[upbeat music] Welcome to the Rebooting show. I am Brian Morrissey. This week is a treat. I am joined by Jason Wagenheim.
I think this is your second time on the podcast, Jason. Second time. Second time, but the first time as the North American CEO of Football Co., a collection of soccer/football assets.
For those, just a little clarification for American listeners and European listeners, non-American listeners, whatever. I'm gonna switch between soccer and football. I'm not trying to be pretentious when I say football.
I'm just trying to be, you know, culturally attuned. And for our non-American listeners, I'm sorry, we call it soccer. That's just how it is. I'm not gonna change it. I'm gonna try to keep everyone happy.
Jason is also a seasoned media executive. You know what that means, Jason. I've been around too long. That's fair. [laughs] Exactly. I've seen it all. I'm also seasoned. We're media people of a certain age.
[laughs] This is one of the euphemisms of journalism that reporter like to use.
Yet he's worked at Bustle Digital Group, was an executive for seven years, I believe, spent a decade at Condé Nast, publisher of Teen Vogue, RIP, been at Dennis. You entered the profession at the perfect time.
I did, yeah. The late '90s. What a time to enter media. It, it was nothing but up and to the right since. It was pretty awesome.
In 1999, working for Maxim and being, I guess I was twenty-six, twenty-seven years old and having a Maxim business card, and I was the first ever ad director for maxim.com. Yes.
And all my friends were going to this little startup called Google, and I was like, "You're crazy. It's all about brands. Maxim's a brand. This Google thing's going nowhere. It's Netscape and Yahoo!"
Yeah, the Maxim versus Stuff wars. I mean, those of you who do- who were not around for it, you know, a lot was on, on the line. But when you look back, I just wanna like- Yeah... I wanna get into the Football Co.
thing, but, like, you saw the end of it 'cause we're, we're, we're kinda going through this period, I feel like, of nostalgia, where we're getting, like, memoirs from- Mm-hmm...
the good days of the magazines, and I love them. You know, I don't, I, I was never part of it, so I don't really know, but, like- Mm-hmm... I like that lore. I think you need lore.
Obviously, it's a completely different business now, but you saw, like, the sort of tail end of that 'cause I, I feel the, the financial crisis really completely ended it. Yeah. I think, I think that combined with...
Look, I had a great 15 years or so. I would say 2010, '11 is when things started to really go south.
When social went mobile in, whatever that was, 2008, and I remember looking at everybody at Vanity Fair and going like, "Oh my God, we're screwed. Everything's in the palm of our hand right now."
And then 2010, '11, Snap, Instagram came online, and all of a sudden, influencers who were babysitters by day were making videos on YouTube and getting tens of millions of views when we at Teen Vogue and, and Vogue were barely scraping a million, and we just got beat, and got beat quickly.
I think we made some mistakes as publishers that the internet wasn't really gonna catch on [laughs] early days.
So talk to me about those mistakes because, look, I think in some ways, like, a l- there was a lot of execution problems with how media brands handled the transition from analog to digital, [laughs] let's be real.
But at the same time, they were kind of in an impossible situation to some degree, and I'm not even sure if this story could have ended up any differently with how the industry has lost again and again and again to the broader decentralized media ecosystem.
I mean, their, the, the sort of stalwarts of that era are fighting millions of upstarts, right? It just seems, like, inevitable that this was gonna happen. You could argue the timing or whatnot, but like- Yeah.
Look, I think, uh, not to go down a rabbit hole on this, but the Condé Nast launched brands like style.com and concierge.com and epicurious.com and didn't lean into Bon App or Vogue or GQ online, and that allowed a whole universe of Popsugars and Refinery29s and Bustles and Vices to launch and steal their brand turf.
Condé Nast owned culture in the aughts and way, way before, for, for decades before, and they ceded culture to brands that were invented by the internet or for the internet, rather than leveraging their own brands online because they were trying to protect, rightfully at the time, their, their big kahuna asset, which was ink on paper, and involved the r- relied on the survivability of print.
So I think, you know, to bring it home for a second, we're seeing some of that happening now with where the web is trending and where page views are going and what ChatGPT and generative AI are doing for, to publishers, right?
We're seeing this, the same cycle sort of repeat itself and why it's really important for companies like ours at Football Co.
to be in all the new spaces and make sure we're following audiences and following all the new technologies that they're following along with it. So let's talk about that, that shift- Mm...
that, that's happening right now, right?
'Cause we're in the middle of it, and sometimes, like, we, I feel like we're in denial or we're in the middle of it or we're not totally sure, but, like, you know, anyone who went through the shift from analog to digital- Mm...
it took place over a long period of time. It wasn't like, you know, 1996, the lights went on, and then all of a sudden- Mm-hmm... you know, there was a lot.
It, it took years, and, like, the dot com implosion led to a retrenchment. There was a lot of people who said, "I knew this stuff was a fad. Let's get back to what we were doing."
