Ep. 12 - Local Economies and the World's Game Transforming Arkansas Culture

Embark on a journey through the economic landscape of Northwest Arkansas with Mervin Jebaraj, the insightful Director of the Center for Business and Economic Research. Mervin, charting a fascinating path from Dubai all the way to Fayetteville, unpacks his comprehensive analysis of local and global economic strategies. As he casts a light on what to expect economically in the year 2024, our conversation takes you from the pivotal insights shared at the Arkansas Business Forecast Luncheon to the intricacies of national trends, all meticulously woven through Mervin's seasoned expertise.

As Northwest Arkansas's economic fabric continues to flourish, we traverse its transformative journey from the humble beginnings in the '90s to its current status as a self-sustaining economy. The episode peels back layers on the growth driven by burgeoning industries, the transition incited by remote work, and the region's competitive edge against larger metropolitan behemoths. Amidst this rich economic discourse, we lace in a vibrant discussion on soccer's influence on local culture and economies, spiking anticipation for the World Cup 2026 and its potential to revolutionize the sporting world.

We then turn to the heartbeats of communities—soccer clubs like Wrexham AFC—and their profound impact on local culture and economies. The unique fervor of soccer fandom is beautifully illustrated as we explore how the sport's promotion and relegation systems could elevate the economic stakes and community spirit alike. Wrapping up, we express our gratitude to Mervin for his profound contributions to Northwest Arkansas and reflect on the center's role in shaping the economic and social fabric of the region. Join us for this compelling exchange where economics, community, and the love of soccer converge into a narrative as intriguing as the game itself.

Transcript

Wes Harris: 0:04

Pitch to Pro is the official podcast of USL Arkansas. This will be our platform to tell our story about the club and the special place that we call home, northwest Arkansas. This is a journey we want to bring you along for the ride. We'll share what's going on behind the curtain, help educate the community at large about soccer, our league, and give updates on the progress of the club along the way. Together, we'll explore and unpack our journey to professional soccer, the magic that is NWA, our community, and talk all things soccer from on the pitch to behind the scenes, telling the story of our club. Pitch to Pro Podcast is proudly sponsored by PodcastVideoscom. Podcastvideoscom is Northwest Arkansas's premier podcast recording studio, equipped with industry-leading equipment. The recording studio and services save you time, money and hassle. They are dedicated to helping you create, record and publish high-quality podcasts for your audience. Be sure to check them out today at PodcastVideoscom.

Wes Harris: 1:07

Hello everybody and welcome back to the Pitch to Pro Podcast. I'm your host, wes Harris, managing director for USL Arkansas, northwest Arkansas's professional soccer club playing in the United Soccer League. We have a really cool conversation on deck for you today with my very esteemed guest here, mr Mervin Jebaraj. Mervin is the director for the Center for Business and Economic Research at the Sam M Walton College of Business at the University of Arkansas, along with a lot of other things. But, man, that's a mouthful. Mervin, welcome to the show, man. Thank you so much for coming on. Thank you, I'm just a man with the longest title, all good. Well, mervin, before we get into all of the very interesting stuff that you do and how that impacts NWA and all of what we're doing here with our project as well, I wondered if you could just go quickly into a little bit about your background, how you came to NWA. Your, like a lot of us here Transplant Spot, have come to know and love NWA and now call it home. So talk a little bit about how you found Northwest Arkansas.

Mervin Jebaraj: 2:16

So there's a long story and a short story, but the shorter version is that my next-door neighbor in Dubai went to school here at the University of Arkansas and when I was applying to colleges, applied to a bunch of them, including the University of Arkansas, because I knew somebody that went there and, sure enough, they gave me a decent chunk of change to go to school here and that brought me here, and over the years I've come to find all kinds of things that you can do here in Northwest Arkansas, make it a place that you want to stay in. So I stayed in Northwest Arkansas, so went from Dubai to Fayetteville.

