Dustin Heise 0:00

Kevin, I can't thank you enough for taking some time today to join myself, Dustin Heiss, and the podcast for Defining Moments. Boy oh boy, do I ever admire the work and the leadership and the growth that I see from someone like yourself and as I continue to grow and so many others that are going to listen and learn from this opportunity today? What an opportunity to meet with today's guest, Kevin Blue, CEO and General Secretary of Canada Soccer. He's built a standout career leading major sports organizations across North America, from captaining Stanford's golf team to becoming one of the youngest Division I athletic directors in the U.S. Kevin has led high performance programs, driven record growth, and now plays a key role in shaping the future of sport in Canada and internationally with uh with what's in front of them. Kevin, thanks so much for taking some time today with me.

Kevin Blue 0:46

Amazing, Dustin. Happy to be on and uh look forward to the conversation with uh with a fellow colleague leading NSOs. We've got a lot in common. So thank you for having me on.

Dustin Heise 0:57

Yeah, I really appreciate it. Well, to say that you have a lot on your plate is uh is a massive understatement. We won't even get into all of that quite yet, but you know, one of the biggest pieces that you know coming into this chat, I would love to just dig into is just the mental game that it's required in these roles. And and you know, as you continue to to grow throughout your sporting career, and we know how incredibly important the mental game is in the game of golf, and then to then continue to lead as an executive at uh Stanford, you know, to then be able to, you know, lead at at Golf Canada. And then again, now at uh at Canada Soccer, where we've got an incredible opportunity in front of us and how you've set the vision. Can you just share a little bit about the foundation of how you are able to enable yourself to prepare at each step of the pathway? And then the vision that we see unfolding in front of us today is Kevin Blue.

Kevin Blue 1:49

You know, we all grow up in certain contexts and have certain sports experiences. And when you become a sports executive, a lot of how you operate is informed by those growth experiences along the way. And in my case, as a as a kid, I played a bunch of different sports. It it ended up being golf as my main sport as I was, you know, in my sort of mid to late teens. And you just learn from that type of situation where golf is is, as you mentioned, it's a it's a significant mental challenge. It requires an even-keeled approach and it it requires an understanding of probabilities and decision-making and accepting the outcome. Uh it requires being able to, you know, the golf cliche is one shot at a time, and in in, you know, in business, of course, that's you know, one decision or one moment at a time. And being able to rely on those training experiences is important. Like I think people like to draw links between actual sport and then the business world, and in some cases it's a bit of a stretch. But in my case, there have been a lot of things that I've been able to, you know, encounter and deal with as an executive that I think that a lot of the psychological at least experiences in in my sporting career at least laid a foundation for. So I I feel fortunate in that regard for sure.

Dustin Heise 2:58

Sure. As we saw in you taking on the leadership at Canada Soccer, one of the pieces that I I recently watched in in preparing for today was just the uh the initial video that you'd recorded and and the three key pieces that you you wanted to make sure you led led with and really leaned into. And you know, I think all of us as as leaders can really appreciate how you've ongoingly continued to make those real. And it was, you know, in earning that trust, the professional reforms and the uniting of the nation behind the game of soccer here in Canada. And do you mind just sharing a little bit about how that process has unfolded and how you held yourself accountable to delivering against each of those? I know that they're never-ending goals, but at the same time, you know, how you make sure that you're benchmarking against those and circle back to hold yourself accountable to them.

Kevin Blue 3:50

Yeah, good question, Dustin. And that's that's going back to the very beginning of when I started in this role, which was, I think, at the end uh it was announced in February of 2024. So it's not it's not that long ago. It doesn't but it feels like it was like 15 years ago. Right? And there's been so much activity and if you want to call it growth and in some cases adversity in the last however many years that February 2024 feels like you know, February 1965 or something. You know, it just feels like there's a lot of progress. So, but in in I guess that initial communication was was meant to try to set a table and an expectation for the community. Like I come from outside the sport. People would encounter that and try to understand, like, well, who is this guy and what does he know? You know, he's never played reality soccer before. And they and they're right. And so what I what I tried to do early on was just express a commitment and an understanding that it's my responsibility to steward the game that really belongs to the soccer community in Canada. And I would do that by being communicative and by bringing the expertise that I did have, which is in organizational leadership and sports business and things of this nature, to the soccer community, you know, without professing to know more about soccer than people who have been in the sport for a long time. So I think that that approach has worked, specifically being aware and very clear and articulate about the fact that I don't come from a soccer background and I'm not a soccer expert and I'm not trying to be one. I think that that's in a way builds credibility because it is, I guess helps me emphasize and add value in the ways that I do know how to add value and demonstrates to the soccer community that I'm not trying to replace their expertise. So the initial intro video or whatever you're referencing was was hopefully like it was an attempt to express that early on. And I haven't thought about the intro video itself in a long time. It seems like it's been five years ago, but loved the goals and how you laid it out.

