{"id":4727,"date":"2026-06-08T10:59:11","date_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:59:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/4727\/"},"modified":"2026-06-08T10:59:11","modified_gmt":"2026-06-08T10:59:11","slug":"world-cup-2026-men-in-blazers-turns-soccer-fandom-into-sports-media-empire","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/4727\/","title":{"rendered":"World Cup 2026: Men in Blazers Turns Soccer Fandom Into Sports Media Empire"},"content":{"rendered":"

About an hour before he\u2019s set to go on at Franklin Music Hall in Philadelphia on a Tuesday night in May, Roger Bennett sits backstage on a corduroy-cushioned couch. He\u2019s making edits to a stack of notecards that will guide him through the evening\u2019s interviews. \u201cIt\u2019s heavily researched,\u201d says Bennett, co-founder of the Men in Blazers<\/a> Media Network, which produces soccer podcasts, videos, newsletters and events. \u201cI\u2019m trying to show the guests that we put our work in, and we\u2019d like them to reciprocate.\u201d<\/p>\n

Bennett\u2019s guests are Pennsylvania Governor Josh Shapiro, Philadelphia Eagles offensive lineman Jordan Mailata and two members of Mt. Joy, an indie rock group with Philly roots. The show is one of eight stops on the Men in Blazers countdown tour ahead of the upcoming FIFA World Cup<\/a>. Over the past year, Bennett has crisscrossed the country, stopping in host cities for the tournament, which begins on June 11 in Mexico City with matches to follow throughout the US, Mexico and Canada. At each stop, he brings out musicians, athletes and other celebrities for conversations that fall somewhere between corporate conference, late-night talk show and self-help podcast \u2014 with a lot of civic boosterism and World Cup hype.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"About an hour before he\u2019s set to go on at Franklin Music Hall in Philadelphia on a Tuesday…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":4728,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[2946,731,2944,1364,185,69,2945,420,553,1080,460,62,487,113,6],"class_list":["post-4727","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-world-cup-2026","tag-a-walk-with","tag-business","tag-businessweek","tag-cities","tag-fifa","tag-football","tag-industries","tag-jordan","tag-mexico-city","tag-pennsylvania","tag-philadelphia","tag-soccer","tag-social-media","tag-sports","tag-world-cup-2026"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4727"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4727\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4728"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4727"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4727"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/football\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4727"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}