Wes Harris: 2:55

That's quite the move. That's quite the move. That's awesome. And so talk a little bit about and you came to the University and have you? Did you stay from the University and just that's where you went to work. Did you do a little bit of thing, a few things here or there in between there?

Mervin Jebaraj: 3:13

I stayed at the University, broadly at the center in various capacities, eventually running it in 2017. I did do some other things on the side Salting work and things like that. Sure, sure In general and staying around the economics field for a long time.

Wes Harris: 3:32

So talk a little bit about the center and what it does and the work that you guys do.

Mervin Jebaraj: 3:38

Yeah, so my center has been around since the 1940s. Wow, I've not been there that long. This was a center, so the University is a land-grant institution, has a mission to serve the entire state Only two land-grant institutions in the state us and the University in Pine Bluff. And in the 1940s, all the way up to the late 90s, what the center did was take data that was collected by the federal government and repackage it for the state and then distributed to businesses, to a government sector, to the state government, local county government, whatever you want, and basically give them stats about Arkansas that came from the federal government. This was pre-internet, and so if you wanted data about unemployment or labor force participation or just about anything that you think of that, you can now go to the internet and just find that kind of stuff.

Mervin Jebaraj: 4:38

All of it was physically collected by the federal government, sent to centers like ours around the country and repackaged them and mailed them out to people. So with the advent of the internet we don't need to do that anymore because that data is now resides on federal websites. So we've converted to just doing a lot of analysis and collecting data that isn't collected by the federal government or other sources. So we produce original research on topics that are of interest to Arkansas. So it has to be something to do with Arkansas or a border state that has some businesses in Arkansas, necessarily, and with governments again state, local businesses and nonprofits to help them answer economic questions, which is our specialty here in the States. So sort of the go-to resource if you want some economic analysis or some question about the economy of our state, of the policy change or things like that that's great, that's awesome.

Wes Harris: 5:44

So you guys just had your 2024, I'm gonna butcher this, but 2024 Business Economic Outlook event that you guys hold annually now and talking about what the outlook looks like for 2024, for NWA and Arkansas abroad, you even went so far as to say the world. You kind of went the funnel. You did the global outlook, the US outlook and then Arkansas and then NWA. Can you talk a little bit about some kind of those highlights and summary where we go on in 2024?

Mervin Jebaraj: 6:17

Yeah, so this was our 30th year to do the Arkansas Business Forecast Luncheon, as it's called. There you go, the official name. That's the official name and it's been one of those. So, if you, you can get global outlooks and national outlooks from a lot of foreign sources. You often cannot find local information produced like that, so that was the original name. Participant starting this program. I figured why just do an Arkansas Forecast? You can also have people listen to a perspective on the global economy or the national economy. So we had some great speakers this time. Greg Deco from EY is unfortunately, mitch, a city fan, unfortunately for both of us. That's right. Alan Zentner from Morgan Stanley did the national forecast, state and regional forecast. I think you know. Across the three of us, the common theme was that no recession in 2024. Huzzah, we also said that last year and we were right. I don't think people believed us, but I was one of them.

Wes Harris: 7:25

Yeah, believed us, believed you believed, you Believed you. Yeah, part of that was I had just done my MBA and went through Raj Khali's economics class, that's right.

Mervin Jebaraj: 7:38

So you know, I think last year we predicted a soft landing and I think we ever landed. We were still cruising altitude. The economy was predicting soft landing again and you know, so far the indicators are that the economy is still growing really strong. So we might have undersold the prospects maybe, but we'll see. It's still a lot of the year left.

Wes Harris: 8:01

Yeah, yeah.

Mervin Jebaraj: 8:02

But that's you know. The regional and state forecast was basically that you know, at about 10,000 to 11,000 jobs here in the state, five to 6,000 jobs here in North West Arkansas and particularly in the sectors that have been growing a lot recently, like professional technical services, leisure and hospitality, industry, construction but there's quite a bit Around us and then education, healthcare services.

