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Sebastian Tomich, Dan Weinberg and Sara Fischer // Soccer Upfront (Media Forum) - Part 1
15 Plays13 days ago
In this first of back-to-back special episodes, Kit Magazine presents a conversation with Sebastian Tomich of The Athletic and Dan Weinberg of CBS Sports—two at the very forefront of industry transformation—as moderated by Axios media reporter Sara Fischer.
The segment was recorded at Frankfurt Kurnit in Lower Manhattan on June 5, night two of the 2025 Tribeca Festival.
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Transcript
Introduction to KIT Magazine and Event Alignment
00:00:10
Speaker
Kit Magazine, the publication behind this series, was inspired by a B2B convening, the soccer tournament for the media and creative communities that's part of the Tribeca lineup each year. So it all but stands to reason that we've had our eye on doing an event of our own since day one.
00:00:24
Speaker
Not only is it a chance to express IRL, our somewhat unconventional content and sensibilities, it's an opportunity to bring together, both on stage and in the room, the exceptional cross-sector cohort we're proud to call our community.
00:00:35
Speaker
All that said, that our first event of its scale and profile should align with Tribeca and underscore our industry roots is decidedly poetic.
Industry Transformations with Sebastian Tomich and Dan Weinberg
00:00:43
Speaker
In this first of back-to-back special episodes, we bring you a conversation with Sebastian Tomic of The Athletic and Dan Weinberg of CBS Sports, two at the very forefront of industry transformation, as moderated by Axios media reporter Sarah Fisher.
00:00:56
Speaker
The segment was recorded at Frankfurt Kernet, Lower Manhattan on June 5th, night two of the 2025 Tribeca Festival.
00:01:07
Speaker
Hello everyone. Thank you for coming out today. I appreciate it. This is the first time a mic has ever been too low for me. So that's exciting. I am joined by two people who need no introduction to this crowd. They are total experts on sports media.
00:01:20
Speaker
We have Sebastian Tomich, who is the chief commercial officer of The Athletic and Dan Weinberg, who's the EDP of programming at CBS Sports. A round of applause for our panel. um
00:01:33
Speaker
are So today we're talking about soccer and journalism.
CBS Sports' Expansion into Soccer
00:01:40
Speaker
I will start with you, Dan. Is soccer and journalistic coverage of soccer a good business?
00:01:48
Speaker
It's a great business. ah First of all, hi, everybody. Nice to see you all. And thank you for having us. So I think it's a great business to cover. And I think the evidence of that is the growth that we've seen around the sport at CBS Sports.
00:02:03
Speaker
um I was sitting and thinking about this recently. um It's 2025. Five and a half years ago in 2019, the grand total of soccer matches on CBS Sports was zero, if you can imagine that.
00:02:18
Speaker
um And this is CBS Sports. We've been around for decades, 60, 70 plus years. And i think we saw an opportunity to try and super serve soccer fans, not only in this country, but around the world.
00:02:32
Speaker
And that
Investment in Soccer by The Athletic
00:02:33
Speaker
speaks to the power of the business ah side. You said zero five and a half years ago. how many today? Doing over 2,000 matches annually, um it's pretty unbelievable in our business to ramp up that quickly, that holistically.
00:02:50
Speaker
We go from zero to 100 like that in you know basically half a dozen or so years. um It's almost unheard When you think of CBS Sports, you think of Super Bowls, the NFL, college football, college basketball, golf.
00:03:03
Speaker
Soccer was not a part of our ecosystem. So why make the investment? What gave you the confidence that it was going to have? off Well, I think the popularity of it speaks for itself. ah we look at Whenever we look at ah acquisitions, we look at trying to capture new people, new fans, a wider fan basis. And when you think about this sport and the fans that consume this sport, three things come to mind.
00:03:30
Speaker
And they're super important in our business. Number one, they're young. soccer has the youngest fan base of any of the sports that we cover at CBS Sports. um The average fan base for our fans of this sport is under 40.
00:03:44
Speaker
And the other sports, the main pillars at CBS Sports, they skew older than that. They skew older 40. You're talking about golf. You're talking about football. You're talking about basketball. These are older. skewing sports. That's always super important. You want to find that next generation of people that are going to have affinity for who you are what your brand is um and what you stand for. that's number one.
00:04:05
Speaker
Number two is they're diverse. you Soccer fans ah come from all nationalities, all quarters of the globe. um And that's obviously something that we're seeking to grow. We're seeking to grow our diversity always.
00:04:17
Speaker
And then number three, and we've seen this now really, really clearly, is that they are as they as much of a digital first community. content-seeking fan base as maybe any sport out there.