And I suspect history doesn't repeat itself, but it certainly rhymes. We'll have some kind of, like, quasi-correction, whether it's a bubble collapse and we're all living in caves, I have no idea, to this AI situation.
And a lot of peopleWill [chuckles] inevitably do the same thing. They'll say, "I knew this stuff was a scam." But when you're looking at the changes going on in the media landscape, I think we're in agreement. Totally.
These, these feel structural, right? So how do you avoid making... Assuming that there was a set of mistakes that were made in the transition- Mm-hmm...
from analog to digital with holding on to clinging to old models too long, right? How do you, how do you end up thinking about where the opportunities are in this structural shift, another structural shift? Yeah.
I think we have to go back to the dawn of time with publishing, and what was always true is that content was king, and we followed- Yeah... our audiences.
The platforms, we need to remain relatively platform agnostic and focus on building brands and building credibility around audiences, and then the dollars will follow.
And all the new technology platforms, they're just formats. They're just screens that on which we're building our IP and building our platforms on.
So as I think about the future for our business, yes, it's going to be less text on websites, the, the, the modern version of ink on paper, and it's going to be things like YouTube and YouTube video and leaning into creators and talent and creating IP that we can rally audiences around, and then, you know, sell brands against.
The formats, you know, will, will continue to change. The platforms will change.
But the credibility that Goal, our flagship soccer brand has and the relationship that we have with our audiences, that, that is impenetrable by AI and other things.
So we just have to continue to be where our audiences are and make sure we're supporting them with content that matters. Right. I don't think the formula has changed.
I just think the, the screens or the platforms have and will continue to. Okay. But the- Yeah... clinging to old models, I'm gonna put words in your mouth here. That's what I do.
Would seem to be around the words on, on webpages, right? Like, 'cause I think one of the big shifts, and look, you, you- Yeah... you, you saw this up close at Bustle, right?
Like, the entire-- Like, Bustle was, in my view, it was built basically as a modern version of a Hearst or, or a Conde Nast. That was the outward.
You know, it was like, we are going to have a digital metabolism where these, because they clung to old print models, they didn't have it.
They weren't, like, good at things like SEO and those kind of distribution, a modern distribution approaches of the internet. Now, all of a sudden, it's... You find this all the time. It's not just Bustle.
It's, it's, it's Vox and, and, and others, where all of a sudden, the upstarts become legacy- Yeah... like, incredibly quickly.
And it seems like the legacy business now is putting words on webpages and monetizing it with, monetizing those words with display advertising. Yeah. Look, that, that's exactly right. I mean, that's what's happening.
Okay. I mean, the-- I-I'll give you the context. Our, our business last year in just twenty twenty-four was forty percent media.
So that requires users going to website, our websites and pulling up pages that allow us to deliver ads. It's now roughly thirty percent media in twenty twenty-five, and it will continue to go down in twenty twenty-six.
We're planning around that. Our branded content business is up twenty-five percent and now makes up forty percent of our revenue mix, and that will continue to grow in twenty twenty-six.
Branded content that we create is distributed on all the social platforms on a CPV basis and guaranteed with views and impressions against that. It has nothing to do with eyeballs going to our website.
So that's, that's where it's shifting. We have a, a growing experiential business where we've launched a merch business this year.
These are all things that will help fill in the gaps that, you know, the, the declining asset, which is, is the webpage and the website will, will allow for us to build our business on in the future.
And w-we're very, we're very bullish on it. We're just...
You have to be, you have to be super agile and just adapt with all these times, and that's what some of the legacy publishers or some of the digital media guys just haven't done or haven't been able to do as fast, and that's where, what, where they'll be disadvantaged.
Right. So what attracted you to sports? You'd spent your career really on the lifestyle side. Now, for-- sports is in some way, shape, or form, like- Totally. Yeah... lifestyle adjacent at the very least. It's different.
And then I think, you know, lifestyle itself is very challenged right now in, in the digital world. But what, what, why, what did you see in sports, and why is sports so well-positioned r- I mean, relatively speaking?
Yeah. Look, I mean- Why is it so well-positioned now? You, you just look at all the, the stats around live sports. It's where all the investment goes. It's where the eyeballs are.
Something like ninety plus percent of the top one hundred TV shows on ratings last year were NFL games. You know, we know, we know the data around why sports is, is so important.
For me, personally, I saw the opportunity with the World Cup at the time when I took the job. It was two and a half years away.
My clock on my desk tells me it's now one hundred and ninety-eight days away, my countdown clock. Wow.
And I saw the, I saw the tailwinds, having the tailwinds of the World Cup on the way to twenty twenty-six was a big lure.
And then also, you know, I think I was hired for this job out of women's lifestyle and out of places like Conde Nast and Bustle because what sports has traditionally been missing is the great storytelling around it. Mm.
Most n-most sports publishers or most of those that carry the broadcast really just focus on news, scores, analysis, what happens on the pitch for those ninety minutes.