Wes Harris: 8:31

Yeah, quite a bit and honestly not enough in terms of the residential and I know it's growing and they're doing what they can. But with the, what are we? Up to now, net 38 new people a day come into NWA something like that with births, plus, you know, people moving and all of that.

Mervin Jebaraj: 8:49

Yeah, we could do an entire podcast Of a few podcasts on the YVM Built in the Founsley.

Wes Harris: 8:55

Yeah, yeah, absolutely Well, awesome, and I think that's great to hear. Continued growth and mitigated to what people might have thought of maybe two years ago, even last year. But I think everybody was kind of coming in like, oh, what's going to happen, what are they going to say? And it was, for some, pleasantly surprised, but I think for others it was kind of oh okay, yeah, good Good.

Mervin Jebaraj: 9:23

We like growth. Yeah, growth is good.

Wes Harris: 9:25

Yeah. So, speaking of growth, we live in one of the fastest growing parts of the country, the world, but for sure the United States and not only fast growing but also performing well economically on a lot of different metrics and KPIs, increasing diversity, all of these different things From your perspective. You've been here kind of for that. You know it's grown since before you were here, but early 2000s to now has kind of been that big boom, in particular over the last five to 10. Can you talk a little bit about your experience and kind of you know, with a little bit of a twist on your professional background as well, in terms of you know the economic science behind it a little bit in terms of what's driving our region's growth? Everybody knows that it's happening now, especially with the international and international attention that we've gotten, but kind of bring people into your world a little bit. You know what are some of those things that have been the key drivers and how we look at that from your lens.

Mervin Jebaraj: 10:32

Yeah, I should think of the original growth boom here in the 90s. You know that was largely because the three major companies here and the University were growing, particularly the three companies, and so a lot of that growth was those companies doing so well and attracting people to work for them. And then the early 2000s decade, if you will, right up until that recession, was growth that people who wanted to work with those companies were generating. So it wasn't directly, it was somewhat in those companies, but more so in the companies that wanted to work with the three big companies here. Yeah, and then in this most recent decade that just passed, is the companies that work with the companies that work with big companies. So you support yes, all the support companies here, and so, by and large, north Dostarfin sells growth has been driven by job growth. So it was either job growth with the three big companies or the companies that worked for them, or the companies that worked for the companies that worked for them. But I think we're, you know, not quite there completely yet, but we're starting to get to the self-sustaining growth that isn't dependent on one of these companies adding jobs.

Mervin Jebaraj: 11:48

At this point it's, you know, the kind of business growth that you're seeing and the job growth that you're seeing leisure and hospitality industry, healthcare and education that's mostly just to sustain the growth in the population here. So it's not directly related to those companies in that sense. Except there's all these people here, and all these people need their hair cut, need places to go eat, need places to get their teeth cleaned, need hospital and so all of that and everything of that nature. So that's kind of growth that you're seeing. So it's still sort of in relationship with jobs. But you know, during the pandemic we saw some evidence of this with remote workers. So now it's not, we're not quite there yet. We're not one of those cities where people just move without a job and then find something when they get there. So we're not, I think, at New York, austin or something like that, people just like I'm just gonna move to New York.

Mervin Jebaraj: 12:47

Yeah like one of those things. Right, I'll figure it out. Figure it out. Yeah, and I think there are people that do that here. It's not a very big thing, Not at all. Or certainly over the pandemic with the remote working people were just like I'm just gonna move there and figure it out, and you saw a lot of population during the pandemic here.

Wes Harris: 13:07

Yeah.

Mervin Jebaraj: 13:08

North of Shorokin. Now most of these people had jobs somewhere else so they weren't quite doing the. I'm gonna move there, find a job, but that will be the sort of next phase of our growth is just become self-sustaining. Where you become that region, people go. Well, I'm gonna go try my luck in North of Shorokin.