00:04:31
Speaker
um That started in Europe before it started here in this country, but we're seeing it now all the time between what we're doing digitally, what we're doing socially, and the fact that every single one of those 2,000-plus matches I referred to are housed on Paramount+, which is a digital direct-to-consumer platform, and it has become a magnet for soccer fans in this country. So think about those three things.
00:04:52
Speaker
Youth, diversity, digital first. It speaks to where the business is going and it speaks to why it was a really important decision for us to make. So
Soccer's Growth in the US and Business Potential
00:05:02
Speaker
about the athletic, soccer, how big of a part of that is your business? Like, is it more than 10% of your revenue is tied to soccer-related content? How do you measure that?
00:05:13
Speaker
Well, to answer your first question, is ah covering soccer journalistically a good business? ah If that is not true, I am totally screwed and I'll be out of a job. and So we've got the largest soccer newsroom in the world and in terms of coverage and ratio in the newsrooms. It has, if I was to index,
00:05:32
Speaker
um total fandom in the US to the amount of staff we have against it. Soccer is going to index the highest in terms of the amount of staff to fans. We are right now investing ahead ah potentially of where we think it's going. So we're more investing in the potential um It's a little weird. I'm half international. I have grew up in Northern England. So for me, it's very odd to speak about football as a bet.
00:05:57
Speaker
Like it's so ingrained in culture there. Football is life. It's hard to say this is some emerging sport. um It is in the U.S. s It very much is.
00:06:08
Speaker
i mean, if there's 83 million fans in the U.S. and after the World Cup, let's hope there's 120 million. um Knock on wood. um As it relates to the NFL, it is still on the up.
00:06:21
Speaker
And then in terms of how we cover it, the data proves out. i mean, the top five most followed teams on the Athletic are all international soccer teams. So it's the obvious ones you can think of.
00:06:33
Speaker
Man United, Real Madrid, Barcelona, Arsenal. And then it flip-flops at the end between whatever Premier League club is finishing in the top four. ah Admittedly, just again, might show my cards.
00:06:44
Speaker
I am a ah romantic and I love pain and the masochist. So I'm a diehard English national team fan. um I love watching teams lose on penalty kicks. I'm a Manchester United fan.
00:06:55
Speaker
So this is a spectacle of time of pain. But I will say the beauty of Man United, just to speak to how
World Cup's Impact on Soccer Popularity in the US
00:07:01
Speaker
diehard the fans are, and any other sport in the U.S., we do see extreme seasonality with fandom and how well the teams are performing.
00:07:09
Speaker
With Man United, it doesn't matter how horrible they are. It could be a story on the worst game in history, the loss to Tottenham, the loss to Crystal Bay, go on with all these losses. and They're always the top most read stories on the site.
00:07:21
Speaker
You don't seem to be scarred or affected by it at all. It only grows my love. So this is for you a potential opportunity. And i guess the question being, if it's a potential opportunity, what is the opportunity? Is it advertising against the content? Is it selling merch and partnerships with the content? Like how do you monetize soccer eventually?
00:07:42
Speaker
the same way we monetize any sport. um So diehard fandom equals subscriber bases. So that's great. Subscriber bases equal ad revenue. We're not in the all the other businesses yet, but we would love to be.
00:07:54
Speaker
and i think anytime there's just a hyper-engaged audience that's coming to something religiously every day. and I think you know we've seen this particularly in smaller markets in the NFL.
00:08:06
Speaker
You have markets like Buffalo and Green Bay, basically every cold weather sport, you see that diehard repeat fandom. In football, you see that across the board. um If you are a fan of Real Madrid, you are coming every single day.
00:08:19
Speaker
um That like avid, avid fandom, ah we can all keep talking and go on for hours on this. But um in terms of how that translates to business, that is and that is always going to be the best business in the year.
00:08:30
Speaker
yeah When
Strategic Acquisitions by CBS Sports
00:08:31
Speaker
you think of avid fandom, I...
00:08:35
Speaker
I don't know, maybe you're the best person to think about this because you grew up in England and you live here now. I don't know that we have the equivalent in this country of what you see when you go to the Milan Derby, for example.
00:08:49
Speaker
um It's just a feeling and an energy and a passion that I was trying to explain it to somebody the other day. And I said, take Ohio State, Michigan, Duke Carolina, Army, Navy, roll it all into one. And that's what it feels like. That's a good kind of idea.
00:09:04
Speaker
Because the the thing that I could compare it most to in this country is that hyper crazy college rivalry. But it's every single match as opposed to Duke Place Carolina twice a year.
