarin asked to come on the show and we did an interview.

16:46And in the middle of it, he said what I think he came on to say, which is to trial balloon the notion of a Champions League final being played in New York City, which is quickly walked back, creating an outcry across Europe, as it should have done. But you kind of realize this is the moment. America, the audience is so deep. The audience is so, you know, it's the target audience for so many teams across the world, so many leagues. you know the Spanish league is desperate to play a live league game that counts in the United States so is Syria you know the Champions League they're salivating at this opportunity there's so many footballers we interviewed during the World Cup like oh my god playing at SoFi playing at Dallas stadium, AT &T.

17:38My God, these temples of sport. The footballers want to play here too. It's like a dam. Once one game is played here, that's the biggest challenge for MLS. Once one game is played here, every league will flood over. It's almost like everyone is held in check right now, but once it breaks, that's the reality. The ecosystem will become like an invasive species or just eat it up. But MLS plays a role here. It's an important role. It's a meaningful role. But there's no doubt the Premier League, as it is in Germany increasingly, as it is across Europe, the Premier League is king. Americans love the best.

18:18They love the dream team. They don't love a dream on team. They don't have that patience. And so it is the joy of my life. When I fly home now on a weekend to film in the United Kingdom, it's like a party bus we play 20 we do a study of our fan base every year 27 of our listeners fly over to watch their teams in england uh at least once a year and so that connection is deep meaningful different than the fan fandom in the united kingdom in ways we've studied i mean it's incredibly fascinating to think about and talk about but the premier league is is just utterly dominant. What are some of those things that stand out on the differences between those two fan sets?

19:04Look, I did a live show with Everton Football Club on Monday night at the Hill Dickinson with the club and a ton of the players. It's the first time we've done a show in England. It's actually the first time my lovely mum was able to come and see us, which is really meaningful. And I started off talking about my Everton fandom, what it means to me as my identity, a set of values. It means to all of us, I think, who live and die a lot of dying with Everton Football Club. Loyalty, tenacity, commitment, connectivity, a real sense of laughter in the face of doom. All these qualities that I think are really good for life.

19:43I talked about how my third generation, my grandfather was a blue. Both of my parents are blues. All of my kids are blues, probably the best and worst parenting contribution. That's the flow. That's the English thing. I'm from Liverpool. Blues passing it on through the generations almost biblically. The vast majority of American fans are choosing shorn of geographic connectivity. They're not from any of these cities and they don't have it handed down. It's not in their blood. It's not something they inherit. it so they're choosing sean of any emotional connect which means it's completely you know a free choice it's often incredibly random and what's amazing is how deep it becomes jay what the nfl legend is a regular on our show you know he first came on stuffed in a chelsea shirt you know did the bits that many we have a lot of you know john oliver and john stewart super high profile personalities so I was looking at earlier and there's a who's who on that list of guests you've had over the last even just last few weeks yeah yeah I mean it's amazing Rob and Ryan came on Rob Mac, Ryan Reynolds came on this week, Wemby, Victor Wembaiana the final week of the World Cup was pretty magical in that regard we're very you know we have deep ties and JJ Watt came on stuffed in his Chelsea shirt, did the bits that most NFL or NBA stars do about, you know, making noises about their interest in football.

21:16Great. And then two months later, his rep asked if he could come on again. I was, you know, I was like, I've kind of done what I can do. You know, he did these bits. I'm not sure there's a lot more, you know, left to squeeze there. Like, no, trust me, trust me, he's really into it now. I was like, great. Okay. All right. so he came back on man knew everything i mean he he had fallen down the youtube wormhole and like my god it was like levels um and then a couple of weeks later he texted me he goes i'm i'm gonna invest in burnley and before i could say don't do it he's like there on the plane over there and that arc from your curiosity we always talk about soccer curious football curious you know i'm interested to like going in deep that's the art that's happened for so many and And it is random, the first connection.

22:05I was with someone last year who had a Tottenham Hotspur tattoo on their forearm. I was like, why have you got that, man? And he goes, oh, my last name is Thompson. When I was watching, digging around, I saw that Tottenham used to be sponsored. My American accent is terrible still. I'm sorry. I saw that Tottenham were once sponsored by Thompson. Holiday, so I'm like all in. I was like, holy crap, man. Like from a random reason, you now have a Tottenham tattoo on your forearm. And I love it. So it goes from like nothing to everything. That's the driver. And then there are substantial differences that, I mean, part of our mission is to help teams understand it.