Wes Harris: 13:29

Yeah, that's that next step change. But yeah, I'm gonna move to LA and become an actor, but really a waiter or whatever. Or whatever the dream is.

Mervin Jebaraj: 13:39

People go to New York to be XYZ. You can go to Austin to be XYZ. I think those are large, self-sustaining population centers now that people just move there because they know that's where there's a lot of opportunity.

Wes Harris: 13:53

Yeah.

Mervin Jebaraj: 13:53

The fail of the first three things they tried, they'll still have a fourth thing to find. Yeah, exactly.

Wes Harris: 13:58

So if we're not in New York, we're not in LA, we're not in Austin, what are some comp markets that we compare ourselves to, or that you guys I know you guys, the NWA council, I know you guys work together on some different projects and things like that what are some comp markets that kind of we look at, and why do we look at other comp markets and across what metrics?

Mervin Jebaraj: 14:21

Yeah, so I mean, as always, the why we look at comp markets is because, you know, if you want to be able to benchmark yourself against some standard, right? I think originally, when we started looking at comp markets, we were thinking of places that were like us in terms of size. So we're a region of 565,000 people, which isn't terribly large, although I'm sure if you grew up here, this sounded like it's gotten so much larger. But you know, there are places a million people are more. There's a lot of those places around the country, so we're not that. So we used to compare ourselves to places that more or less with the same sizes as us, and we found that over the years you know, we stood for three years on a variety of different metrics, like JobGrow that business grew up, educational attain, things of that nature we were routinely, you know, ranking ourselves number one compared to places that were just like us. So then we tried to be a little more inspirational and pick some larger metro areas that are in our region so you think of Kansas City or Omaha and places like that and then we would consistently be beating those metro areas too. So you know, instead of just, you know, patting ourselves on the back of the back all up at great.

Mervin Jebaraj: 15:40

We decided to do something challenging, and so now we hit ourselves against large, very large metro areas. So Houston, texas, is one of those pro. In Utah, it's a Madison Wisconsin, you know the Raleigh, durham Research Triangle, and so in Des Moines, iowa and Sayake well, these places are doing a lot better than we are and they're a lot larger than we are, which has its own built-in advantages. We talked about self-sustaining growth. They had those, so we want to compare ourselves against them. Obviously, we don't rank nearly as good compared to some of those very large metro areas, but that's the challenge we want. We want to see what they're doing and we want to see how we can do better to get to where they are.

Wes Harris: 16:26

No, that's great and I think it's always.

Wes Harris: 16:28

You know, my professional background was consumer goods and started, like a lot of people, as an analyst and, you know, learned very early on.

Wes Harris: 16:39

You know, it's not just about saying what it's, so what, and then now what. And in order to have a so what and now what, you have to have something to compare it to, and so I think that that's good, that the region is. You know that we're, we have our leaders looking at other markets and not just ones that are maybe similar size, and saying, to your point, you know, pack yourself out of the back, but also where do we want to go and who do we want to be, and then, okay, identify the gaps and then how do we? What are some programs or policies or other things that we can do to get there? So that's great. What are maybe one or two things that in the course of your work and time living here and you know you travel around the state quite a bit what are some things that you know people might find interesting, that they may not know about either Northwest Arkansas or Arkansas as a state, either economically or otherwise, that you've kind of come across and people routinely find like oh, I never knew that.

Mervin Jebaraj: 17:36

Yeah, you know, I think people in Arkansas know Northwest Arkansas and the road story that we've had. I think the challenge the region has faced, and still does to some extent, is that people have an opinion of Arkansas, the state you know, provincial backwater or something like that. Yeah, Don't haven't appreciated all the growth that has happened in Northwest Arkansas and other parts of our state by Central Arkansas and Northeast Arkansas and Charles Brown. So until they actually come here, you know they might have an opinion of what that state is like and what amenities we have, or probably think we don't have. And you know what the culture of this place is from the outside.