00:09:16
Speaker
And it's nuts, but it's twice a year. um I was in Munich this past weekend and just before the match, local time was 9 o'clock at night and I was sort of roaming around the city a little bit, went to the Hofbrau house, had a beer and a Coke and pretzel and whatever. and so um And in the Hofbrau house,
00:09:39
Speaker
In Munich, it was sort of divided. you have the PSG people here. you have the injured people here. They were chanting and singing and screaming and yelling. and It was just, you know, I just thought to myself in that moment, this is unique.
00:09:51
Speaker
This is this sport, these types of fans, this event. I don't know that it exists in our country the way we see it around the world. So are you bullish or bearish that the World Cup brings that level fandom to the... is I am bullish?
00:10:06
Speaker
I'm incredibly... The same level? Yeah, incredibly bullish. I think the World Cup is a signature event in the sporting calendar for the decade. And I think it brings out the national pride in a way that you know few other events
Comparing World Cup to College Sports and Olympics
00:10:21
Speaker
ever can or ever do.
00:10:23
Speaker
And what I think we're seeing in this country now is more of an interest in the international game than we ever have before. And frankly, I would like to think anyway, we're part of the reason why.
00:10:34
Speaker
There's more international soccer available to consume in the United States today, now, than ever before by a wide margin. and So you're seeing much more of that sensibility come to our country. And I think when the World Cup comes here, it's just going to be you know incredible.
00:10:49
Speaker
Can I just follow with you on that? How did... ah CBS Paramount make the decisions around which leagues they were going after? So UEFA and Champions. I mean, I know NBC has always owned Premier League, but you know ESPN has gone big in Bundesliga. How are you making those calls and where you place your bets?
00:11:06
Speaker
Part of it just deals with when the rights come up and what the competition is. But maybe the best way to answer that question is the first move that we made was the Champions League. The first partnership we did was with UEFA, the signature club competition of the world.
00:11:21
Speaker
We actually just over the weekend announced that we now have the exclusive partnership for the Women's UEFA Champions League as well. So we decided to create a central building block around that specific competition.
00:11:34
Speaker
um It took a little while. There were multiple cycles where, frankly, it didn't happen. And then it happened. And I think that was the anchor that we needed to build our portfolio. Because when you have the rights to the Champions League, as everybody in this room knows, you are instantly a player in this space.
00:11:53
Speaker
And all of the other leagues out there now are more apt to want to be your partner because that is your anchor property. So I think it grew out from there. yeah Any other leaks that you're eyeing when the rights come up that you'd like to get your hands on?
00:12:06
Speaker
Anytime a league sprites come up, we'll always take a look at it. kirow We'll always want to evaluate how it could be an asset to our business. So without, you know, without talking specifics, when those opportunities come up, we'll be in the mix. A good professional
Monetization Strategies in Soccer
00:12:21
Speaker
dodge.
00:12:22
Speaker
Seb, we talked about the World Cup. Do you think, I think everyone here could probably agree that this will drive a ton of fandom in the U.S. in 2026. But do you think that it's going to live on after 2020?
00:12:36
Speaker
think fandom here will just be different back to what you were just saying. I think sports is tribal and we've never surveyed our audience and said, you know, would you be willing to die for your team?
00:12:47
Speaker
Be an interesting one. um You know, I can just say anecdotally, like from experience of going to all these different sites, you do this too. Like single sport towns act differently than multi-sport towns.
00:12:58
Speaker
ah Sports fandom is very tied to your family and how many generations have followed it. It's number one reason why someone follows a team is because your parents followed a team. So for teams like Buffalo and Green Bay and Philly is not a single sport town, but it acts like one.
00:13:12
Speaker
um You know, the Eagles have a special place in their heart. Those are fans that are willing to do things for their team. They might end up in jail. ah In the UK, you have a lot of that. Like it's a very my experience there is it's very binary.
00:13:25
Speaker
You know, you're either a rugby or a football fan or maybe you're a cricket fan if you're super posh. Uh, but it's not, you know, it's not like here where you're following the NBA, the NFL. And I think as football comes into the U S and we have the world cup, I think the relationship between these teams and the fans is going to be a little different.
00:13:44
Speaker
You know, it's not local. I don't think that keep fans in Philly, it's going to be an and not an or they're not going to dish the Eagles and say, I'm a giant fan of Liverpool. um you know just from the numbers again i think since the 94 world cup we've had fans soccer fans in the us i'm just go back and forth between soccer and football because it's confusing uh at least 10x um it's not gonna 10x again because that math wouldn't work but we have 83 million fans in the us heading into this world cup think it's safe to say we're going to get double digit percentage increase after um you know for our numbers
00:14:16
Speaker
Football fans love the big players. They love the U.S. players that are playing abroad. They love following Messi and Ronaldo and the other stars. Neymar, or used to be Neymar. Mbappe and others.