There's a great intersection of soccer, in particular, with pop culture in America, fashion, travel, food, style, music.
All of those things intersect with sport, and not a lot of brands are doing that storytelling, and that's what we're building this company around globally and in the US, and do it-- inventing and creating lots of formats that make the game super interesting and, and accessible beyond the ninety minutes.
How do we fill the gap between the match days? And that's, that's a lot of where we spend our time and investment from a content perspective. Yeah.
So for those who are unfamiliar with Football Co and with Goal, I can remember as, like, an editor at Digiday, our UK team was always writing about goal.com, so I, I kn-I sort of know about it.
[chuckles] Explain the, explain the assets that, that are under Football Co. Yes. There's, there's many. We are a global football holding company called Football Co that has a dozen plus brands worldwide.
Goal is our big flagship. You can go to Goal anywhere in the world. We publish in fifteen languages.
You can find out-Anything that's happening with any player, club, tournament, any major event that's happening in football, soccer only, all the time.
We reach across all of our channels about seven hundred million people every single month on a global basis. We have Cora, which is the largest sports website in the Middle East.
We've got Spox in Germany, Calciomercato in Italy. We've got a great business around our women's brands, which are Indivisa and Soccergirl. It's a house of brands, but all focused exclusively on football.
We're backed by TPG, which is fun.
They, they acquired the asset goal back in twenty-twenty to launch Football Co officially, and we've been since gobbling up football assets around the world, and on the way toward world domination in twenty-twenty-six, Brian.
Okay. And the, the, the strategy is, is, well, well, not like forsaking the website, but it's very social video-centric. Yeah. That is, that is most of where our, our big bet is on.
You know, our YouTube channel globally is three and a half million subscribers. We have many tens of millions across Instagram and TikTok and, and Twitter and Facebook as well.
Most of our output is social video that, you know, we're banging out ten, fifteen assets a day, uh, just to the US alone and, you know, really building our IP and our own exclusive formats that both support where fans are interested and how fans are consuming football content now.
And then, of course, our advertiser partners, you know, support and sponsor those assets. Okay. So most of... So is most of your distribution inevitably through platforms, through YouTube or through TikTok- For sure...
or Instagram? Yeah. Yeah. That's, that's where-- that's what we've been building toward. That's where it's going, you know, and again, with a real emphasis on You-YouTube.
We, we really have a big bet that these, you know, talent, creator-driven formats, podcasts, you know, things like you do so beautifully, but- Thank you...
you know, others are doing in the sports space is really where, you know, our future is, is banking on.
And, and also, you know, we-- when we think about video, we think of it as typical, uh, typically a fan-led, creator-led, or player-led format.
We're using one of those three, you know, talking heads as a way to create content for our fans and, and brand partners. Okay. So it's like, it's more, in some ways, it's almost, like, more lifestyle oriented, right?
Like, I mean, you're not, like, people are not going... You're not, you're not banking on people coming to you for, for a recap of, of the match necessarily. That's what the website's for. Yeah. That's super relevant.
So I, I would say- It's still relevant...
like as, as goal.com is where soccer fans are going to get scores, to follow the matches, to follow their teams, the play-by-play that happens in each match, and that's a very natural place for them to go and do that.
That's in their feed. We have an app that has, you know, one and a half to two million MAUs a month that they're on for live scores every single month.
Those are the things that really drive that ultra fan, that core fan that's, you know, lives and dies by their Arsenal scores and their Premier League scores on a Saturday morning.
The social- the socials really fill the gaps. That's where the entertainment happens. That's where we inject humor and comedy into what we do. We really do a great job of giving fans a voice.
You know, fan-led content is one of our most important formats that gets great engagement, and that happens mostly on Instagram and TikTok.
And then YouTube, you know, we've created a bunch of more studio shot, more premium formats that, you know, drive the, the long-term views and the long-term loyalty. Yeah. Are you building, like, franchises?
Yeah, big time. We're, we're launching later in December a major new show with a big NFL talent that I can't yet reveal, but that's coming soon. We have a big- Mm. We have a lot of show formats.
We've got a slate of about two dozen shows on the way to the World Cup that involve a lot of different aspects of storytelling around the game that brands can sponsor and that will build big fan audiences around.
I mean, we really, we really think of our IP, you know, much like we're programming ESPN or Fox Sports. You know, we-we're, we're always on and again really thinking about what...
The only thing we can't service fans with or advertisers is LED billboards and television spots on Telemundo or Fox.
There is so much more activity that happens around the game between match days, before and after the match, and that's really that appetite that for content that we sell with our fan base. Hmm.
Well, that's like a constraint that becomes an opportunity, right? Yeah.
I mean, you don't have rights, and so the constraint of that is, like, you can't rely on the highlights or we're selling those LED bil-billboards, and then it becomes about almost like a lifestyle.
Like, at the end of the, the stories, like, around sports.
And I think one of the things that I think sports has, has gotten really right, it's like there's drama inherent to the games, but there's drama outside of the games.