Wes Harris: 18:22

Yes.

Mervin Jebaraj: 18:22

You know, colored by sort of a national perception of Arkansas the state. It's supposed to these regions that are very different from each other and from the national perception of Arkansas the state. So I think you know, in general people that come to Northwest Arkansas and other places in Arkansas are generally surprised by what they see here, the growth, the openness to all the things that we have growing in our region, and I think it gives them a very different perspective once they're already here but you know we still need to do more work to break that barrier from getting past the psychological, not hurting anything good about it.

Wes Harris: 19:07

Right, right. So to that point. I know that we could probably both sit here and talk for days about why we love the area and the region, but you've been here now for just over 20 years, if I'm not mistaken, and you know, unlike me, I was a boomerang. So I was here for a little bit, moved away for work not because I wanted to, but for work and family and came back because we loved it and wanted to be here and raise our family here. But after being here for 20 years 20 plus what's you know I know you could probably draw on a million things, but what are some of your favorite things about the area? What does it mean for you that you enjoy about living in NWA?

Mervin Jebaraj: 19:53

I know, while we're recording this today, it's the first fake spring that we have here. What I actually enjoy about one of the things I enjoy. So I grew up in Dubai, which really had just one weather hot and very hot. Yeah, so we have four seasons in North West Oregon. We do. We have a winter, it's cold, it snows. We have a spring, we have summer, it gets really hot and fall is really pretty.

Mervin Jebaraj: 20:25

And I enjoy hiking In particular. There are so many great hikes, both within our cities and really close to our cities here in North West Arkansas, which you can hike the same trails at probably not in the summer, but the other seasons and enjoy the differences that you can see on the same trails that you've hiked several times. The other thing that I enjoy about North West Arkansas is that you get some of the big city amenities that you might expect to see in much larger metro areas, but we have those types of things here in performing art space or in other cultural assets music festivals, so forth A lot of good restaurants, a lot of good bars, a lot of good places where communities can grow together.

Wes Harris: 21:14

So coming soon. Professional men's and women's soccer yes, coming soon. So, and that's a lot of what we heard too in terms of you know we did these listening sessions. And what do you love about NWA? I think it was big city amenities without big city problems or mitigated big city problems, so that's great. But I agree with you that the four seasons here are definitely marked, but they also do this especially in the winter, like this week. I'm not complaining about the weather this week.

Mervin Jebaraj: 21:48

This is your first fake spring.

Wes Harris: 21:49

We'll have a second fake spring, for the real spring, yeah, yeah, we'll drop back down below zero here in a couple weeks maybe, but I'll agree. And the hiking I mean just the outdoors that we have here and that's so close, it's just incredible. But I also know that you are a big football guy. Right, correct the correct football, that hand ag, hand ag. I love that, I love that. So, speaking of ag, we may have some agro here at the table, because Mervyn is a man United fan and I'm a Liverpool fan and we are our tribals. But it's okay because I think it's one of the best rivalries in all the sports and it's just A Liverpool fan still liking him. There you go. Well, there's hope for me. So I wonder, with your background and your professional lens, have you ever looked at or talked about the economics of football and we don't have to go super granular, but just in terms of how they operate their business model? Have you looked at that at all?

Mervin Jebaraj: 23:06

Sort of direct one undergraduate honors thesis. We looked at the revenue model of the top five leagues, Look at television revenues in particular and see how that was distributed to the teams and what impact that had on competitiveness. So a lot of people are premier league fans because they have really big TV contracts and agreements with major sports networks all over the world. They do so. They've very successfully exported that brand. But what they haven't done, which some of the other leagues like the Spanish League or German League have done, which is taking the money that they have from TV contracts and just giving it to the top pieces, Whereas in England 20 teams in the world fairly competitive Maybe Luton Town is not as competitive as they might be, but they're not there now, I mean the last few weeks they've been doing okay.