00:14:28
Speaker
And they love following the big teams. I think that continues. um i think I don't think you'll come out of the World Cup and you'll have all of a sudden a giant surge in Crystal Palace fans. um That would be nice for that, but I don't i don't think it's going to happen.
00:14:40
Speaker
But I think there's going to be a ton of growth. Where I do think there's a lot of opportunity is on the commercial side, of the marketing side. i think marketers are still trying to figure this out. If I just compare it to the NFL, which is the most over-merchandised sport,
00:14:54
Speaker
in history. There's so much money flooding in. up and I think football hasn't even even close to scratch the surface in that. And if you look at the spending around it and the community that's built around the sport, I think as the business side of that gets built up, I think you'll start to see a lot more of this fandom grow. And it on your side
World Cup Format and Viewership Engagement
00:15:13
Speaker
of the business, and I would imagine the more business flows in, the more revenue flows in, the more those rights are worth, the more you want to bid for them.
00:15:20
Speaker
And to me, it's very simple. you're never you You can't grow fandom until you introduce casual fans or people that aren't exposed to the game to the game. And the World Cup is a signature moment to do that.
00:15:33
Speaker
Between the promotion that will be attached to it, between the games themselves, between the national pride that is associated with it, you're going to bring new eyeballs to the sport. It just happens every World Cup.
00:15:44
Speaker
And I think, obviously, um you know this next one is a will be a huge moment in the same way. It's so, sorry just keep going on this. The World Cup is just so different than regular season football. So I think, as you were saying, I think it was really good you comped it to college sports.
00:15:59
Speaker
I think watching Premier League football and other leagues is very similar to watching college sports where every single game is a playoff game. That's so unique compared to a lot of US sports. So, you know, by week two, week three, if Liverpool drops three points, we've already got something to talk about. And there's a reason to tune in on Saturday.
00:16:15
Speaker
The World Cup is completely different. I think it's more into the Olympics. You're to draw on a huge amount of casual fans. It's more of a cultural community festivity. I think fans are going to come in and come out. I think it's its own sort of microcosm within sports. I think coming out of that,
00:16:30
Speaker
we still are going to have growth of soccer fandom. I think they're related, but I don't expect coming out of the World Cup again that you know the Premier League going to surge 50%. what what ah The last point for me on this, what it does, it's that tournament format creates urgency.
00:16:44
Speaker
That's what it does. Every game has stakes. every game Every game has drama. Every game has urgency. And by the way, not all that dissimilar with what we just saw with the Champions League having wrapped up. First year, a brand new format where there were more clubs, where there were bigger clubs, where there were bigger clubs playing each other earlier in the tournament, where there was a new...
00:17:04
Speaker
um prelude to the knockout phase. We called it in our shop match day eight, which wound up being one of the most consumed days we had the most dramatic days. We had the galatso treatment that we gave. It was super exciting from the beginning to the end stakes, the drama.
00:17:19
Speaker
That's what you have with a tournament like that. And of course with the pro company, it's three and a half weeks, four weeks, you know, so it's condensed and it's super dramatic. So,
Leveraging Social Media for Global Fan Engagement
00:17:29
Speaker
um,
00:17:29
Speaker
There's no question that it brings in new new eyeballs. There's no question that it creates growth. And frankly, um you know I think this may be what you were referring to. We're banking on that. you know we we've we're We're partners with UEFA long past the World Cup. We're partners with a lot of our um soccer partners long past the World Cup.
00:17:47
Speaker
The bump that we anticipate for the World Cup is absolutely something we're looking forward to. Thinking about how you're going to serve the soccer fans throughout this big bump, every sport has a different medium that sort of attracts people. The NBA is super big on social. I think about baseball. It is so heavily consolidated in local rights.
00:18:05
Speaker
I think about football, big and national broadcast. Like what are the products that you think work very well uniquely for soccer specifically? I mean, it's not that unique compared to any other sport. I think the one, um there's lots of things I'm super excited about.
00:18:21
Speaker
and can we do the, the like audience show of hands thing for the term? How many of you have been to a world cup match? way more than that. i guess this is a very qualified room thinking about it since I called a soccer up front. I went to my first World Cup at Doha.
00:18:36
Speaker
um I'm an absolutely massive football fan. And i like I remember getting into the stadium in one of the knockout matches, like literally about to cry. It was so fun. I was like, this is a Sabraco versus Spain.