Trust me, I'm a Philadelphia Eagles American football fan. Me too. There's always drama between the end of an Eagles game and the start of the next game. Yeah. And that's just how it is.
And I think that's what we see with, for instance, women's basketball really taking off is there's really good drama. They've got good characters.
They've got heroes and villains, and that's what you need to break through. Totally.
That's-- and that's the storytelling that matters that you're not gonna see on Fox or Telemundo or the broadcasters, and you're really not gonna see it on ESPN anymore or Yahoo Sports.
There's so much happening in the NWSL right now. I just got back from San Jose. We were there for championship.
The vibe in that stadium was just electric, but the four days leading up to championship on Saturday, there was a big award ceremony presented by AT&T. There was a bunch of ragers of, you know, parties that we went to.
There were live podcast recordings. All the players are decked out, showing up at media days and doing their interviews and telling their stories.
There's a lot of discussion whether Trinity Rodman, you know, the American superstar- Mm-hmm... is gonna go play in Europe and, and leave the NWSL. There's a, a big storyline around that that we're following.
So there's so much happening, and it's our job as publishers in this whole ecosystem to tell those stories, to give fans a voice, to make these players famous.
I think that there's a lot of room for soccer [chuckles] in America just toJust to tell these stories, you know, what happens off the pitch with, with the men and women that are fueling the game here, that will continue to attract fans more so than what happens during the ninety minutes.
If you think about soccer's growth in America, there's now something like a hundred million fans in the US according to US Soccer and other stats, a hundred million plus fans. Mm-hmm.
That's up from sixty, seventy million just a few years ago.
It's been fueled by Welcome to Wrexham, Ted Lasso, and Messi's arrival in the US, coupled with the streaming access, where you can literally watch more soccer in America through any of the streaming platforms than you can living in other parts of the world where soccer is more endemic.
So there's a lot of access, there's a lot of excitement, and there's a lot of entertainment and culture that's sort of underpinning the growth of the sport here, all combined with what's happening with the road to '26.
Yeah, uh- It's a great time. It's a great time for the sport here. Yes.
I think a lot of times, you know, some of us, you know, have, have been hearing about soccer being inevitable in the United States for thirty years at this point. I mean, the last time- Yeah...
that the US hosted the World Cup was nineteen ninety-four. I actually remember it weirdly. I was in Europe actually- Me too... at the time, so I missed it. [chuckles] Yeah. The US did okay, actually.
They, they got through to the round of sixteen. But you know, the- Mm-hmm... the...
It, it's like change happens, like, inevitably, it ends up happening, like, in, in dribs and drabs, and then it, like, actually, you know, gets momentum.
And you know, soccer has become a lot more popular in the United States. I saw some stats recently that, you know, f- like you talk about a hundred million fans, but, like, it's not the main sport for a lot of people.
It's like a second or third sport. But- Sure... the self-declared favorite sport in Q4 2024, American football, of course, uh, was number one going away at about, like, thirty-five percent.
Basketball was in, it was about sixteen percent, and then soccer/football at, at, at ten percent.
So that it, it is already past baseball, which is still for some reason declared America's pastime, and it's, it's simply not. Yeah, and it's so boring. Football- It's such a boring sport...
American football is America's pastime. It's... let's just be real here. Yeah. You know, I got asked a lot when I took this job, you know, "Why hasn't soccer caught on in America?"
And when you really dig into the stats, my answer just became, it, it has. You're just not paying attention. And by the way, stop expecting it to be as big as American football.
It's just never going to be, and that's fine. We can be very comfortable as a very popular number two or three sport here. And if you look among Gen Z, it's growing even faster. Yes.
And Gen Z Hispanics, which of course is a super important audience, it's growing at a rate that's out of, you know, over-indexing every other cohort.
So the growth is, the growth is massive, and I think once the World Cup is here, it will not be a finish line, it will be a starting line for even more to come for the sport.
If you, if you just break down this World Cup for a second, you know, it's a hundred and four matches compared to sixty-four in twenty twen- twenty twenty-two.
It's forty-eight teams compared to thirty-two teams in years prior, so there's fifty percent more teams, fifty percent more nations competing.
You're gonna have anywhere from five to ten million visitors coming to America for it, spending thirty-five billion dollars, a hundred and eighty-five thousand jobs created. I mean, it's gonna be fucking bonkers.
It's gonna be like a hundred and four Taylor Swift con- concerts over those thirty nine- Yes... days in June, July. And I think America is only half ready for it, and I'm, I'm excited, I'm excited- Oh...
for what the next six months brings because it's just gonna... the momentum's been incredible, and it's only gonna pick up after the draw. Yeah. I should, I should, I should clarify that the United States is not...
This always gets our Canadian and Mexican friends mad. [chuckles] Like, don't put American as your s- as your nationality when you, like, enter Mexico. They get, they get pretty mad about that.
