Winner-Takes-All Soccer Tournament For $1 Million Prize Coming To North Carolina In June 2023

During the summer of 2020, roommates Michael Volk and Henry Tembon were sitting at their apartment in New York City watching The Basketball Tournament (TBTTBT
), a winner-takes-all event where teams of non-NBA professionals compete for $1 million.

Volk and Tembon, former teammates on the University of Virginia men’s soccer team, thought the concept was intriguing and could work for soccer, as well. Now, they are getting a shot to prove their thesis.

On Tuesday, TBT Enterprises, the parent company behind TBT, announced that it’s expanding to soccer with the launch of The Soccer Tournament (TST). The inaugural TST will be held in June 2023 over a four-day period at WakeMed Soccer Park in Cary, N.C., a Raleigh suburb.

Like its basketball counterpart, TST will have a winner-takes-all format and a $1 million prize. The first two teams in the 32-team field have already been set: former pro and U.S. World Cup veteran Clint Dempsey has committed to put together a team, and the Hashtag United semi-pro team in England will also enter TST.

Teams from the U.S. and beyond can submit their applications starting this week via the TST website to be considered for one of the 30 remaining squads in the field. The tournament is open to anyone who’s at least 18 years old.

Jon Mugar, the co-founder and CEO of TBT Enterprises, said college players can compete in TST, but they will be ineligible to share in the $1 million prize unless they forgo their college eligibility. He added that TBT Enterprises decided to have the TST in June because the college soccer season is over by then, and it’s also a time when the international soccer leagues are not playing. Major League Soccer, the top U.S. league, plays games in June, so it is unclear how many MLS players will compete in TST.

While professional and college games have 11 players on the field per team, TST will have a 7-on-7 format and a smaller field to ensure an action-packed game with more scoring than usual in order to attract casual or non-soccer fans. In addition, the games will have two, 20-minute halves as opposed to the typical two, 45-minute halves in college and the pros.

Tembon, Volk and other high-level players have been testing the concept at an indoor soccer facility in Brooklyn and determining what the best format will be for TST. They have decided TST games will be played on fields that are 65 yards long by 45 yards wide, which compares with a minimum of 110 yards long by 70 yards wide for an MLS field. The size of the nets in TST will be 6 ½ feet (height) by 18 ½ feet (wide) compared with the typical 8 feet by 24 feet.

During the test games, there have been an average of one shot per minute and a total of 8 to 10 goals per game, according to Tembon and Volk. They said players have enjoyed competing in a 7 vs. 7 format that is common in practices and pickup games.

“If some of these people that don’t like football, which we live and breathe, if they watched one of our training sessions whether it’s in college or as we’re warming up or even in our 7 v 7 leagues, they would love this,” said Tembon, who works as an investment banker at Credit Suisse. “It’s action-packed, there’s lots of goals, everybody has technique at a high level.”

He added: “You’re seeing this attacking football concept, but at the same time it’s remaining as authentic as possible. That’s what we’ve been aiming to try to do.”

For Mugar, the expansion into soccer makes sense. When Mugar and co-founder Dan Friel, who have been friends since seventh graders in the late 1980s, conceived of TBT, they had the FA Cup soccer event in mind as a model to follow. The FA Cup is an annual single-elimination competition staged in the United Kingdom since 1871 that’s open to hundred of professional clubs from the PremierPINC
League to lower-tier leagues.

The idea behind TBT was to have a similar feel in that people with limited experience could compete against players who have played professionally for years, and at the end of the tournament only one team would earn money. In 2014, Mugar left his job as a comedy writer and TV producer while Friel left his job as an attorney to launch the inaugural TBT, which featured 32 teams competing for a $500,000 prize.

Since then, the event has grown each year. The tournament now has a 64-team field with all of the games televised on ESPN or one its sister networks or streaming platforms, and Mugar, Friel and the TBT staff have secured numerous corporate sponsorships.

“It’s always been in the back of our head,” Mugar said of launching a soccer event. “Some of the models that they used over in Europe for soccer have always been really appealing to us. We’ve always sort of contemplated what a high-stakes, open-to-all model would look like across all sports.”

When Volk and Tembon reached out to Mugar about starting TST in 2020, Mugar thought it sounded intriguing. He was impressed that Volk and Tembon had played at the highest levels of college soccer, while the third TST co-founder, Alecko Eskandarian, was the top selection in the 2003 MLS draft and played 125 MLS games over seven seasons.

“When we started building this plan and watched TBT and saw their platform, we thought it was a perfect way since they built a successful tournament with basketball,” said Volk, who works in enterprise sales. “They’ve been through the trial and error the first five to six years that they had with it, and really turned the corner to success. We thought that teaming up with the brilliant brains of Jon, Dan and the team over at TBT, we thought it would be a great collaboration to really bring our dream to life.”

Early this year, Mugar decided to move forward with TST, and he and the rest of the staff have been working for months on the concept. Tim Brosnan, the former executive vice president of business operations at Major League Baseball and a veteran sports executive, has been advising on how to launch TST.

Phoenix Suns point guard Chris Paul, who has owned an equity stake in TBT since 2018, is also serving as an advisor, as is Dempsey, who is one of the best U.S.-born soccer players in history. Dempsey played for three U.S. World Cup teams and spent nine years in MLS and seven years in the Premier League.

“Clint was one of a very few people that we feel like in the soccer world that would be a perfect partner for us,” Mugar said. “Just given the way he grew up as an outsider in the soccer system. He played with a chip on his shoulder. He always felt like he had something to prove, and he played with intense passion.”

He added: “With TBT, a lot of our players embody that same chip on their shoulder mentality. That’s exactly what drew Chris Paul to the property. Once we discovered Clint and the idea resonated with him, it was a natural fit.”

Volk, Tembon and Eskandarian hope to expand TST beyond just an annual tournament. They envision a future in which they have other 7 vs. 7 tournaments and leagues in the U.S., Europe, Asia, Latin America and elsewhere.

Mugar, meanwhile, said TBT Enterprises has considered expanding to other sports, including baseball. But, for now, the main focus is on continuing to see growth with the basketball tournament and get the soccer tournament off the ground. Mugar said he has informed executives at ESPN and the companies that sponsor the basketball event about the expansion to soccer, but they have not finalized any media or advertising deals on the soccer side.

“It’s been a new challenge for us, certainly,” Mugar said. “It’s a lot of fun, though. Looking back at how we started basketball, there are a lot of lessons we learned 10 years ago. To now be able to put those into practice with the development of a completely new property, it’s been pretty awesome. A lot of people don’t get that opportunity.”

He added: “We’ve learned a lot over the past 10 years, and I think we can start soccer off on a higher level because of it. That’s what’s been really exciting about it.”