In February 2021, Sola Winley joined Major League Soccer as their Executive Vice President, Commissioner’s Office & Chief Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Officer.
In this role, Winely leads the league’s efforts to increase representation, advancement, and retention of underrepresented groups in the front offices of the league and clubs, as well as the technical and coaching personnel with the teams. He also oversees MLS’ initiatives to drive access, exposure, opportunity, and participation in soccer within underserved communities and develops strategies to increase diversity among the league’s vendors and partners.
Soon after his arrival, Winley enacted several programs and policies to make long-lasting changes. In 2021, MLS unveiled a series of updates and improvements to its Diversity Hiring Policy for sporting positions within the clubs. The changes, led by Winley and created with a working group of club personnel, league executives, and current and former MLS players, were made to increase the policy’s efficacy, add a specific focus on the hiring of Black candidates and strengthen the policy’s enforcement mechanisms. The updated policy applies to the entire MLS ecosystem, which includes MLS clubs, MLS youth academies, MLS NEXT, and MLS NEXT Pro.
In March 2022, MLS announced that it will leverage a historic $25 million loan from a syndicate of Black banks, marking the first time any sports league has participated in a major commercial transaction exclusively with Black banks. This partnership was facilitated by the nonprofit National Black Bank Foundation.
Before joining MLS, Winley’s career included tenures with the National Football League, A+E Television Networks, and his own consulting and advisory companies. Winley partnered with CEOs and advised senior teams on leadership and organizational development, executive coaching, diversity and inclusion, and strategic communications across various industries. In this capacity, Winley also developed and implemented leadership and training programs created to prepare and advance mid-level executives of color into senior positions. He began his career working with the NFL for seven years, where he helped to roll out national grassroots initiatives and worked in special events and international media sales and marketing.
We caught with Winley while in LA, to talk all things MLS, check it out after the jump.
The Knockturnal: What inspired that choice to go to MLS, considering your background?
Sola Winley: A couple things inspired me. One is that I believe sport in and of itself is a platform for change and a platform for good. That was a key consideration. And after the murder of George Floyd, Major League Soccer, like a lot of organizations, made a commitment to improving diversity, equity, and inclusion. And we had 170 players in our league, Black players who organized and created Black Players for Change. And came on board to help to move our agenda to create more inclusion, not just for Black folks, but for women, and for folks from all underrepresented groups.
The Knockturnal: I love that! As I know it, football is the world’s number one sport. Why do you think it has yet to become top three yet, in America?
Sola Winley: I think we’re considered to be in the top five. And quickly making our way. If you look at our attendance, our attendance is, this year, for the first time in league history, we’ve averaged over 10 million. We’ve had over 10 million fans attend. 21,000 people per game. It’s a lot, and we’re now. Our league is 27 years old, compared to some of the other traditional sports that are 125, 150, 175 years old.
The Knockturnal: Hard to compete, yeah.
Sola Winley: It’s not that it’s hard to compete, it takes time to get to become part of people’s consciousness, and be viewed as a viable option. You look at some of the major markets, they already have a lot of franchises that have a long history there. Like New York, you just take New York. You have New York Knicks, you have New York Yankees, New York Mets. Long legacy teams that are there. Islanders, Rangers. It’s hard to break through the clutter, not just for sport, but any type of entertainment product that’s looking to get people’s attention. It’s not a matter of if, it’s a matter of when.
The Knockturnal: What’s the insight to that to get to the top three?
Sola Winley: There’s a couple of major catalysts that are coming up. First, the World Cup this year. And then we have World Cup in 2026. If we look at the World Cup in 1994, the league was actually born out of that. World Cup will be a major mobilizer, just for people’s attention, and interest in soccer, in the United States, and our brand of soccer, and actually in Major League Soccer, we say our soccer. We have a long term plan over the next several years to continue to grow our fan base. If you look at the diversity of our league, 25% of our players are Black. 30% of our players are Latino. Players come from 80 different countries. It’s an immigrant-based sport in a lot of countries. And here we’re an immigrant-based nation. It’s a matter of how do we ensure that we create an opportunity, and say, “Listen, our soccer is for you. Come check us out, Spend some time with us.” And that’s how we build a sense of community.
The Knockturnal: I know sometimes it can be a sore subject, and there’s fútbol, and there’s football. How does the community feel about the naming situation?
Sola Winley: I think it probably depends on who you’re talking to, brother. It’s football, that’s the global name of it. And this country has been familiar, and been introduced as soccer, but we interplay it, football, soccer, and if you’re in the culture enough you’ll see that most people who are in the culture will say football, and it doesn’t matter as long as they’re enjoying it.
The Knockturnal: American football, I feel like with people who don’t watch American football, they bring a lot of people in that comes to the Super Bowl, and halftime show. Would there ever be that situation implemented with your games?
Sola Winley: We’d love to have a wide enough audience where we can attract the type of eyeballs that all the major events have. We’re in the process where the process of building it. You look at some of our new stadiums. For this year, we have a 30,000 seat stadium. The largest soccer specific stadium in America was just built. We’ve invested over $7 billion in new stadiums, and infrastructure. And so over time, what you’ll see is that more, and more people are becoming attracted to the sport. If you look at the investors that we have, we have world class investors, and some folks that you’d be very familiar with. In LA, Magic Johnson is an investor. We have Kevin Durant is invested in our league. James Harden’s invested in our league. Russell Wilson, Sierra. The more that we have folks who say, “You know what, soccer’s cool, let me go check it out.” The more that extends the reach, because people who haven’t been interested in the sport before, we have to give them a compelling reason to at least sample us, and try us out. Either that’s going to be from the stories that we create, the interest that they have in our players, the video games that they are exposed to, and most importantly the experience that they have once they come and spend some time with us in one of our stadiums.
