A new multi-year “flagship” deal between the Sounders and iHeartMedia will see the team’s games aired on Sports Radio KJR starting this season alongside half-hour long pre-and-post-game shows.
It marks a significant milestone for the nine-year-old Major League Soccer franchise, which for years had team-generated broadcasts air on KIRO 97.3 FM. The new deal will still involve team broadcaster Matt Johnson doing play-by-play of matches on KJR alongside assorted analysts, but is expected to make Sounders content more widely distributed amongst casual sports fans.
“We haven’t had someone as enthusiastically embrace us as a sports-only broadcast partner with the kind of interest and commitment and welcome that we currently feel with this relationship,” Sounders owner Adrian Hanauer said Tuesday after the deal was announced.