You gotta put- They are in Canada now too. Yeah. [laughs] But they feel like you gotta correct that. I've had that before. I'm like, "I thought that was the official," but, like, I got, I got- Yeah... mildly admonished.
The United States is sharing the hosting with Mexico and Canada, but in true American fashion, US fashion- [laughs]... we're taking by far the majority of the matches. Yeah. That's just how it goes.
But it is gonna be a different, it is gonna be a different milieu than last time. Diana Ross was singing [laughs] the, the, the opening the last time. Is that right? I didn't know that. This happened. Yes.
I for- I think I forgot that. I blocked that out. Yeah, that's right. So it's gonna be a little bit different, little bit different. Maybe we'll get Bad Bunny.
But so the opportunity, I would think the business opportunity is... look, the, the ri- like FIFA is, is, is a good business, right? And- [laughs]... it's, it's well run. I'd say. Yeah. They monetize well. Yeah.
They would make like a PE firm blush. But n- there, there's obviously restrictions around... There's only so much...
There's more demand than there is supply when it comes to attaching yourself to a massive event or, or as a brand attaching yourself to a massive event like the World Cup, and I would assume that that is a massive opportunity for Football Co and for, for others that don't have rights but can, can offer people an entry point, offer people, offer brands an entry point to attach themselves in, uh, to this without the FIFA price tag.
Yeah. Look, if you're a FIFA partner, you're spending a hundred million dollars- Oh, God...
plus for those rights and those entitlements, and, you know, the sub, even the smaller supporter levels are spending fifty, sixty million. I mean, it's, it's bonkers, right? Yes. Yeah.
So we think of our TAM as first and foremost the FIFA sponsors, the endemics. They will work with us on some level, both locally and globally. That's your McDonald's, your Bank of America, your Visa.
Verizon's a big spender now. DoorDash just announced recently that they're a big FIFA supporter now, which is great.
Then you've got your major soccer spenders, so folks like-Modelo, AT&T, Marriott, Mastercard, brands that, that already have decided soccer is important for them.
And then there's a whole universe of marketers in America that I call soccer curious. They know the World Cup is coming. They don't really know much more than that.
They haven't really come up with a soccer strategy or a plan to engage with the sport, or fans, or players, or clubs, or whatever, and they know that they can't miss this moment.
So because the FIFA categories are so, so restrictive and so exclusive, there's so ma- there's so much opportunity for both the major competitors...
Like, if you're Pepsi, if you're Mastercard, you're going up against Coke and Visa's entitlements. Mm-hmm. You, you don't have a ton of other places to go other than TV, and outdoor, and a few other spots.
We help really satisfy the opportunity for brands to get the World Cup without having to cut that massive check through the content, the media, the video we'll deliver, the coverage of the matches, the parties, the experiential piece is going to be really big for us next year.
So it's, it's gonna be a, a great year, and we're right in it now. I think, I think we'll know by March how our June, July is gonna look, and then I'm gonna take all of August off on just after July 20th when- [laughs]
I'm blaming-... the day after the final 'cause I will be exhausted. But it's, it, it, it will be a great run in the next six months. So there's some concern about the, the, the World Cup year. Mm.
Obviously it's, it's a fraught climate. We've got ICE, maybe the Border Patrol, apparently more aggressive than ICE, threatening to raid venues and whatnot. Yeah.
I assume that your, your belief is that there's simply too much money at stake- [chuckles] Yeah... for- Look... that sort of unwelcoming atmosphere.
Only because, like, you know, I, I see, I see tourism has, like, plunged, honestly, in Florida. Like, it's shocking- Mm... to me. I... it doesn't...
I don't see it, like, covered in, in the sort of news, and maybe it doesn't show up in the statistics, but- You just feel it... it, it's, there's no two ways about it, it is, it is plunged. Yeah.
And a lot of that is, you know, I think the economy is, is being propped up by AI, but a lot of it is also the fact that, you know, Canadians have no interest, and I don't really blame them, for wanting to, to come to the United States, much less Florida.
And that has impacted more than I would've thought. Like, and you see this in s- in... it's not a major thing, but in, in arrivals from, from other countries because, you know, a lot of stories just go around.
I, you know, I've just talked with like, you know, people, like, people from Germany who are like, "I'm scared to go to the United States, like they're gonna go through my phone." I'm like, "Really?" [laughs] I...
Look, I think we all might have these anecdotes and see what we... and read what we read on Twitter. I, I think it will be a very welcoming nation come 2026. Gianni Infantino is the fearless leader of FIFA.
I encourage your listeners to follow him on social media. He's highly entertaining, and he's also the world's greatest politician.
He has been buddy-buddy with Trump since Trump was in the White House when they announced that the... the first time, when they announced that the World Cup would be coming to America in '26.
They announced last week that they're gonna have FIFA Pass, which will expedite visa approval for anyone that's a World Cup ticket holder.
There is a geopolitical undertone, you know, happening now with countries like Iran or Haiti that can't technically enter the country now for a variety of reasons, and there will be other countries that will be more restricted to be able to enter.