The Knockturnal: How do you better propel your stars into bigger stars, within other realms of media?
Sola Winley: It’s a good question. We have a new partnership that we just announced with Apple. It’s a global media partnership. Apple, as you know, it’s the largest company, most profit company in the world. They have 8 billion phones in hands around the world. That’s a very large platform for us to be able to tell our stories, promote our athletes, and get additional exposure out there. And I think World Cup again, is going to be very helpful with that, because there’s going to be a lot of eyeballs watching that US Men’s national team. A lot of those US men’s national team players are Major League Soccer players, and or have come up through our academy system.I think there’s a lack of education though. When you say World Cup, people assume… I don’t think people aware of how that works. You have a league here within America, and they compete and then it’s almost like the World Cup is like the Olympics, per se, where other countries have different leagues in those countries. How do we further the education of how, because the World Cup essentially the Super bowl of it all. How do we further the education of how that works and it’s through conversations like this. I think the more dialogue that we could have about… Maybe somebody who reads this story had never been interested in soccer before, and maybe just from reading this, they check out they… maybe they’ll see one of our playoff games over the next couple of days. Maybe that makes them a little bit more interested in some of our players. And so through dialogue, through continued, just spreading the word, and awareness. And that takes time, because it’s not yet ingrained into American culture the way that it is in a lot of European, Latin American, African cultures. And so that’s just going to be a time period.
The Knockturnal: Very true. 2023 is next leap, basically at this point. What is the plan for 2023? How are you guys expanding in the next year?
Sola Winley: A couple of major things. The announcement of our Apple deal, our season kicks off in February, we’ll be coming out with what the name of the new platforms going to be. All streaming, we’re the first league to go all streaming, which a major deal, right? No block outs, you can go to Apple TV, you’ll be able to watch a Major League Soccer game anywhere that Apple TV is distributed. That’s never been done before. All of our content is aggregated into one location. That’s going to be big for 23. We’re also rolling out a Leagues cup. Leagues Cup is interesting because it’s going to match Major League Soccer against Liga MX, the Mexican League. Both of our leagues are shutting down for a month during the summer, and we’re going to play a NCAA type tournament, best of. The winner of that tournament, there’s real competitive advantage tied to that, because then you get benefits throughout Concacaf, the winner of that championship. That’s big for us. Very, very big for us.
The Knockturnal: Where do you see MLS in the next 10 years? How do you see the growth going within the next 10 years, and what will be the conversation then?
Sola Winley: Our objective is to be among the best leagues in the world. And in order for us to do that, we have to continue to build a sense of community. Make sure that our product on the field is as good as it can be. If you look at the talent that we’ve been able to attract over the last couple of years has been tremendous. A lot of the international players that are coming over, in fact, have said they’ve been surprised by level of talent, more competitive than they had originally thought that it was going to be. If you look at where we were compared to competition against Liga MX, even three, four years ago, we’ve, we’ve been fortunate to out compete them on the field recently in a lot of different competitions. And so the competition level for Major League Soccer is really improving. That’s where the focus needs to continue to be. We have to put the best product on the field. If we continue to put the best product on the field, everything else around that will begin to grow on its own. We already have the dynamic stadium experience. I think it’s the best stadium experience in all of sport. It’s a quick game, 45 minute halves. There’s not a lot of television breaks. You have fans, and supporters that are standing up for the entire match. It’s really unmatched. We already have a dynamic in stadium experience. With Apple coming on board, we’re going to have a dynamic content, and viewing experience. Our work needs to continue to be, let’s put the best product on the field, let’s continue to attract the best talent possible, and then the fans are going to come, because we’re going to give them compelling reasons to spend time with us.
The Knockturnal: As you do expand, are you worried about your core group, as you expand, and get bigger, and reach the masses per se, are you concerned? Because your core group is so die hard, and they have big concerns about being respected, and being valued. How do you keep that in mind with growing, and expanding the audience?
Sola Winley: I don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive. I think that you have to continue to treat the people who have gotten you here with a level of dignity, with a level of respect, so that they understand their value. And our supporters are a large part of who Major League Soccer is, and they can continue to be a core of who we are. Whether or not we have 21,000 fans in the stadium, or whether or not we have 50,000 fans in the stadium, it does not make a difference. You have to remember your core. And I think that we do a pretty good job of that, particularly at the local level.
The Knockturnal: For anyone who’s never been to a Major League Soccer game, why should they come?
Sola Winley: You should come for a couple of reasons. One, it’s a great family experience. And I think that you’ll also see that it’s very multicultural. There’s not a large corporate contingent there. It’s not a major time commitment. You go to some sporting events, they could last for three, four hours. Two hours, you’re going to get in, and you’re going to get out, and you’re going to have a dynamic experience. You’re going to have different food, and cultural options, that are going to be curated for you. You’re going to be part of a soccer culture, and soccer community, where you’re going to feel welcome. You go into one of our stadiums, doesn’t matter where you are in the country, you’re going to feel that you’re welcome. We have a lot of supportive groups from the LGBTQ community. We have Black supportive groups both in Atlanta, as well as in Nashville. And our supporter groups are inclusive, and they’re inviting, and that’s what separates us apart. That’s what separates us apart.
