We didn't translate the show. We built a different one.

Soccer in the United States has a language problem that most clubs handle badly.

A meaningful share of the most knowledgeable, most passionate soccer audience in almost any American market speaks Spanish — often as a first language, frequently as the language they actually consume the sport in. And most clubs address this with a translated social post and a note in the media plan about "multicultural reach."

We had the same gap at Indy Eleven. We had a strong radio footprint through our ESPN Radio partnership, and every minute of it was in English.

The easy version, and why we didn't do it

The obvious move is to translate. Take the existing programme, produce a Spanish version, tick the box.

It doesn't work, for a reason that has nothing to do with language quality. A translated show is still a show designed for someone else. The references, the pacing, the assumed knowledge, the choice of what's worth discussing — all of it was built for the original audience. Translation moves the words. It doesn't move the perspective.

An audience can tell. Being addressed in your language by content that was clearly made for someone else is not inclusion. It's a courtesy.

Translation moves the words. It doesn't move the point of view.

Why we started over

What we built instead

We created Nivel De Cancha — "From the Pitch" — a weekly, thirty-minute Spanish-language soccer programme running alongside Soccer Saturday.

Not a translation. A separate show, with its own editorial identity, running its own conversation about the sport.

That distinction mattered more than the airtime. It meant the audience wasn't receiving a version of something — they had a programme of their own, on a mainstream sports station, in a market where that had not previously existed.

The wider play

This sat inside a larger effort with our radio partner. We worked to normalise soccer across the entire station rather than quarantining it into one show — including Indy Eleven results in general sports updates alongside scores from major tournaments and clubs worldwide.

The logic was the same in both cases. You don't grow an audience by building it a separate room. You grow it by changing what counts as normal in the main one — and then, where the audience genuinely needs its own space, you build that properly rather than as an afterthought.

What transfers

The test isn't whether you've reached an audience. It's whether the thing you reached them with was made for them.

• Ask who the content was designed for, not what language it ended up in. Those are different questions and only one of them is about respect.
• Separate reach from relevance. A translated asset increases reach. It rarely increases relevance, and relevance is what converts.
• Decide whether you're serving or accommodating. Accommodation is cheaper and audiences can tell the difference immediately.

Building something new is more expensive than translating something old. It's also the only version that reads as genuine — and in a market where you're asking people to invest emotionally in a club, genuine is the entire product.