John Parker believes he has solved the riddle.
For years we’ve been told soccer is the sport of the future in the U.S. It’s the fastest-growing, has the most attractive demographics, skews younger, is the most cosmopolitan, blah, blah, blah.
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Yet the sport has struggled to find a broadcast audience, especially among the legacy media. NBC, ESPN and others, after failing to find viewers on cable TV, moved much of their soccer content to streaming platforms. Apple TV+, which is a streaming platform, has become so desperate for an audience for its MLS content that it removed its paywall. And most major newspapers, including this one, have dramatically rolled back regular coverage of the next great American sport for want of readers.
Parker, co-founder and chief executive of Kickback Soccer Media, said his idea isn’t intended to succeed where others have failed. It’s intended to succeed because it hasn’t been tried before.
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“What we focus on is less the product, more the audience. So American soccer fans,” Parker said. “There’s inherent difference between a soccer fan in the U.S. than there is a soccer fan in, say, England, where you grew up with the sport.”
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Kickback, which launched in December, isn’t a traditional newsroom but rather a multiplatform media company built around different hubs: Soccerwise, for example, will offer more traditional coverage of soccer in the U.S.; Kickback Committee features more than a dozen soccer personalities conversing with fans on topics and trends; First Touch, the company’s World Cup property, is designed to attract new fans with original material. Content from each platform will be distributed via podcasts, newsletters, social media and video on Instagram, Bluesky and YouTube.
Among the journalists and soccer personalities who will be featured regularly are David Gass, Tom Bogert, Jordan Angeli, Brianna Pinto and Susannah Fuller. Parker recently added MLS authority Matt Doyle to that lineup.
“Think of it as a funnel,” Parker said, with the content getting either broader or more tightly focused, depending on where you are in the funnel. That tailored approach, he added, recognizes U.S. soccer fans are at different points in their journey with the game.
And it already appears to be working. Two weeks ago satellite radio giant SiriusXM picked up Kickback’s entire slate of shows, hailing it as one of the nation’s fastest-growing independent soccer voices.
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More important to its success, however, may be the monetization model.
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“We are not news. We are not journalistic coverage,” said Parker, 38, whose preferred style of dress is soccer jerseys. “We are a modern digital media company, so we’re playing in a very different space.
“It’s not subscription-based. It’s not click-based. A lot of it’s going to be some form of licensing, brand partnership, direct to consumer.”
And while the individual audience for each hub may not be overwhelming, in the aggregate, Parker believes, the numbers will be impressive.
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“We’ve developed media properties that really focus more on specific sections of the American soccer audience,” he said. “Then for those media properties, it’s podcasts, it’s shows, it’s original social series, it’s documentaries. It’s all the forms of media that we can deliver to fans, usually through a digital format.”
Whether he got the formula right remains to be seen. But Parker and his investors certainly got the timing right. MLS, entering its 31st season this month, is one of the top 10 leagues in the world while the NWSL has the highest attendance of any women’s league on the planet. And in January, the Economist released a report that showed soccer passed baseball and is the third most-popular sport in the U.S., after football and basketball.
Looming over all of that is the World Cup, which will return to the U.S. in June and is certain to spike interest in soccer. The key will be holding on to that interest, Parker said.
“Everyone is talking about how the World Cup is an important moment. But the real question is what happens after,” he said. “If millions of people come in for 2026 and then leave, we’ve missed the opportunity.
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“We’re creating content that is attractive to longtime fans but also captures new fans and keeps them on their journey of connecting with American soccer.”
Also unique to the model is Kickback’s promise to devote 3% of gross revenue to support of initiatives aimed at bringing new fans into the game. Because the more the fan base grows, the larger Kickback’s potential audience grows.
“There’s an opportunity to speak to a broader audience through some of this content that’s a little bit more relevant for those who are starting to get into it,” Parker said. “The great thing about how we set it up is some of those people are going to love the broad storytelling and they’re going to want to find out more.
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“And we have an option for them, right? We’ll move them down the funnel.”
⚽ You have read the latest installment of On Soccer with Kevin Baxter. The weekly column takes you behind the scenes and shines a spotlight on unique stories. Listen to Baxter on this week’s episode of the “Corner of the Galaxy” podcast.
This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
