Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice
How Pay-to-Play Keeps Top Talent From Being Found | Brad Rothenberg
05 Jun 2026
Transcript generated automatically by AI and may contain errors.
Chapter 1: What is the main topic discussed in this episode?
Success starts with getting high school kids into college with some type of scholarship. And this year, we had 23 kids graduate. They're all going to college with some full ride and some partial scholarships and some coupled with academic scholarships. That's the first level of success. Where we are maturing now is in college.
We're creating college readiness programs to help them learn how to do job interviews, write resumes, get jobs out of college. But that's just beginning. That's the next measure of success is where our alumni end up.
You don't win by following the playbook. You win by rewriting it. 700 episodes deep with the people who actually built something real. No theory, no fluff, no shortcuts. This is Right About Now with Ryan Alford.
Soccer in America is growing fast, but access to the highest levels of the sport still depends on too much money, exposure, and who can afford the system. Brad Rothenberg, the founder of AccessU Foundation, saw that firsthand through the grassroots soccer programs that eventually led to building his foundation.
Brad has a unique perspective from growing up around the business side of American soccer to now helping underserved scholar athletes turn their talents and academics into real college opportunities. Today, we get into the pay-to-play problem, why so much talent gets missed, and how AccessU is helping kids get the shot they already deserve. Hey, Brad, what's up? Welcome to Right About Now.
Hey, Ryan, how are you? I'm great, man. Ready to kick it around? I'll admit, I know a little bit about soccer, but I have four boys. They've played some. I'm always fascinated by the fandom and the spirit and have been around it, but I'm looking for enlightenment today.
I can shine a little light on what I do. The World Cup's gonna be here soon enough, and you'll pick up a little bit of the excitement that others have. It's a little bit infectious.
I have seen that, and I do see the fandom and appreciate the educated enough to realize that soccer is the largest sport on earth. You grew up firsthand with it, literally.
I was never a great athlete, but I played every sport I could. I'm a crazy American football fan. I follow everything. I was born into the world of soccer, but really my dad was more involved in the NBA. I came to soccer, look at it as a business opportunity. And AccessU, the program that I'm running now, was born out of this massive Hispanic marketing program we created.
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Chapter 2: What challenges does the pay-to-play system create for talented soccer players?
All those things happen. But it's always been interesting to me. Why is it so tertiary? Is it just sort of one of those things where popular things become more popular, like it feeds itself self-fulfilling prophecy? Or is it deeper than that?
I remember, as I said, growing up in my dad's business world, it was really about the NBA. And I remember he was on the board of governors before Magic and Larry. There were only five teams making money, at least in California. We had to watch the NBA finals on CBS after the 11 o'clock evening news. Then Larry and Magic showed up, followed by Michael Jordan.
And, you know, David Stern, the commissioner, had everything set in place to succeed. But the same kind of thing is going to happen with soccer one day. That's part of the objection I had to the pay-to-play system is that it really prevents those kids playing in the inner cities.
African-American kids in L.A., Kansas City and Atlanta aren't being scouted and seen and developed because they don't have the money to play into the system. The next Lionel Messi, the next Maradona or Pele might very well be living in like the 10,000 block of East Olympic Boulevard in L.A. We just don't know. I feel like soccer is doing a lot right.
The league is on its feet and they're ready for Michael Jordan to show up and change everything. Sometimes it just takes that kind of luck.
Star power. It does fascinate me. I think you're nailing a lot of what made these others basketball, especially the star power. You would think that a handful of American all-star, rock star athletes would have come along already just by chance, if nothing else. I don't know that I can connect those dots, Mil. I don't know if any of us can. Only God, nature, whatever you believe in.
We are the undisputed best national team soccer program in the world. Brazil, Argentina, Italy has nothing on us because we have the best women's national team. We've won more World Cups and Olympic gold medals than any other country because of our women. Our men trail on the field. And that's largely because we're not able to just really pursue merit.