Mervin Jebaraj: 24:01

So you can have a team come into a league from the Lordeus and like Nottingham Forest or whatever and just do well because of your amount of money and compete against the bigger teams. It's not every game is in the complete blowout or again like you might in some of the other European leagues. So that's always very interesting to me.

Wes Harris: 24:22

Yeah.

Mervin Jebaraj: 24:22

The sense that it's not a winner. Take all the money. It's definitely. The revenues are definitely handed out evenly. There is a bonus for winning, but it's not significant compared to just payment. That goes. And then they also pay down the pyramid. They do. So there's more soccer leagues, and that's really where the real community building happens, because big major clubs that you see now on TV they were community clubs once upon a time, but now they're big international brands. Well then, community clubs, so that you have community clubs in those same cities that you have teams from. So I think that that piece is very interesting. The other thing that I'm sure will be very interesting and I'm sure will all get to live at some extent, is the World Cup in 2026. Absolutely, it's going to be here. I plan to be off for the entire month and a half. Yeah, it was originally a month, now it's a month and a half.

Wes Harris: 25:24

Now it's a month and a half because, for those that don't know, they extended it from 32 to what is it? 48 teams Too many, Too many? I think? Yeah, but I think they put out a graphic. There's going to be, I think it's 104 games or something like that in total and like 62 or something like that in two weeks, which is almost the entirety of a Premier League season in two weeks time.

Mervin Jebaraj: 25:46

Yeah, different points in my life. I used to pride myself that I could watch every.

Wes Harris: 25:52

World Cup game. Okay, I did that as well.

Mervin Jebaraj: 25:56

Yeah, it's. Even if I had the time, I wouldn't be able to do just too many games. I think there are, basically if you lose yourself in part of the game potentially multiple TVs multi-screening.

Mervin Jebaraj: 26:08

Back when it was a normal World Cup, and at 32 teams they have three, four games a day, three to four and spaced out so you could actually watch them, yeah, and it's like a one, two hour break between games. Yep, go do some work, come back. Yeah, watch the next game. Go do some work. Now. I don't, you can't, you can't watch all the team.

Wes Harris: 26:29

Yeah, it's, it's gonna be. That's gonna be a challenge because I too used to pride myself and have, up until even this last women's World Cup. I watched every minute of every game and still remember, you know, the O2 World Cup in in Korea and waking up at you know, one in the morning, great, and it was like one, three and five and then I would go to school and, you know, put on a big pot of coffee at 13, 14 years old, yeah, but you know 48 teams.

Mervin Jebaraj: 26:59

They all need a base of operations somewhere. Hopefully one of them trains. There are only 48 states here.

Wes Harris: 27:05

There are, yeah, they could each pick.

Mervin Jebaraj: 27:09

Not sure which ones to adapt. The bring Croatia here, croatia here.

Wes Harris: 27:14

Yeah, chris, we're bringing Croatia here.

Mervin Jebaraj: 27:16

You'll see this in a couple weeks here, so I'm putting them in like you know, 16s in Texas or something. I'm sure they should give a. They should give a team to every state, team to every state. And then I adopt Idaho.

Wes Harris: 27:32

Why, exactly, the travel dynamics of that may be a little bit interesting for each other. Gonna be bad anyway, it will be. It will be, yeah, but hey, the, the 94 World Cup was a massive springboard for the sport when what we have coming up Not just with the World Cup in in men's, but we also have the Copa America this summer. We have the FIFA Club World Cup in 2025. You have the coup de grond 26, then we have 27. Potentially they're still working on the bid for the women's there either 27 or 31, and then we also have the LA Olympics in 2028, where there's some soccer as well. I mean, that slate is just almost, almost. I think the closest one would be Brazil but almost unprecedented in terms of that run that close without the level of tournament there, and that's just kind of do wonders for this pretty, yeah, growing Sport here in the US. Yeah, it's gonna be incredible. But thank you for talking about that with the.