But look, I think the doors have to open up, and football is the world's great uniter. It is, without question, the most common language spoken around the world is, is soccer, football.
And I, I hope and expect that all of the amazing undertones of what soccer brings to culture and to the world will, will unite, will unite us during this time.
I, I have to think that way, and I, and I, I genuinely do believe it. It's gonna be an incredible celebration across all 11 US host cities and the other five between Canada and Mexico. Yeah.
How much are activations a part of your business? I mean, you, you were... You know, you had left Bustle at the time, really the, the, the change was already happening, right?
I remember before the Nylon House during Art Basel, we, we had a- Yeah. [laughs] We, we met up. You, you came to one of those. I remember you were- I did, I did. I was extremely- You were, yeah... out of place.
You had the- But I'll do, I'll do anything to pursue a story. [laughs] You had a lot of really... I remember my... You know, some of those activations on there, I was like, "Oh my God, really?"
Like an airline activation in a Nylon House party on a beach during Art Basel in Miami Beach. And- Yeah. No, it's, it's a big, it's a big part of it. We have a lot of demand for experiential.
We're launching a platform called House of Goal. It's exactly what it sounds like. Okay. Two to three-day pop-up experiences in the major host cities where fans can come, and they can engage with brands.
They can participate in skills challenges, trivia challenges. We'll close it down at night for big ragers and, you know, parties that we'll throw. We'll have our live podcasts recordings from there.
It'll be a great moment to bring fans together in the cities, you know, beyond the fan zones- Mm... and some more, some of the more official things that are happening.
We just threw a big party following the NWSL finals in San Jose last weekend. It was brilliant, well attended, called it Indivisa HQ. It's our y- kind of experiential women, women's event footprint.
That's definitely where it's heading.
So as we talk about the future of this business and where it's all going for us, we've gotta think about getting our, our, our brands into some of these other spaces to be able to activate for both fans and, and brands.
I'm wearing Illumineer's collaboration, a jersey- Mm-hmm... a kit that we just launched with the, the band to celebrate their 20th anniversary. This is a new and growing business for us.
We've launched merch with OutKast. The Deftones is coming up. It's... Anderson.Paak was another one that we did. They're all supporting some impact work that we're doing in local communities as well.
But between experiential and merch, it's making up about less than 4% or 5% of our business. Okay. That could be 10% or 15%, you know, in two, two or three years' time. Oh, okay.
So I thought, I thought experiential would be, would be much bigger because I, I, I guess I'm trying to get at is-When you're looking at-- let's just say this is like lifestyle adjacent.
When you're looking at lifestyle media, it seems to me these are mostly gonna be experiential businesses, in the same way B2B media businesses are really events businesses i- in, in most cases.
That seems to be the direction that, you, you, I mean, you guys w-were on that jou- direction at Bustle. That Bustle is- Yeah... I think fully arrived at that. They're all in. At that. Yeah.
They've done a, they've done a great job of flipping the script on their business and going all in on that Nylon membership and what they do with W Magazine, for sure. Yeah.
So is that the sort of future of institutional lifestyle media? And that I mean is that, like, like you said, I think all of media is trying to figure out how... What, what is my right to exist? What is my- Yeah...
differentiation in this world of millions of creators that is not g- that genie is not going back in the bottle. And y- we started this conversation yo-you had said
that, you know, a lot of, like, the Conde Nast publications were simply losing to the, that massive decentralized world of, like, creators. Yeah.
I would, I would frame it as the future of our business is about continuing to improve the relationship that we have with our readers and our fans, and then the s- the platforms and the ways in which we engage that relationship is what will, what we will be able to monetize and what will fuel our growth.
So if we have a great brand that has great credibility and a, and a relationship with this reader that is indispensable, we can then go into experiential. We can create merch that they'll wanna buy.
We can think about personalization on our website and our social platform, so we're just feeding them information that they want to see from us every day, rather than us curating what we think they might want.
How do we use AI and other, you know, tools to be able to create better personalization so that they're only getting information from us that matters most to them in any given moment?
How do we fill the gaps between match days with experiences, with social content, with, you know, and with, with high-level talent and creators? That's how we think about it.
The, that relationship we have with our reader, and again, that hasn't changed. That's, that's what publishers were doing 100 years ago.
That, that's gonna fuel the growth of our business, and for me, the, we remain platform agnostic and format agnostic.
We're gonna continue to adapt with whatever technology and the universe throws at us so that we can keep building on that foundation with wherever our readers want us to be.
I don't-- Again, I don't think it's like brain surgery.
It's just that's how we think about everything that we launch is, you know, what is the reader value, and do they want and expect us to be here in this space right now? And then the dollars follow. Yeah.
So why have a collection of brands? Why not just... You talk about, like, House of Goal. Why not just, like, make everything, like, under Goal?
You know, it's, it's a great question, and one that we've, we talk about a lot.