Dustin Heise 5:48

Yeah. And then, you know, for for so many of us as leaders, like we want to know that our that we're tracking against whatever the the KPIs or the OKRs that that you've established. And I don't just mean from the business context, which of course can see that you're also crushing those, but just making sure that like you know, the trigger points of making sure that you've you've built built those. And so, you know, I'll dig in a little bit on like the the professional reform, like where it's you know extremely evident that not only in the prep and and what you've done with uh Canada Soccer Red, and then also the uh the work you've done with uh you know Canada Soccer Media Entertainment, like alongside them and helping ensure that you know it was uh the right alignment for uh the ecosystem, if you will. And and just maybe just share a little bit about you know how you've been able to use like that very exemplary skill set that you have that I think is the example for all of us in in in this ecosystem, um, around how you built you know the right fundraising tools and leveraging and and then the kennel soccer, you know, media and entertainment.

Kevin Blue 6:47

Aaron Powell So what I I'll say the following. I think my formative years in sports business were in the NCAA system in the US, right? Like I went down, like you were referencing at the beginning and was a student athlete and did some grad school stuff. And then I went, I got right back involved in the business and administrative side of college sports at the highest level. And in college sports, college sports is similar to NSOs in a lot of ways because it's a nonprofit sort of multi-stakeholder environment. It's not professional sports where there's an owner and the owner's in charge. It's mission-oriented with a bunch of different stakeholders that are actually the ones that you are serving. And then you have a nonprofit, not-for-profit mandate where you're not trying to make free cash flow or build franchise value. You're trying to fund a mission, right? And so college sports has this in common with the Canadian NSO world. Now, how does that actually in practice show up from a business strategy and tactics standpoint? In US college sports, we know that philanthropic activity and fundraising and foundation-based activity is a huge part of the revenue mix in US college sports. And so I grew up in that world and I developed a set of skills where, because of the context of when I was running the commercial side at Stanford, you're involved in a situation where you're generating tens and tens of millions of dollars commercially, but also philanthropically. And the combination of those two things, which is completely normal in US college sports, um, it was normal when I became the athletic director at UC Davis. You know, I was 33 at the time. I didn't have a lot of experience, but I had a well-trained skill set in the combination of those two revenue streams. Yeah. And you bring that back home, right? You bring that back home to Canada, where Canada traditionally in nonprofit mission-oriented sports has been very reliant on federal funding to some extent on commercial funding, but has been underexploiting philanthropic, you know, engagement and revenue derived that way. And so what essentially we've done at Canada Soccer, and we did this, you know, Gulf Canada similarly, is, and the Canadian Olympic Foundation is a bit of an example of this too, is to overlay uh essentially like a U.S. college sports business model onto a Canadian NSO. And I think that as we have these conversations as a sports system, you know, with the federal government and understanding the trends that are occurring from a funding standpoint, it's incumbent on us as sport leaders to figure out how to diversify revenue and increasing our emphasis on philanthropy as part of the revenue mix is probably a forward-looking way to do it. And so we've been we've been able to do that, which has been, I think, pretty critical for the financial success of our organization. And I think like if you look five or ten years down the road in how Canadian sport is funded, I think you're gonna see a bigger and bigger piece of the pie being philanthropically derived support to complement commercial revenue and and other sources.

Dustin Heise 9:36

Spot on. And it's gonna be a must. And thanks for sharing that. One of the pieces that you know is is directly in front of you. And again, we're all grateful that you're leading the way there in this upcoming opportunity with uh FIFA 2026. But most importantly, like the ability to galvanize human beings, Canadians, international community around this sport and this sporting opportunity. Do you mind just sharing a little bit about uh the impact that that you know this opportunity has and and how you really want to lean into that to it as a difference maker in people's lives?

Kevin Blue 10:10

Yeah, I mean, look, as far as the galvanizing is concerned, that's the players and the coaches. Like we put the players and the coaches in position to succeed, but the people love the Canadian men's national team and just the same as they love the hockey teams and et cetera, and then women's national team, you know, when we have Women's World Cup in 2027. And uh, you know, we're at a moment right now where Canadian identity, Canadian pride, Canadian sovereignty, even are things that people have on their minds. And there's not a sport in the world that's more global than soccer. And it's something that I didn't like you kind of intellectually get it, but you don't really fully understand it. At least I didn't until I got involved in it. There are 211 countries, member associations of FIFA, 211. Yeah, like that's more than the UN has. And soccer is like the most important thing to most people in the world. Like if you said, hey, what's the favorite thing that you do? It's your your club that you follow or your national team that you follow. Like if you took a poll of all however many billion people live in the world. For sure. Yeah, 100%. You know, it's soccer. So, so the global nature of it, like the Olympic Games as an institution, the global nature of soccer is something that's it's a prominently global enterprise that Canada representing itself in that way is pretty important for reasons beyond soccer. Like when we have June 12th, we're we're playing in the first game in Canada, the World Cup, and that will be the most televised event in the history of the country from a global standpoint. There'll be more people around the world watching Canada play soccer than have ever paid attention to Canada at one time ever in the history of the country outstanding up to that point. So that's not to puff chests about how important it is, it's to say it's to say like truly global things are not common these days. Olympics is one and the World Cup is another, and the um the opportunity that it's not lost on everybody for sure. And, you know, our of course our players and coaches are just focused on doing their thing and executing, and they're not overbuilding it in their minds to this big thing, but we organizationally feel a responsibility to deliver a proud moment for Canada. Uh, you know, we're embracing that.

