Soccer Media Go Crazy?

Welcome back.

Last time, on Jason Davis, Once and Future Soccer Eagle...

I think I went on way too long about jerseys and opined on our attitudes towards MLS history? Anyway, if you read it, thanks. If not, I hope you can sleep at night.

This time on Jason Davis, Once and Future Soccer Eagle...

...an appearance on Nos Audietis, a soccer podcast from my friends at Sounder At Heart, has me thinking about the state of American soccer media 317 days out from the 2026 World Cup.

Here's the appearance, if you want to hear me say some of the things I'm going to be writing about below before you read them.

I really appreciated Jeremiah's invite to come out and talk about (waves at everything American soccer media) because I think about it a lot. That's what 17 years of blogging, podcasting, writing, and radio...ing, will do to an American soccer brain. It's almost impossible to avoid meta conversations when what you do is tied up with issues of fandom, culture, psychology, politics, capitalism, etc., etc.

I like to think that my career gives me some worthwhile perspective about where we were, where we are, and where we might be going when it comes to how soccer is covered in America. I've been a DIY amateur blogger and podcaster, a beneficiary of some speculative soccer media investment (R.I.P. KickTV), and part of the soccer arm of a giant corporate product for whom soccer is just small piece of a vast content plan.

Jeremiah's question, one I'm not sure we ever directly zeroed in on, was about American soccer media in the buildup to 2026. It's hard for me to think about what's ahead without thinking about how things have changed (or not) during my time in the business¹.

Soccer in America is undoubtedly much bigger now than it was in 2008, when I launched my first blog with nothing more than a head full of half-baked thoughts and a belly full of gusto. What I'm not clear about is whether that growth in popularity has meant an improvement in the way the sport is covered.

While trying very hard not to romanticize the era when I got my start (even though I believe it was a unique time to be using the internet to make something of your own), I don't think things have gotten better. Investment in the sport is rampant—clubs, leagues, tournaments, etc.—but it feels like media has been largely left out.

That's probably as much a function of the difficult economics of the news business as anything else, but I also think that the people lining up to put their support behind the game in the United States (many of whom are true believers, not just opportunists) don't see media as a crucial part of building out the game.

That makes me sad.

It also makes me sad that so much money seems to be flowing to one media operation in particular, but I'll save that rant for a different day. American soccer has never truly trusted itself and that means we've offloaded a lot of the work of covering the game (I'm talking in English, here) to people from other places. It's really hard to build a native soccer culture that is completely American when a large segment of soccer fans are taking their cues from cultures abroad.

It's not all doom and gloom, of course. As I told Jeremiah, I think there will be an uptick in spending on soccer as a whole later this year and heading into 2026. While the sport is more prevalent in the United States than it has ever been and one would think that a home World Cup would light a fire under the assess of business smart enough to see the game's potential, these things tend to move more slowly than we think.

Then there are things like Kickback, the new effort that scooped up Soccerwise. From what I've learned, there's plenty of reason to be excited about what they'll be making going into the next year. A multi-pronged approach to connecting with a range of soccer fans types means Kickback is casting a wider net than a lot of the small operations doing podcasts and YouTube channels.

YouTube and podcasts is where the DIY ethic is showing its strength at the moment. It's actually tough to get a handle on the amount of content available on YouTube, even as a guy now making a thing that lives on YouTube. A few of the creators there have broken through and made a name for themselves, but I don't see that a "progress" for the state of media around the game—at least in the short term.

As we talked about on Nos Audietis, everything is so fractured now that even our ability to gauge progress is in question. That part fascinates me, because it means it's not clear to anyone what the ceiling is for the sport in the United States.

Have we moved on from needing a traditional media apparatus to reach our potential? Or is the shrinking/concentration of soccer media missing piece that we'll hold the game back in this country?

Okay, other things! The Best Soccer Show is Thursday night.

On The Best Soccer Show Patreon and the members section of the Morning Kickaround YouTube channel you can catch my semi-daily missives. Today's was a freebie, so sign up for more looks inside my soccer brain.

I did an interview with Simon Evans on MLS 3.0 for Morning Kickaround.

¹ One day I'll use this space to tell the story of how I came this close to a deal with Fox only to have it fall apart at the last minute.