A big part of our strategy is to be a house of brands, because not all football content is consumed equally, or, uh, there, there's no one-size-fits-all for football fandom.
You have football culture and football, pockets of football fandom in e-every part of the world. Even in this country it looks very different in New York compared to what it looks like in LA.
You know, Hispanic commun-communities versus more general market ones.
So we like to have brands and content formats within those brands that service, you know, all the different type of fan cultures and types at any given moment or stage of their fandom, from the casuals all the way through to super fan.
Yeah. Are there just sort of approaches that you need to take that are different for a, a US market versus what Football Co is used to, say, in Europe? I mean, obviously- Yeah, for sure... look, we're catching up here.
I'm, I'm using Pitch and, and lots of Kit, you know, we heard. You're doing a great job. And so, but at the same time, we've got, we've got a ways to go here in America.
We are not yet, you know, fully, you know, soccer crazy. I think we need, we need our LeBron James. We've never gotten our LeBron James. I thought Freddy Adu was gonna be it. I was all in on Freddy Adu.
[laughs] I mean, what, what could, what can I say? Clint Dempsey, no offense, not exactly the same. No. We've got some good players. W-Weston McKennie and, and Christian Pulisic. We've got, we've got a good team.
We're feeling- These people are not household... Diego- These, these are not household. These are not like Steph Curry. Diego Luna is pretty great. He's on his way up. Steph Curry's not... No. He's coming up.
I, I'll tell you, you know, uh, it, it's, it's interesting. We do think about the- Caitlin Clark. The, y- women's college basketball needed Caitlin Clark. [laughs] Big time. So.
Well, American soccer needed Alexi Lalas back in the day- Oh my God... and, and, and Landon, and Landon Donovan.
So I, I, we definitely think about our, our content strategy is very different here than it is in other parts of the world.
Look, i-it's football with a capital F in Europe, obviously, and you can't, you, you, you can't come at it with some of the, the snark or the irreverency or more of the entertainment value that you do here in the US.
American soccer fans, again, the gateway to their fandom is typically not something that happened on the pitch. It's happening with entertainment. It's happening in comedy. It's happening with celebrity.
It's because Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhenney decided to launch a little club, you know, Wrexham. Yeah. And they followed that documentary.
That's the gateway to fandom here, so we build a lot of our content formats around that. We definitely have the diehards that come to Goal every day to check scores and, and analysis, and we have...
You know, we service them in a, a different way than we do the casuals. But I think the real way that th- the sport will be fueled here and continue to grow is with crossover.
So when we think about the NFL, the NBA, MLB, there's a lot of great stories in there that intersect with soccer.
There's a ton of investment coming from people like JJ Watt or Magic Johnson or Tom Brady, who have all invested in football clubs.
The, th-that's telling those stories and making sure that crossover with culture moment happens with soccer is, is absolutely what we lean into, you know, more than we do in other parts of the world, where it's much more rigid on, you know, your football knowledge or nothing else.
The other fun fact just about American fandom isYou know, I, I'm an Arsenal fan because it was the first match I went to ten years ago in Europe.
They beat Everton like five-nothing or five-one, and I just became an Arsenal fan. I bought the kit, and that was it.
American soccer fans follow on average six point one clubs, compared to Europeans, who follow one to one and a half clubs.
Well, because they-- it should be-- sports fandom should be inherit- I'm, I'm very biased on this. It should be inherited. It should be passed down. It's, it's, it's like religion.
It-- and, and with soccer, it's just not here. You know, young Americans are finding... I'm an Eagles fan too, Brian, by the way- Philadelphia Fever... because my parents are- I'm, I'm a Philadelphia Fever...
from Philly and Atlantic City. I am a Philadelphia Fever fan, which is the Philadelphia Major Indoor Soccer League [laughs] team in the nineteen eighties. You're going way back. You're going way back. Absolutely.
Yeah, the Philly Union are a good team now in MLS. But yeah, it's just not the way it is with Gen Z.
They're following players more than they're following clubs, and they're-- when a player like Mbappé goes from PSG to Real Madrid, all of a sudden Real Madrid jerseys become the best-selling jerseys in the world, and you've got kids running around every middle school in America wearing a Kylian Mbappé Real Madrid jersey, you know, to start the school year, like they were with Messi- Yeah...
you know, three years ago when he came to the US. Has Messi had the impact that, that he, he was supposed to have? 'Cause like I remember going back-- remember when Beckham, like, came to the US? Yeah, it's huge.
Like it was like- Yeah... it was painted to be a massive, like, event, and it kinda had an impact. I mean, you know- Yeah... he and Victoria established themselves as like here for their business interests and whatnot.
It, it- That, that helped... it did, it did for sure. It did for sure. And Messi has had an outsized impact, there's no question.
When you have, when you have the best player in the world, the GOAT, who, you know, playing on your home turf, that, that impact is just absolutely incredible.