Dustin Heise 12:18

And the impact from the seat you sit in that you hope to have through this opportunity, what how would you describe that?

Kevin Blue 12:24

Well, it's a good question. I don't actually think about like the personal impact. Like my responsibility as the CEO is to support and help everybody in the organization do their jobs as best they can and and provide the support and clarity that people need to thrive. And this is not something that you just turn on at the beginning of the World Cup, obviously. Like it's it's a it's a it's a it's a culture, it's a structure, it's tone that's that's established. It comes from the support of our board and our president, Peter Grusso, in enabling an environment where managements create conditions for everybody to be successful. And I and I I have a board and a and a president that's very supportive in that respect. And I think that as we approach the World Cup, the best thing that we can do is to execute, be super task-oriented, not be overbuilding the occasion. Like you still have to do your job and you gotta be as calm. And this is maybe the golf golfer in me. It's kind of like I love it. The first T on the final round of the Masters has more significance than the first T on Monday morning in the pro am that you're gonna play the next day, but it's still a driver up the left side with the five-yard cut in both situations, and you just gotta figure out how to make it as much like a driver up the left side with a five-yard cut as you can. And that's what that's how organizationally we're thinking about this World Cup. Like we got to do our jobs and as normal as possible, not fooling ourselves into thinking this is some normal no, no, but that's it's a major event. But but you gotta be focused on the execution part of it, and that's what we're doing.

Dustin Heise 13:50

Absolutely. Well, a lot of the times we as uh leaders, wherever you're at within the e within the organizational ecosystem, you can find moments that you're overwhelmed and you can find moments that it seems like all too daunting and that this particular situation. And how you just shared that around how you enable your team, your coaches, your players, your business leaders to be able to perform in that when it matters most. It came back to some of the initial kickoff that we had was around that mental approach to be able to deliver where you'd already also shared, like that professional ability, which you expect is at a world leading or world-class level. And so, you know, I think that's what we're all seeing unfold in front of us with your leadership. And so it's uh it's really neat to watch and be able to, you know, be able to hear some of the how it's playing out and the approach that uh you take. And of course, I'll take a golf analogy any day. So it's uh, you know, Kevin, with uh, you know, the time that we've had together, I I I can't thank you enough. Any final thoughts or you know, any way that you would like to express where you you hope to see you know yourself and you know Canada soccer in in one year's time now. You'll you'll have had you know FIFA you know behind you and so much to look forward to. You know, what would be uh an expectation that you you'd like to share around what you see in a any year time from now?

Kevin Blue 15:13

I think that the sport of soccer is it's the most played sport in the country, and what we need to continue building is the resource base to have it continue to professionalize, not only at the club level, but in the breakthrough in terms of media coverage to match the interest. And I think the World Cup should catalyze it. Lots of people play soccer, but commercially and culturally it's still under-indexing relative to the participation levels. This is the opposite of NFL football, for example. You know, lots of people in Canada watch the NFL. Lots. Not that many people play traditional like American or Canadian football, but the commercial and cultural and media sort of prominence of that sport is extraordinary. And we just need to flip it a little bit. Like, that's not to be negative about other sports, but what I'm suggesting is that there's that soccer, right? Soccer ought to grow commercially and culturally from this World Cup. So I I hope that happens. And I hope that, you know, one thing that Canada soccer can contribute to the sport system writ large is is hopefully uh a path for us to continue to follow vis-a-vis, modernizing the business operations and the revenue mix and the integration of commercial revenue and philanthropic revenue with the right sort of athlete relations approach through our national teams, et cetera, to try to contribute that as I don't want to say example, but a way that the Canadian sports system can do it uh as we look forward for the system at large.

Dustin Heise 16:42

Well, thank you for for taking that on. You you are living that, by the way. We are seeing that and we are learning from uh the foundation that you're putting in there. And uh you know, we're grateful for for having a leader like you uh in the seat that you're in and you know, continuing to to champion alongside you and and then in the sports that we represent and and uh you know take as seriously to get to where they belong within uh their respective ecosystems domestically internationally as well. So Kevin Blue, thanks so much for taking some time. Uh thanks for having me on. Awesome.