The inception of Men In Blazers came, effectively, out of a truce.
After longtime host Roger Bennett went from sic’ing his audience on ESPN over its uninformed coverage of the World Cup to becoming a contributor at ESPN, new president John Skipper began to make soccer coverage a priority. Skipper pursued more soccer rights and poured money into the sport, just as podcasting began to sprout up inside and outside the network. The soccer-loving boss gifted Bennett and Michael Davies their own show, before almost anyone in the industry recognized the power the medium would come to have.
“It felt at the beginning like we were just tying two cans together with string,” Bennett told Awful Announcing this week.
By the end of the 2010 World Cup, Bennett began to see the intimacy of both podcasting and social media, and felt Men In Blazers becoming a “cult hit.” Soon after, Bill Simmons launched Grantland, and offered MiB a spot on its podcast network.
“Every vehicle needs a push start, and there’s no doubt that that moment was the beginning of this incredible journey,” Bennett said of those ESPN days.
Men in Blazers has since developed a huge following all its own, largely by tapping into every pocket of soccer fandom in the country, on-site and online. Known for its incisive commentary on soccer culture and frequent celebrity interviews, Men in Blazers again took to the road throughout the men’s World Cup, with live shows in tournament host cities as part of its “Great American Road Trip.”
Live USMNT pregame shows for knockout-stage matches each drew more than 60,000 viewers on YouTube, while postgame reaction shows largely recorded from the back of the network’s travel van made up the entire top 10 of most-listened to episodes on Spotify, according to the platform.
“That was a College GameDay-style experience,” Bennett said of the road shows. “I do think, for us, physical broadcast is really critical, physical engagement, physical activation. I feel like we’re a band that’s gigged and gigged and gigged, and really built an authentic connection to our audience and to the different football cultures that have grown up across the nation.”
The GameDay comparison is no exaggeration. Live shows, with flashy production and impressive guest booking coming off a hefty fundraising round last summer, drew huge crowds and even bigger audiences in feeds. Total Men in Blazers were up nearly 300 percent over the previous year, starting from May 1, according to Spotify.
With multiple leagues’ broadcast rights up in the near future and more big tournaments potentially due to be hosted in the U.S. in the next decade or so, many in sports media have wondered how much this World Cup can multiply fandom in the country. But Bennett has been around long enough to know that question is both tired and misses the point.
“The whole network is living proof that the question is ridiculous,” he said. “I think the question is habitual. We joke on our show, soccer (is) America’s sport of the future, and it has been since 1972. It’s always tomorrow’s sport.”
“The audience size is massive, it’s young, it’s hungry, it’s obsessed.”
Unlike other American sports, however, soccer is made up of a twisted assemblage of leagues and competitions that make it hard to measure. In response, MiB has launched a vertical, The Women’s Game, that covers the NWSL, the WSL in England, the women’s World Cup, and more, as well as Vamos with ESPN’s Hercules Gomez, with more focused coverage of Latin American soccer culture and Liga MX.
Corporate networks necessarily cover what they have rights to broadcast. Other podcasts may be limited to one league or nation. MiB has unharnessed an umbrella that produces more than 1,000 episodes per year for all types of American soccer fans.
“We’ve built a network that refracts those different realities, and wherever a ball is being kicked, 24/7/365,” Bennett said.
“Linear wins with live rights, but that flanker programming, it’s who has the deepest, most authentic, richest, most meaningful connection to their audience. Who owns the fanbase.”
As perhaps the most visible soccer commentator in America, Bennett is a go-to for perspective on the sport from ESPN to MS NOW to his fellow podcasters. “All good for business,” he says. Bennett could be found debating Stephen A. Smith between live shows from the back of the van this summer, and hopes to remain a fixture on traditional media as soccer rights continue to spread across more platforms.
The English Premier League, which MiB covers during club season, is on NBC through the spring of 2028; MiB has a partnership with the company’s Peacock streaming service. Apple TV owns MLS rights. ESPN airs Spain’s La Liga. USA Network just won rights for Germany’s Bundesliga. International competitions are split among Fox, CBS, and TNT Sports. This is, in large part, why soccer fandom remains diffused — and why Bennett rejects the idea that the sport must become even more popular as a result of the World Cup to be taken seriously.
“All of these things are splintered, and my goal is to work with everybody in the United States as kind of like the centrifugal force, with our fanbase,” he said.
Yet World Cup viewership was undeniably larger than ever before this summer, and even without a central landing place for new fans, each pocket of American soccer love will welcome new fans coming off this tournament. Bennett has worked to ensure that Men in Blazers will reach them in whichever pocket they land.
About Brendon Kleen
Brendon is a Media Commentary staff writer at Awful Announcing. He has also covered basketball and sports business at Front Office Sports, SB Nation, Uproxx and more.