22:44Americans in their sports, you're from Chicago, you support the Chicago Bears, Chicago White Sox, Chicago, but it's multi-team fandom here and it's come over to football. So I always ask our fans when I'm in the street and someone stops me, I always say, hey man, who's your team? And people will go, and this is very odd for English ears, I know, so just putting a health warning. The fans will say, you know, I'm an Arsenal fan. You know, Wrexham are my lower league team, Dortmund are my German team, and I really, really love Elche. And I'll be like, wow, that's, and my women's team is North Carolina Courage.

23:24And the bandwidth they have for support and from that muscle that they've developed in American sport carrying it over, it means that teams like Atletico Madrid, they can aim for that, you know, to be the Spanish team here. It's quite fascinating. They have three young, coveted Americans. Like, oh, that's interesting. They could become very, very easy. I mean, they have a real opportunity as Americans become more nuanced and so on and so on and so on. When you watch Wrexham play in the United States, play a Premier League team, and yes, Liverpool at Yankee Stadium. I mean, Liverpool are one of the most, Arsenal, Liverpool, authentic, historic, yearning, the two biggest teams in the United States.

24:11But my God, Wrexham punched so way above their weight. The number of Wrexham jerseys, the number of Wrexham fans. And so there really is an opportunity for everybody. I recently did a podcast or a chat with Sean Harvey, who's a director at the Wrexham Football Club as well. And great, great guy. And he was saying, I think that the study they did at the end of last year was something like that Wrexham is followed by an average of seven times the amount of fans an average Premier League club. followed by in the US. So yeah, they've got a pretty good stranglehold in that marketplace. I want to keep moving on to things specifically back to the MLS situation, the opportunity.

24:52Obviously, the World Cup's just been, that's been one of the driving forces of interest around the sport of late. What's your view on just how that Apple MLS dynamic has worked? From my point of view, it's been interesting to see that quite a unique approach, putting all your eggs into to one platform's basket. How's that being received and how do you think it's performed given what we've seen since the launch of it? You speak to smarter human beings and maybe my focus really is almost unrelentingly on the Premier League and the Champions League. I cover the US men who were in a very interesting moment in that they too, it was Americans seek the best and move to, you know, really do feel like they're Arsenal fans, really do.

25:35or feel so deeply connected to Liverpool, the default position of just being an automatic US fan has been kind of buried alive. I think MLS is a choice. It's not an automatic choice. I remember early on going into ESPN, having an argument with an executive. The executive was like, who do you think a kid in Houston is going to support? Is he going to support Real Madrid, a team far away in a foreign language or is he going to support the Houston Dynamo who are right here in their own backyard where they can buy the shirt of the town and they can see their team with their own eyes in their own stadium you know in prime time again my American accent is terrible I apologise it's better than mine I remember looking at him I remember looking I've been here years and all that I can barely earth conceal it hooray for Hollywood I said to him God Real Madrid every day of the week I mean every day of the week.

26:32And I think I wasn't kicked out of that person's office, but my Lord, the argument was heated. But it's ridiculous to think any other way. And the challenge for MLS that they've been struggling with is to put it behind the paywall, is to create a friction. And football finds you easily. And so to hide is, I mean, it can be death. Especially for this new fan base after the World Cup, we felt it. The audience was enormous before the World Cup, but there's an even bigger. It's like the football fan base in the United States is like a river that's burst its banks right now. You find your thing immediately.

27:14You don't want to have to look for it. You don't want to create a struggle. You don't want to create a friction. Also, the natural inclination of an American is to love the best. And so I understand, having seen the rise of English football, that what is is not always what will be. I can remember, and this is a name that will only mean something to your older viewers, that when the Premier League started, English football was still a muddy backwater. Italian football, Jürgen Klintz always says, Italian football was where the music was played. Indeed, it was. I remember when Ravinelli moved to Middlesbrough.

27:51Middlesbrough getting more mentions in this show probably than any other episode you've done. The Italian newspapers wrote, you know, 1992, 1993, how sad it is that his career has imploded to such a degree that he has to go to England. That's the only possibility. And that's where MLS is right now. They've made a bet on these names, old names, Elder names, Lewandowski, the latest to come. You know, Offerstep, still massive global names. That's a move. What English football then did is bring that next wave of young talent, you know, move the quality of football up. And the tectonic plates under football, they're always shifting.

28:34They're always changing. Again, the order, the hierarchy, the food chain is deeply malleable. And there's so much money here and there is so much interest. You can see a future scenario where the game grows and grows and grows and the quality. Ultimately, we're only just cheering for spreadsheets. The quality, the budget, the wages goes up. But you can also see a future where that Danburst, where that Champions League final is played at MetLife, where the Serie A are coming over, where La Liga is suddenly playing. By the way, this is not the future that I think is great. I understand how complicated this is.