00:18:47
Speaker
First World Cup I'd been to. So made the energy in the stadium is just so, is nothing else like it. Like back to the, would you die for your team? These fans are willing to die for their team. um so i translate that into what works and the urgency um there's a little bit of that i think just the power of live here is stronger than ever the stakes um the things that i'm really interested in for this world cup and where we're actively trying to program around are just a lot of crossover um the thing i think i to celebrate another media company a competitive years i thought the nbc did an incredible job with the on fix how dare you yeah yeah
00:19:26
Speaker
I did, absolutely. they did They did so well at the crossover appeal. So take someone who has a lot of interest in other fields demonstrate that they had interest in the sport there and bring their audience over.
00:19:36
Speaker
And I think the thing that's interesting about this year's World Cup, for example, we work with a lot of different NFL players who are giant fans of football. They have their own independent audiences that may or may not be friends of football, but we can bring them over with us, our total audience grows. And I think that because this event is going to be so huge, the crossover appeal, think is going to be massive.
00:19:58
Speaker
and I am actually, i was going to tee you up perfectly. I think you did something similar for the Champions League final. we Are you referring to our Beckham cats? That's it right. Yes. um I love this question. I'll tell you why.
00:20:10
Speaker
Because it gives me a chance to talk about all the great ways that we are distributing our content. there's There's two things that are unique about it. One, we have 24-hour, seven-day-a-week network that we saw a need for a couple of years ago. It's just over two years old, the Galazzo network.
00:20:26
Speaker
and it's very good by the way. It's great. It super serves. Thank you for saying that. Appreciate it. He's promoting me. I love it. It super serves soccer fans. It was a need that we saw in the marketplace. We've created you know new ah studio franchises around we do matches i mean it. So you asked, what are we going to do to cover it?
00:20:44
Speaker
That will be day in, day out, every hour of every day, and we will cover it as we do every hour of every day, even 65. The second thing that we've seen that has been really, really successful for us um tied mostly predominantly to our ah Champions League Today show is our use of social.
00:21:02
Speaker
You referenced that with the NBA. I would argue that our sport, soccer, is... as good of a match for social as anything out there. And maybe we've struck lightning in a bottle of here because UCL today has really, really resonated with fans, not only in this country, in this country but around the world.
00:21:21
Speaker
And that's been through the vehicle of social. the The clips from the show that we put out on social are literally getting billions of video views, billions of views. It is incredible.
00:21:32
Speaker
Since the start of this past season, um You know, we're talking about, we did seven, there were 700 different social media posts specific to our UCLA Today show, each of which did over a million views. 700 different posts, over a million views. It translated to well over a billion views just from that show.
00:21:56
Speaker
So social for us has become a massive, massive um tool for us. ah in terms of how we
Emerging Soccer Stars and Global Audience Potential
00:22:02
Speaker
distribute. And Ty, mostly to that show, because the uniqueness of that show, the talent, the dynamic they have together, the bond they have with the fans, um you know, it really, really lends itself to it.
00:22:11
Speaker
Talking about social, Seb mentioned Ronaldo and Messi. Like, are we ever going to get to a world where when we think about U.S. fandom of football, it's not just the Ronaldos and the Messis, and it's going to be, you know, level two players? Because that's what we have right now with the NBA and with the NFL, but not so much with football.
00:22:29
Speaker
Do you feel that way about the NBA? I do feel that way. There's only five people on the court at once. You get to know the weakest player. I think we were just looking at the numbers on this. So, um yeah, survey wise, if you look globally at people's sports fans, most favorite athletes, 50% of the answers globally will be Messi or Ronaldo.
00:22:48
Speaker
If you go to the U.S., they're number seven and ten. And number one, two, three is Mahomes, LeBron, Curry. So right away, you have a big opportunity. I don't think that I'm always going to bet on stars in any sport as a huge audience driver.
00:23:02
Speaker
um The thing I do get excited about, particularly with this World Cup, is the next generation. Messi and Ronaldo are really hanging on. that One more World Cup. They're going to be wheeling them out.
00:23:13
Speaker
um the the A little bit of the challenge there, it's like, you know, I i could do another show of hands of how many people have heard Kylian Mbappe speak. That's pretty good.
00:23:26
Speaker
I have not heard of Speak very often. I mean, it's a he's a very quiet man. um And you could say the same for Messi. You don't have the same type of publicity for these athletes in the US.
00:23:37
Speaker
and I'm very curious heading this World Cup if you took the top, you know, players, emerging players in different teams, you know, Florian Wurz on Germany, you know, how many people know him as a household name? ah Nico, go ahead. Let's say how much of that is a language barrier?
00:23:52
Speaker
I'm not sure. I think a lot of this is just... I think Messi Ronaldo have just been so dominant for so long. um Even in the last World Cup, Ronaldo was being benched, and he's still dominating the airwaves.