And that's this part of what I love about like the NFL and the NBA is there are fewer barriers to entry because it's a more commercially viable program. And if you're scouting for Texas A&M, you're competing with all the other big Texas schools and you're going to every high school game to find that kid to play the position you need to get over the top. And that's not the way it's done in soccer.
Most of the good coaches, the college level, are able to use the club's system to find the kids to go to a couple of tournaments. They don't have to dig deep into the urban centers to find this untapped potential. We'll see if it changes one day. You remember Sonny Vaccaro?
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Chapter 3: How does Access U support student-athletes in their academic journey?
Or post facto after a game, you're going to get a red card for the next game. The tolerance that we give to player indulgences should stop. And the U.S. could do that. The MLS is thinking about it. If not so much picking up the pace of play because it's a running clock, not spending time watching drama unfold that isn't real drama. There is plenty of good soccer drama for you.
I mean, even for me, I love the game, but I'm not a tactician. It's a generation of kids who grew up playing it that are going to change the fortunes of the league.
You've got World Cup this year, the economic impact for the U.S., how grand this truly is. I don't know if people completely grasped the economy, especially U.S. I know outside of the U.S., the economies of it. Maybe drop a few lines on FIFA and how much you love them.
I'm looking forward to this year because I'm a fan. But next year is the Women's World Cup, and our women's national team is outstanding. A lot of the kids in my program are girls, and I'm hoping that I get to work with FIFA on some type of legacy program here in the United States. There is no legacy program that FIFA is doing in the U.S. this year. That's left to the local organizing committees.
Unlike in 94, when we last hosted the World Cup, there were a ton of revenue opportunities. sponsorship categories, licensing, premium ticket sales. FIFA is controlling all of that. And you know what? If I was FIFA, I'd probably do the same thing. They don't look at the U.S. as a market that they need to grow like they did in 94.
They look at a market that is exploitable because we are the cash for soccer in the world. Most of the big brands that sponsor the World Cup are U.S. companies and we can afford these outrageous ticket prices. Even if games aren't going to sell out, they're going to make a ton of money.
The dynamic ticket pricing, which everyone's complaining about, and it's kind of new to sports fans, but it's been in the concert business forever. It's right now that the media is just grasping onto anything because there's nothing else to talk about. There's going to be plenty of money made on the program, mostly by FIFA.
And I'm looking forward to them returning in 2027, dropping it back in the U.S.
Got to turn those dollars back in here for the companies, obviously seeing the value of it and getting in front of those audiences, multicultural or otherwise. I mean, it's larger than multicultural. It might've been that 15, 20 years ago, but it's a lot more mainstream.
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Chapter 4: Why is the future of soccer in America still considered unfinished?
I learned fast from him that soccer was burdened with these problems, that there were ways to work around it, but it really required entrepreneurial efforts to do so.
Amen to that.
He says a lot of yes. It's true.
Just show up and say yes, even when you don't feel like it.
I've had failures. He's had failures because you say yes and you try things and that's a little beyond your capacity or things didn't work out, but it's worth it.
Talking to Brad Rothenberg, he is the founder of AccessU. When you say pay to play, I get in this headspace of NIL, name, image, and likeness, which is a huge topic now with college sports, definitely football and basketball. I mean, it's really in everything. I'm a supporter of athletes and young persons getting paid for their name. I'm a marketing guy. I'm a branding guy. It's my legacy.
So I believe you should get paid for that. But there's two sides of every coin. Two things can be true at the same time. I can believe that, but I can also be witnessing some of the decay of the sport because of it. What's the balance of all that?
I'm absolutely pro-athlete, pro-amateur athlete. But I look at what's happening right now, and you start with football. The SEC and the Big Ten, they're really doing what we've done in society, which is they're going to be able to afford to spend $2 million on a cornerback, and they're just going to marginalize the other conferences and smaller colleges.
We're going to have great football from those two conferences, but I worry that the margins are going to get so great that it's really going to be the haves and the have-nots. I do hope, I've only thought this through, I would expect that at some point the NCAA or the conference...
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