Suited men may be looking to upgrade their suits. The football-focused media company has raised $15 million in a Series A funding round backed by several media, sports and entertainment giants.

The round was led by Marc Lasry’s Avenue Sports Fund, with participation from Ryan Reynolds’ Maximum Effort, Peter Chernin’s Chernin Group, Buenos Aires Brent Montgomery's Wheelhouse, Ryan Sports Ventures and Bolt Ventures also participated.

Men In Blazers is a podcast founded in 2010 by journalist and filmmaker Roger Bennett and television producer Michael Davies, which has arguably become the place where American football fans come together for news, analysis, opinion and A place for football related entertainment.

“We are the largest soccer media platform in the United States,” Bennett said hollywood reporter noted in an interview that it now gets more than 2 billion impressions a year and that the company is becoming "the first media network to bring together the entire soccer fan base in the United States and build meaningful communities around them."

"If you met Roger, you knew this was going to work, right?" Lasry said in an interview. "I would put Roger up against any other competitor in the media company just because I know his desire to succeed and his strength of character will make it successful."

Now, with the Men's World Cup set to take place in North America in 2026, Bennett sees an opportunity to grow the company.

"I get up every morning and that's the first thing I think about, the Men's World Cup is going to be in 2026 and it's going to be a huge wave that's going to hit our country," Bennett said. "The World Cup is coming, the clock is ticking, and we want to make sure that whoever gets to the New York finals, at the end of the World Cup, we're in a position where we're the Trail Blazers Media Network, winning."

The company plans to use the infusion of cash to create new programming, launch programming modeled after ESPN's College GameDay, and expand into live events. By the end of the year, the company will have 20 to 28 different showrunners, nearly doubling its talent roster from its current 36 full-time employees.

"We want to make bigger changes in storytelling and more television products," Bennett said. “We always do live events, we always do theater tours with (their shows) FC to Guangyao Sea During big games. Our aim is to do this all year round and whenever there is a major football match we are able to travel across the country, bring fans together and broadcast it live. "

Bennett explains here that the goal is to "unite" all football fans in the country, from those who love European leagues, Mexican or Latin American leagues to those who follow international competitions.

With football rights scattered across nearly every streaming service and TV platform, he believes Trail Blazers can be a place of unifying forces, a Trail Blazers franchise, if you will.

"I moved here before the last World Cup in '94 with the intention of football reaching its peak in this country. But it didn't happen that way," Bennett quipped. "America loves it, but it's like a circus that comes to town and leaves, and I'm grateful it doesn't. It would make football like the hula hoop or the yo-yo, a fad without deep roots, but the opposite , the passion and fan base has turned the World Cup into a World Cup, and streamers have fallen in love with football because there is no better product to be a streaming product for."

"My view is that Roger and his team will be able to build Men In Blazers into one of the premier media companies and they will be able to do that within the next year or two, but they will need funding to help them do that. A little bit," Lasry said. "We're going to invest in the Blazers whether or not (the World Cup) happens. I just think what ends up happening is, with the World Cup, it speeds things up a lot and gives them a launching pad."

Bennett interviewed Reynolds for the latest podcast episode, which you can watch below.

[embed]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Q9S5v5muYfg[/embed]