The, the, the amount of Messi jerseys that are sold, you go to matches that are just absolutely bonkers and, and sold out when he's playing.
There's, there's no one like him, and there probably won't ever be anyone like him.
And he's, he's done a lot to not just prop up the game here, but attract other players to MLS and, and shine a spotlight on some other talent that's, that's been coming from other countries and while we continue to develop our talent here in- Yeah...
the US. Do you think it's important for the MLS to be like... I mean, it's made progress, right? Like, but at the same time, like, the level of play
in the MLS compared to what you see in the Premier League is, to me, it's not even close.
Like, I always just like, I'm not obviously like a soccer aficionado, but I've always noticed that like you know an Am- you know you're watching the American team and the Americans playing because the ball bounces a lot when they pass to each other, [laughs] and it's like completely glued to the, the, the grass when, when I see non-Americans playing soccer.
That's, that's basically- Yeah... my baseline. [laughs] I, I see-- I always compare European soccer to like a beautiful ballet, and South American soccer is like a street fight. It's like, it's like...
And mart- MMF fighting or whatever, MMA, you know, meets soccer. And America, yeah, look, the, the level of play is definitely not the same, but the stadiums are full. The fan experience is incredible.
The, the level of play is definitely getting better. We've had an awesome MLS Cup with some great matches. Messi has had some incredible goals, others have.
As we head to MLS Cup in a couple weeks, like, those are, those are great match-ups. And there's also great rivalries.
I, I went to El Trafico this year, which is LAFC versus LA Galaxy at BMO Stadium, and man, it was epic. There was not a person sitting for ninety minutes.
It was, whatever they have, twenty-five thousand people in that stadium, and it was just absolutely electric what was going on. And that's what I love about the game.
You know, again, the, the level of play aside, the fan experience and the fandom that we're building here in this country is rivals what happens in, in Europe and other markets. It's pretty incredible to see.
I encourage everybody to go to a game. The best thing you can do before the World Cup is go to an MLS or an NWSL match in your, in your, in your city and actually experience what it's like, and you will get it.
I took a very friend-- a, a very important CMO friend of mine to Copa America last year at Giants Stadium, MetLife, and we saw Argentina play Chile. He had no soccer IQ whatsoever.
I was telling him all about the game and what Copa America [chuckles] was on the way out. We got there, we're two minutes in, eighty thousand people all wearing Messi jerseys, and he's like, "Wags, I get it.
I fucking get it now. Like, this is amazing. I need soccer in my life." That's, that's how it happens. Okay. Cool. Go to a game. Go to a match.
I will, I will, I will go to my first game since the Philadelphia Fever, 1982. Let's go see the-- we can go see the Philly Union next year. We'll go see the Philly Union together. Okay. That's awesome.
So final thing is, like as I said, like it hasn't been the greatest stretch for the media business, right? And for those who consider...
Like 'cause I think one of my concerns with this business is that, you know, there's so much doom and gloom necessarily written about it, is that people will stop going into it.
And then you, you have like a doom loop that, that exists. Give me your case as a, a media industry lifer, a card-carrying media person, and that is meant with the highest of compliments, okay? Thank you. Wow.
Gi-give me, give me the, give me the case for why this is still a fun industry. Give me, give me a case for why it's a, it's a rewarding place to, to, to work.
You know, for people who wanna tell stories and market them and do things that are differentiated and create content and build audiences around those stories, like it still exists, and it's still gonna thrive.
Again, I think the format and maybe the way we go about doing it and creating those stories or broadcasting them or putting them out into the universe will continue to change with technology.
But if you're a creative person, if you ever, um, if you have a hankering for telling a good story, and you wanna put some fizzle around it for marketers and brands to support it, like there's, there's no better business.
And I'm still having a lot of fun. I love being in sports. I would encourage people to think about sports media business and, and ways that it can continue to change and evolve with everything that's happening with AI.
But there's, there's still a lot of opportunity out there, and stories need to be told, and audiences need to hear them, and they still crave them. And that's what I've always built.
You know, every- everywhere I've ever been the last twenty-five, thirty years has been just around that as a foundation, and I, I don't think that has to change. Yeah.
And I also think, like, it's funny 'cause I think that there's a big opportunity to take the sports media approach and, and apply it to other areas. You know- Yeah, good point...
'cause if you think about the, the, the entire ecosystem that surrounds various sports, like there are other lifestyle areas that that can be applied to. I mean, look, we're seeing that a little bit.
Like I think TBPN is really interesting 'cause they're basically applying, it's more sports center than it is CNBC to the tech industry. Like you can, you can do that across a bunch of different like areas.
So you know, this is a time of a lot of chaos.
I mean, I wrote about earlier today about how it's a time for hustlers, is th- anytime there's a lot of chaos and volatility, there's a lot of opportunities, and the hustlers find them. Totally. [chuckles] You nailed it.
Keep hustling. Keep hustling. Jason, thank you so much. Appreciate it. Thank you, Brian. Good to be here. [outro music]