00:24:05
Speaker
Obviously, Messi did the unthinkable, and that was an incredible time. um So back to your question, I think for this World Cup, think it would be interesting story about the next generation of players, you know, to tease our own product.
00:24:17
Speaker
um We do a lot of that.
Data-Driven Coverage Plans for The Athletic
00:24:18
Speaker
We basically database every single player. We work with Football Manager, and you guys have played that game for the serious nerds ah to really gather all the data from every player. And then we start, we come out with a thing called the radar before the World Cup. And we say, here are the players you need to watch. And then we back it up with an insane amount of stats and to give you any kind of bragging rights at a bar to say you're the smartest fan out there.
00:24:38
Speaker
So is that data play something that we should be expecting more of at The Athletic? And I ask because you just did this big, intensive NFL draft data report. Like, is this how you all will journalistically distinguish some of your soccer coverage?
00:24:51
Speaker
We're going to marshalling the whole newsroom around this. So won't just be, like I said before, we still have the largest soccer newsroom in the world, but we will pull every single team around the World Cup. The opportunity is that big. i mean, every number, I think you had said this already, it's the most washed sports game in history. Every World Cup final, it beats itself in terms of a record.
00:25:09
Speaker
think the last U.S. World Cup was the most attended World Cup ever, and that was in 1994. We're going to smash those records. ah The last World Cup final, I think, what was it?
00:25:20
Speaker
two a half billion people had watched at least one game. These numbers are just astounding. um So I pull that back to what's the audience opportunity for us? Every single team in the newsroom is going to play a role um unless they literally are so are so football literate it's inappropriate for me to pull a journal. They shouldn't be working at the Athletic. I think it's just a diehard hockey fan.
00:25:42
Speaker
ah And then the amount of stories that we can pull um back to, and I think Colossa does a great job of this. like I watch it every weekend. um I'm viewing this as more of an Olympics-like event where you're going to have to create, as a media company, you need to create as many entry points as possible for where a first-time fan can get excited.
00:26:03
Speaker
So there's the angle with the stars. Let's try to get you excited about Florian Verts. You know, he's German. It's going be a little boring. ah Nico Williams on Spain. Like, let's get you excited about those players.
00:26:14
Speaker
um We just launched a sports leadership desk. um We are very likely going to host a sports leadership conference right before the World Cup in New York to talk about what it means to lead on the field. And we're 100% going to see that around football.
00:26:27
Speaker
um that's ah That's a business angle. If you might be passionate out business and leadership and spend all of your time on LinkedIn, but you haven't watched a soccer game yet, I'm going blow you over. And you take that across that fashion and style cooking travel.
00:26:39
Speaker
We want to create all these different pathways because, again, to get from 83 million fans who are most likely going wash it no matter what to 150 million fans that we want to shoot for as a target.
00:26:49
Speaker
These are the things we'll have. And on that,
Collaborations Enhancing World Cup Coverage
00:26:51
Speaker
quickly, on the crossover there, when you say looking at fashion, style, travel, cooking, ah does that mean that you're going to work with the New York Times? Like, would we see one day Messi's favorite recipe on NYT? Colob Ultra.
00:27:07
Speaker
Didn't answer my question, but okay. um Yeah. If you would work with us, that'd be great. um You know, football players are, ah ah come with special entourages that make it a little harder.
00:27:19
Speaker
um I think I remember when we had Mbappe into the newsroom and he brought 20 people with him. So it's a little, little trickier than, than in the U S and they really back to the data. like these are,
00:27:31
Speaker
the fandom for these players is astronomically more than your typical us athlete they're really superhuman um yes we the new york times is going to cover the shit out of the world cup uh and we'll work with them on that we will 100 do the geeky stuff for you know i'm a sports nerd i'll spend all day in graphics and interactives trying to figure out who's going to win this game i haven't even thought about the bet i don't bet for the record but The betting side of this will be big.
00:27:57
Speaker
It'll be a very, very big event. And for those who want to place bets on a sport that they might not have watched regularly all year, I suggest that they smarten up and get in the data. we I'll just add one thing, just when you talked about the popularity of the athletes.
