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

With Premier League kickoff just a day away, Men in Blazers pulled off something it had never done before — live-streaming a Tottenham preseason match direct to North America and pulling in over 3x the concurrent viewership it had forecast.On this episode, Nick sits down with Roger Bennett, Co-Founder and CEO of the Men in Blazers Media Network, to unpack how MiB became one of the biggest independent football media businesses in North America — and what football's rapid rise in the US means for the sport's next 50 years.How Men in Blazers built its business on two first-mover bets: spotting football's rise in the US back in the early 2010s, and timing its launch around the emergence of podcastingInside the World Cup output that pushed MiB's streams up over 500% — 200+ podcasts plus TV shows, newsletters, alternate broadcasts and live eventsWhy NBC's 2013 Premier League deal — and its off-primetime kickoff slots — became an accidental masterstroke in growing US fandomMLS's move behind the Apple paywall, and why friction is the enemy of a fanbase that "finds football easily"America's multi-team fandom habit, and why Wrexham draws roughly seven times the average Premier League club's US followingDebrief: streaming Tottenham vs Hoffenheim live to North America ~10,000 concurrent viewers against an internal forecast of 2,800–3,200 — and what it signals for the next wave of club-direct broadcastsStreamTime Sports is thrilled to make the top 5 Sports Business podcasts. See the full list here: https://podcast.feedspot.com/sports_business_podcasts/