Bluesky And Kickback Join A New Era Of United States Soccer Media

Bluesky Social website displayed on a laptop screen and Bluesky Social on App Store displayed on a phone screen are seen in this illustration photo taken in Poland on November 16, 2024. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto via Getty Images)

NurPhoto via Getty Images

Soccer news just in. The 2026 FIFA World Cup in the United States will be accompanied by a fresh approach to domestic soccer coverage that will tell the story of the sport’s growth in 2026 and beyond.

One new high-profile media outlet, Kickback Soccer Media, has teamed up with Bluesky and joined a growing group of independent outlets spearheading coverage of the game in the US in this potentially pivotal moment.

Some of this new approach is by design: there is no better way to engage with soccer fans and provide the kind of coverage they want than by immersing a media outlet in that culture, and reporting on that as much as the games and the sport itself.

It is also partly by necessity. Domestic American soccer has struggled to get a foothold in the country’s national and mainstream media. When national outlets do cover soccer, they are more likely to cover soccer stories from the English Premier League or elsewhere in Europe, thousands of miles away, than they are to cover the game locally.

As a result, domestic soccer coverage has always originated from other channels. From a passion for the game and for the culture and community it embraces. Done primarily for the love of the sport.

The interest and participation has always been there and is increasingly so, but in the past, those more mainstream outlets might have done one story on an MLS team every few months and then complained that no one reads them and took that as evidence that no one is interested.

It needs to be built over time, and from the right place. The soccer media has faced as many obstacles and setbacks in the United States as the game itself, but it’s no surprise that a certain style of dedicated (in all senses of the word) media coverage is the one that is making the best go of succeeding.

“The media activity in this country has largely vacillated between the rights holders and the momentary interest of various other outlets that lasts around a World Cup, or a tent pole even, but I think a couple of things have shifted,” says Kickback co-founder and CEO John Parker.

“I hear regularly from people who’ll say: ‘I’ve been hearing for 30 years that soccer’s the sport of the future, I don’t get it.’

“I think it’s partly because it’s already here, but we’re still just kind of repeating the same refrain.

“In terms of the monetary investment and the scale of fandom in this country, it’s arguably already the third biggest sport, based on all the data, and all of that data says that once the current generation of people 35 and under becomes 55 and under over the next 20 years, it’s going to be the second biggest sport.

“It’s not the sport of the future. It’s already arrived.”

From fansites like Hudson River Blue on the East Coast and Sounder At Heart on the West, to national independent outlets and newsletters including Backheeled, Protagonist Soccer, and Beyond the 90, there is a new era of soccer media that is connecting with fans and providing more interesting coverage of their teams and leagues.

The two aforementioned fansites themselves emerged from a more mainstream media company, SB Nation (Vox Media), that gave up on domestic soccer and ditched all of its MLS outlets in 2023, but both have thrived and become more successful since going it alone. Again, partly by design, but partly because it was the only option.

By providing thoughtful, knowledgeable, respectful, and considered coverage, these outlets, using a new media model, will become the destination for U.S.-based fans looking for coverage of the world’s most popular sport in the coming years.

“At Soccerwise, we don’t pretend these are silly or little things, we value what happens post a Seattle Miami game, or post the Nashville Philly game, the same way that someone who’s covering Chelsea or Manchester United would value their coverage,” says David Gass, who founded and hosts the Soccerwise podcast, and is the chief media officer and co-founder at Kickback.

“We think it matters to the people, it matters to the players, it matters to the coaches. One of the things I think that a lot of people who have tried to sell soccer in America have done is belittle their own product at times by overvaluing external products or trying to legitimize it by connecting it to external things.

“I just did an interview about college soccer, and the University of Maryland has a supporters group that has bounced for 30 plus years because they value themselves, they put a good product on the field, and they make it feel like it matters.

“If you do that, people can engage with it. People will give that energy and effort to it because they feel like it’s worth their time. I think that’s one of those things that soccer has struggled a lot with, but is one of the things I think we’re really primed to help provide fans.”

There is more evidence of this in Tuesday’s announcement that Kickback will partner with the Philadelphia Union and the United States national team supporters’ group, American Outlaws, to provide free tickets for fans who are looking to experience a soccer match for the first time.