00:28:12
Speaker
We see that every show we do with Thierry Henry. Thierry Henry obviously is an icon in the game. And i as you were saying that, I thought of the moment a few, i guess a month or so ago, a month and a half ago, for the Pound I-US game that we had on our air and Pound I scored the game winner, um you know,
00:28:32
Speaker
the last minute of the game. And the goal scored, literally continued running behind the goal, jumped on our set, we had a set right behind the goal and celebrated the goal with Thierry Henry live. I mean, celebrated the goal in his face, screaming, go check it out. If haven't seen it, it's one of the, one the most exciting moments and it speaks to the global popularity. We,
00:28:51
Speaker
interviewed after the game and he said i just realized i was staring at my idol and i grew up watching him and loving him and there he was and i thought to myself what better way to celebrate this glorious moment for me and for my country than to celebrate with one of my heroes an icon so we see it all the time we saw it um this past weekend with the beckham cast that you mentioned earlier it was a a an initiative that we did with with David Beckham and his friends, Beckham and Friends is what we called it. And and it was just sort of an alt cast. They watch along with the game and he's got some pretty cool friends, Tom Cruise, Tom Brady, and you know some some good friends. Casual? Very casual. alex
00:29:31
Speaker
But again, it was you know just him walking through the halls of the stadium. You just felt his presence and how e what he meant to other people there around him. and it is ah It's pretty amazing. It
Growing Coverage of Women's Soccer
00:29:44
Speaker
was pretty transcendent.
00:29:46
Speaker
Seb, we only have few minutes left, so I want to make sure I ask about this. have to take the full 40 minutes. so We're almost there. It's like flown by. ah Women's sports. The Athletic has doubled down on your coverage of women's sports.
00:29:56
Speaker
What should we expect for your coverage of the women's side of soccer leading up to the World Cup? i I don't know what the latest stats are. I mean, last time we were out of here talking about the Women's World Cup, we had two of the four.
00:30:09
Speaker
There was only four full-time women's soccer writers in the U.S. We had two of them. um We now have five. ah So that number is growing. We'll keep covering that NWSL like we cover any other ah sports league.
00:30:21
Speaker
Interest in that has definitely been growing thanks to CBS's broadcasting. That's growing the interest in the sport. um I don't... i don't expect like a big jump because of the men's world cup however ah the women's world cup just like the men's world cup breaks its own viewership records every single year um so i expect the same kind of success we'll be laying the groundwork for it as always um you know we've got i'll say we have uh a very a humble chip on our shoulder about a lot of these things because we've invested from the start.
00:30:53
Speaker
um you know I feel like in from a media perspective, um there is it is underrepresented. I don't mean women's sports, I mean football as a whole in the US.
00:31:04
Speaker
um I view our products as very complimentary. um you know i love watching the panel with Carragher and Henri and they're goofing around and talking crap about Man United regularly. It's good stuff. ah And it's a different type of relationship with The Athletic. Like it's, you it's definitely a little bit deeper. and I'm a huge fan of Roger's show is going to be on the ah I've been listening to that since back when it was on NBC.
00:31:29
Speaker
and So I think, yeah, there's, there's some OG players here. that would say similar to men's football and women's sports, who've been covering for a long time, and who I think will have a little bit of a chip on our shoulder when every media company rushes to the table and probably has a strategy meeting next March and says, what are the world Cup?
00:31:48
Speaker
We'll be like, we're here all along. We got you. and So I think we're set up for this. This is going to be a massive moment for the Women's World Cup. We'll be set up for it too. And Dan, just want to get your reflection because you all do have that NWSL relationship.
00:32:02
Speaker
What have you learned from broadcasting women's soccer here that you're going to apply the World Cup? Well, I would just point to how much of it we're doing. um You know, but like we talked before, a couple thousand matches a year, multiple hundreds of those matches are on the women's side.
00:32:18
Speaker
Obviously, we've been a partner of the NWSL for multiple years now, going back five, six years. We've got a great partnership with them now across all of our different platforms. We're covering them on Galazzo every day. We're covering them on our digital platform socially every day.
00:32:32
Speaker
Obviously, we're doing matches linear. We're doing matches on the digital side. um We're doing their championship game. we're We're crowning their champion and we're doing it in prime time on CVS, which was the first of its kind move when we made it.
00:32:44
Speaker
Um, and that's only one of multiple leagues on the women's side that we're covering. So, um, I'm not sure if this is ah the answer you're looking for, but we're going to treat it like any huge event, men's or women's. It's a championship of the world, and we're going to give it the appropriate weight, just like we do every day with all of the matches that we have in the women's game. You know, as I mentioned earlier, we just announced this new deal with UEFA on the women's side.
00:33:09
Speaker
We've got other ah partnerships in the European club. um ah club leagues for the women. So um I liked your phrase, chip on your shoulder. I wouldn't say that we necessarily have a chip our shoulder. Humble on your shoulder. I wouldn't necessarily say that, but we've um we've dedicated a tremendous amount of resources to it and we'll continue to do that because it's clearly growing in importance and clearly growing in prominence and we're a big part of that.
