The Men In Blazers may be looking to upgrade their suits. The soccer-focused media company has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round backed by a number of media, sports and entertainment heavyweights.
The round is being led by Marc Lasry’s Avenue Sports Fund, joined by Ryan Reynolds’ and Rob McElhenney’s RR McReynolds, Peter Chernin’s Chernin Group, Brent Montgomery’s Wheelhouse, Ryan Sports Ventures and Bolt Ventures.
Founded as a podcast in 2010 by journalist and filmmaker Roger Bennett and TV producer Michael Davies, Men In Blazers has become arguably the place where U.S. soccer fans congregate for news, analysis, opinion and soccer-related entertainment across its programming and properties.
“We are the biggest media platform in the United States for football,” Bennett tells The Hollywood Reporter in an interview, noting that it now garners over two billion impressions per year, and that the company is on its way to being “the first media network that’s rounded up the entire football fan base in the United States and build communities of meaning around them.”
“If you’ve met Roger, you know it’s going to work, right?” Lasry says in an interview. “I’m going to put Roger up against any other competitors at a media company, just because I know his desire to succeed and his force of personality will make it successful.”
Now, with the men’s World Cup set to be hosted in North America in 2026, Bennett sees the opportunity to turbocharge the company’s growth.
“I get out of bed every morning, and that’s the first thing I think about, the Men’s World Cup is coming in 2026, it’s just an enormous wave about to hit our nation,” Bennett says. “The World Cup is coming, the clock is ticking, and we want to make sure that we’re in a position that no matter who’s in the final in New York, at the end of the World Cup, that we at the Men in Blazers Media Network, win it.”
The company plans to use its cash infusion to create new programming, with a show modeled after ESPN’s College GameDay on tap, as well as an expansion into live events. The company will have between 20 and 28 different hosts for its programming by the end of this year, nearly doubling its talent roster, and it currently has 36 full time employees.
“We want to take bigger swings with the storytelling, more televisual products,” Bennett says. “We’ve always done live events, we’ve always done theater tours with [their show] FC to Shining Sea during major tournaments. And the goal is to do that all year round, that whenever there’s a major football, anything we’re able to go across the nation, bring together football fans and broadcast it live.”
The goal, to here Bennett explain it, is to “stitch together” all of the country’s soccer fandom, from those that love the European leagues or the Mexican or Latin American leagues to those that follow the international game.
And with soccer rights splintered across seemingly every streaming service and TV platform, he sees Men In Blazers as the place that can be that uniting force, Men In Blazers United, if you will.
“I moved here in ’94 before the last World Cup, which was meant to make football go over the top in this nation. It didn’t,” Bennett quips. “America loved it, but it was like a circus that came to town and then left, and I’m very grateful it wasn’t. That would have made football like a hula hoop or or a yo-yo, a fad that didn’t have deep roots, but instead, the passion, the fan base has grown World Cup to World Cup. Streamers have all fallen in love with football because there’s no better product to to be the arrow tip of your streaming offering.”
“My view is that Roger and his group are going to are going to be able to build Men In Blazers into one of the premier media companies, and they’re going to be able to do it over the next year or two, but they need capital to help them do that,” Lasry says. “Whether [the World Cup] is there or not, we would have invested in Men In Blazers. I just think what ends up happening is,with the World Cup, it speeds things up quite a bit, and gives them a launching pad.”
Bennett interviewed Reynolds for his latest episode of the podcast, which you can watch below.
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