Let's Create Something Together!
Today we announce Kickback Soccer Media, and the start of something we hope will be a pillar of the American soccer community – our community – for years to come.
The genesis of our company, a founding involving more than a dozen of the community’s leading voices and visionaries, is the 2026 World Cup — the epochal moment for the thing we’ve built our lives around. As a group, we have bonded over our shared hopes and fears about the sport’s direction in the face of this moment, and we’ve found camaraderie in striving to be a positive force in stewarding it before and after 2026.
But why? What makes soccer – much less a summer soccer tournament – so important to a random group of people, who would never have a reason to congregate otherwise? Why take so much personal and professional risk to build a legacy from something so intractable, something so distant from influence and control?
A recent New York Times essay by Joon Lee put it best:
“This isn’t just about games. It’s also about whether sports will remain one of the last public spaces where regular people still feel that they matter…(i)t's not about preserving the past, but about building a future that still feels human.”
These are the stakes, which are so much bigger than even the biggest entertainment spectacle in history. Sports has been the communal space that held fast in an increasingly disconnected world; in fact, a community such as ours is inextricably rooted in the digital era, where so many of us somehow found both passion and each other. Despite the physical distance that often separates us, we’ve been able to share in the unending joy of discovery, the comfort in belonging, and the fulfillment in finding meaning beyond oneself.
What we’ve shared together, Kickback wants to share with even more people. At such an isolating time, we want everyone to experience that same joy in discovery and that same sense of belonging that has been such a big part of our lives. Yet, at the same time, we face fractures at the foundation of our community. Current fans are confronted by a discourse that is increasingly gravitating toward the inflammatory, condescending, and insipid, and new fans must overcome financial, emotional, and intellectual hurdles that make our community more and more exclusive.
With this huge, galvanizing moment in 2026 in front of us, we must grasp our inherent power as members of a community to do something positive and ensure this moment becomes our moment. We must embrace the diversity of our fandom, rather than constantly comparing it to preconformed expectations. We must engage with our local community at matches, bars, and youth clubs, rather than hurl insults from afar. We must steward new fans into the sport, rather than looking down our noses at their insufficient fandom.
From our first conversations about Kickback, we all agreed we wanted to build for whatever came after the World Cup, and not just the financial opportunity it promotes. We have decided to commit 3% of our revenue in perpetuity to fan and community development initiatives because of it, and chose to focus on ways to develop new properties and platforms for fans and community voices.
We know this isn’t going to change the world, and neither will 2026. However, we know we will never be more empowered to do something to make our shared experience better. If you’re reading this letter, it likely means that you, too, are empowered to be a positive force for the community – if you so choose to be.
We hope you join us in choosing to build a legacy we can all enjoy, up to ‘26 — and beyond.
After all, we don’t care how you got into the game, we’re just glad you’re here. Let’s create something bigger than us, together.