00:33:31
Speaker
At Axios, we'd like to end
Personal Stories and Soccer's Cultural Impact
00:33:32
Speaker
all of our newsletters with one fun thing. So maybe we could end this with one fun thing. if you had to pick the best soccer match you've ever witnessed live and said it can't be the Morocco game that you saw. I had another one. Give me a good example. What it was the best game you've ever witnessed live?
00:33:48
Speaker
Yeah. So, you know, I basically camped out in Doha for the entire tournament and that was half work. And then I might've taken some vacation afterwards. I'm like, I'm not going home. um And I followed the English team, but I managed to, Doha was,
00:34:02
Speaker
you know throwing geopolitical stuff off to the side is an incredible place to watch football because you could go to three games in one day. We will not have that luxury in the US unless you have you know a supersonic PJ that can go from Mexico City to New York on a day. um the I managed to get a ticket to Argentina, Netherlands.
00:34:22
Speaker
and I bought it on my own dime. I was just by myself, so I didn't have those primo hospitality seats that you get with work and ended up buying a seat right behind the goal. And I was in the Dutch fans area and I remember texting my friends, sending a picture out and they said, man, I hope it goes to Pendley Kicks.
00:34:39
Speaker
And I don't know you guys remember that game. Netherlands equalized in the 107th minute and I was with all the Dutch fans just watching just how like they like they were proposing to each other. Like it was literally like like life had and and then we made it penalty kicks and if you remember martinez was doing his antics and i remember getting a text from my friend like he would they were flipping the coin with who where's the penalty kicks gonna be and if you can imagine if you're on one side of the goal the penalty kicks on the other goal are going to be a much different experience and i remember that that flip of the coin and i saw them walking towards me and i was like oh my god i'm gonna see messi kick a penalty and messi kicked the not winning penalty i think it was the fourth but they ended up winning and it was
00:35:21
Speaker
I didn't really want either team to win because I'm an English fan, but it was most incredible experience. Yes. Always buy the tickets is the lesson learned from that. I have two answers. My first one, you probably won't count. It was when my 10-year-old daughter got recruited to play goalie on a moment's notice and made a big save. thought if our Cathy, you know, probably would like You know, so that's not great. I've been very lucky. I've been to a lot of these um European club games over the last several years since we've been brought into the fold here, whether it's Milan or Munich or Madrid and Manchester. So um but believe it or not, I'm going to go the way back machine.
00:36:01
Speaker
Who in this room even knows who the New York Cosmos were? Anybody? The Air League of the soccer up front. Yeah, so ah I was maybe, I don't know, five, six years old. I don't even remember who they played. I don't know that I can name any other team in the NASL from the 70s, but it was maybe 1970 or 1978. I went with my dad and my two brothers that we saw, Pelé, Beckenbauer, Carlos Alberto. I mean, you're talking about legends of legends.
00:36:26
Speaker
So when you're a little kid and you see that, you see Pelé walk by you, that's pretty memorable. So I don't remember the game. don't remember the score. I just remember seeing those people and thinking, wow. And now, you know, 40 odd years later, I realized that that was a slice of time, a moment in time that not many people got to experience. So don't know that's the answer you're looking for because it's out Champions League final or whatever, but that's the one that popped in. No, you remember the feeling more than you remember the score. totally goes to show. Thank you, guys. This is awesome. Just a few of the things we learned today.
00:36:56
Speaker
CBS Zero matches in 2020 to over 2,000 now, and all of them are on Paramount+. plus It was the popularity of the fan base that gave you confidence that you should invest.
00:37:07
Speaker
Three things about soccer fans. They are young, they're diverse, and they're digital first, which is super important. um said said we have about 83 million soccer fans in the u.s hoping to get to like 120 million after the world cup the world cup is unlike anything else i think that's the biggest takeaway today it is like the olympics on steroids the closest thing we could compare european football to here in the u.s is it maybe college fandom but it doesn't even come close which is just so wild um i think Talking about what the fandom looks like, Seb said that was interesting.
00:37:43
Speaker
Globally, you know, 50% people's favorite athletes are Messi and Ronaldo. But if you look at it at the U.S., it's so much different. You have the Travis Kelseys of the world and U.S. football players. i Very excited that both of you are super invested in women's football and women's soccer. We look forward to that.
00:37:59
Speaker
And um a round of applause for these two men with humble chips on their shoulders. are
00:38:11
Speaker
are
00:38:18
Speaker
The second interview of our June 5th gathering, Roger Bennett of Men & Blazers with 72 & Sonny's Matt Jarvis, will publish in the coming days. With immense gratitude to our partners, Frankfort Kurnit, and to our speakers, our guests in the audience, and to you, our listeners here, this is Evan Howell signing off for KIT Magazine and Studio Santiago.