Between now and the Women’s World Cup in 2027, Kickback will provide free tickets for those first-time fans in the supporters section for U.S. Soccer-controlled matches, while at the Union, tickets will be provided for new fans in the River End supporters’ section for the match against New York City FC on October 4.

While the timing of Kickback Soccer Media’s creation has coincided with the upcoming World Cup, these kinds of moves show that, though the high-profile tournament will be part of their growth and coverage, it is the growth beneath and beyond the World Cup that will really help move things forward.

“As a business, I think we have approached the industry with a very 2025 and beyond lens, and that is one of our advantages,” says Parker.

“There are so many great people in this industry who have been susceptible to all the vacillation I referenced before. So part of our rallying cry, part of the reason we exist, is that in this conversation with our seven or eight people who feature across our media ecosystem, and the people are behind the scenes building all of this, was that question of ‘how do we create something that can be our legacy, a place that we can build for years to come, versus just being a gun for hire for the [World Cup] next year?’

“We believe that the modern monetization model of media allows us to create a platform for those people to cover the leagues, to cover the sport, to amplify the voices in the U.S.

“It will allow us to create the scalability that is necessary to employ people and give them the platform, and give the sport the platform that it deserves.”

As well as finding new ways to reach fans through modern media, many independent organizations have also found a more palatable and helpful social media outlet.

Bluesky is emerging as the social media platform of choice for creators, writers, and journalists. Unlike others in the sphere, its algorithm does not suppress posts that share links to work published elsewhere.

This has meant a better experience for fans and creators alike, one that is driven by sharing and discussion, rather than a race to the bottom built around outrage or engagement based solely on numbers rather than interaction and connection.

“I think when it comes to Bluesky, what we really want to accomplish is to put primacy back on people who are leading genuine conversations and who authentically want to support and celebrate the culture that they care about,” says Bluesky’s partnerships lead, Harry Packer.

“I think the way in which we give people lots of control and granularity around their moderation means that you can actually have conversations on Bluesky. You can have disagreements as well, which is great, and they don’t necessarily explode into these crazy arguments.

“I think we really build around depth of engagement and conversation, and because we have people who have come to us for that purpose, I think we offer really unique engagement in that regard.

“We want to be a place where it is as much about celebration of the culture as opposed to the commercialization of it.”

Major outlets like The Guardian have already abandoned X (formerly Twitter) and moved all their social media properties across to Bluesky. Among the U.S. soccer media, Hudson River Blue has done the same, while Kickback has partnered with Bluesky ahead of the World Cup.

Though no social media site is without its issues, Bluesky is becoming the go-to platform where the reporters and supporters, the readers and the writers, the broadcasters and the viewers, can have genuine conversations.

This could also improve the second-screen experience of soccer and create links between everyone involved, as Twitter once did.

“The connection with Bluesky has been really big for us,” says Gass. “It feels like it’s brought back some of the online engagement that Twitter had in its heyday, especially in soccer, where people can be physically disconnected.

“Online has been such a powerful source for soccer fandom in America, and so I think we are using those avenues to constantly get feedback from people saying, ‘this is what we want, this is what we like, this is what we’re looking for.’”

Though most of this is still focused on the World Cup, Kickback knows that it will be around after the tournament, simply because many of those involved have that aforementioned dedication.

“What differentiates us is that we know we are all going to be working in the industry in 2036,” summarizes Parker.

“World Cups [in the U.S.] could be a decade ago, two decades ago, and we’re still going to be here.

“For us, after 2026, there’s not a question of did we do well enough, it’s a question of how do we build from this to the next thing?

“So right now, with everything we’re building, we’re not thinking about how we optimize it for 2026, we’re thinking about how that best positions us in the soccer community for what comes after?”

Gass adds, “The 2027 Women’s World Cup in our time zone is going to be massive, and I think that’s been underrated with the excitement around 2026—having a gold medal, reigning champion in the U.S. playing in Brazil, in our time zone, in a country that most people associate with the sport—there’s going to be big things to cover. I think we do it as well as anyone.”