Right About Now - Legendary Business Advice - How Pay-to-Play Keeps Top Talent From Being Found | Brad Rothenberg

Episode Date: June 5, 2026

Ryan Alford sits down with Brad Rothenberg for a conversation about the part of American soccer most casual fans never really see: the opportunity gap behind the game. Brad explains how the pay-to-play system creates barriers for talented athletes who have the skill to compete, but not the money or visibility to get into the right pipeline. He also breaks down how Access U works around that reality by helping students with tutoring, test prep, college counseling, recruiting, and the support needed to turn athletic talent into a real education pathway. Ryan helps connect the conversation to bigger themes around economics, sports business, merit, and long-term development. That makes this episode relevant not just to soccer families, but to anyone interested in opportunity, talent pipelines, youth sports, and how systems either unlock or waste human potential. Topics Covered The economics of pay-to-play soccer Why talented players fall outside the formal development system How Access U supports student-athletes over four years Why girls and boys often show different readiness patterns How Brad measures success beyond pro careers Why soccer’s future in America is still unfinished NIL, college sports, and what access really means Ryan Alford and Brad Rothenberg on systems that create or block opportunity Links Right About Now https://www.ryanisright.com/ https://www.youtube.com/@RightAboutNowwithRyanAlford Ryan Alford https://ryanalford.com/ https://www.instagram.com/ryanalford/ Brad Rothenberg / Access U https://accessufoundation.org/

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 couple 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 Access You 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 Access-U 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 going to 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 Access You, the program that I'm running now, was born out of this massive Hispanic marketing program we created because after the 2000 census, we saw these huge Hispanic members and we knew that the way to get to these kids was through soccer. That's when I really tapped into my dad's, I inherited my dad's soccer business acumen. This program we ran with the support of all these brands was a free program for Hispanic kids across the country. We produced events in 41 cities, youth clinics, coaching clinics, tournaments, and it was all free to these kids. One thing we did was this open tryout,

which very quickly became the voice of the program. A small percentage of those 25,000 people were coming to try out. But very quickly, we found some super, super talented kids. Many of them went on to play pro in Mexico, a few here in the U.S. A couple went to the English Premier League. But the real story we learned was there were a lot of kids good enough to go to college, never good enough to be pro, even if they were dreaming about it. And that's why Access You was born to help them parlay their soccer skills into college education, get scholarships, and graduate debt-free. It's a fascinating ecosystem. The way soccer is so globally important, and yet it's grown and you would have more data than me. It's growing in the U.S. as we become more acculturated

and Hispanic-dominated and just a lot of mixes of other worldly cultures. It comes with the territory, and I think we get more exposed to it. 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. 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 Maradonna or Pellet, might very well be living in like the 10,000 block at least Olympic Boulevard in L.A.

We just don't know. I feel like soccer's 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 other basketball, especially, the star power.