Wes Harris: 28:38

The economics of the TV revenue, I think you know for those I mean we could do a whole other podcast, the entire show and series and there are out there on the economics of football. Soccer. No mix is a great book if, if anybody is Peak, their interest and they want to learn more. But essentially there's three main buckets, other than selling and buying players, that's more on the soccer operation side, which is a revenue source for teams, but there's there's essentially commercial, which is for all intents and purposes, sponsorship revenue. There's broadcast, so TV deals, and then there's Matchday, which is tickets and all your food and Bev while you're there in the hospitality and that kind of thing.

Wes Harris: 29:25

So those are your three main buckets and you know what you and I were talking about before before we got on to to record here that you know it used to be in the, in the, maybe the great heyday, if we want to say that.

Wes Harris: 29:36

You know, even, even, as you know, nears, 20 years ago, where a match day Really mattered to some of those bigger, you know, bigger global clubs and mega clubs now In terms of their revenue source, and they, you know, it's not to say that they don't matter, they're just a much smaller percentage in terms of their overall revenue model. Because as the leagues have become more popular, as Technology has accelerated, globalization in general, you know, has impacted business across the world in almost every single sector and Football has been no different and what that's done is driven, awareness driven, higher revenue for TV deals and for sponsorship deals and Merch sales and all those things. So what we've seen is an evolution over time, in particular from like the late 90s to now. And especially now Is where match day is used to be maybe 40, 50 percent these clubs revenue model, and now it's, you know, 1015 percent, maybe 20 percent at most, where commercial and broadcasts almost share that. You know the balance of it.

Mervin Jebaraj: 30:48

You have situation like my club meant to see an added roof leaks here. The stadium still sold out. Yeah, it's not their major revenue source exactly, exactly.

Wes Harris: 31:00

Well, you can also talk about their ownership group and all that fun stuff and but that's also another episode worthy. But but yeah, you've seen that evolution and revenue models change, especially as technology and other forces change. But that's certainly been the case for, at least you know, kind of the top five leagues in the top flight Again, another good source for people. Or the Deloitte football money league is public and out there goes into it as well, as KPMG football benchmark is another really good one. But there's for for the soccer nerds like myself that love to get into that stuff. Yeah, um, those are out there for you guys to look at talking about community.

Mervin Jebaraj: 31:43

I think probably you know rexham will eventually not be just a community team because the investment in the TV attention. But you know the first season of it you got to see how that team was Integrated into. So that's what you're thinking about. You know, exact, go lower down the leagues. I think of a community sporting institution. Um, you know, have a whole lot like it here in the US, per se, where like that is the community Hub for activity on weekend, for example. Yep, you know some smaller towns. You might think of high school football games, right, and egg, yeah, games being that and egg community driver. But you know that's what soccer At the lower leagues anyway in other countries is like. It's, yeah, the place where you go hang out with your friends. It's a community. You see the same people Weekend. It's a. It's a easy commitment to make yeah, two hours Yep done.

Wes Harris: 32:48

Yeah, it's not three and a half.

Mervin Jebaraj: 32:50

I have four and actors, exactly you know, at a wonderful time for a brief period between one and five pm In the afternoon on a Saturday and then you can go about the rest of your lives Exactly, yeah, and that's, I mean, that is going to be.

Wes Harris: 33:05

It won't be exactly the the same model, but it's gonna be more to what we aspire to be is a community, grassroots based club and ingrained and rooted in the in the, you know, nwa community, and so I think that that's what you see starting to pop up with the growth of usl Is a little bit more of that model which is, you know, for for folks like you and I that can appreciate that and and you know soccer down the pyramid and what it used to be and those kinds of things, I think you know it's not to say that the make-up clubs don't do stuff in their community.

Wes Harris: 33:38

They do and they make a big impact. It's just it's how they've evolved and it's just different now and that's okay, it's just different, yeah, and so I mean we've talked about it a little bit, but you know us bringing a club here. You know we don't have to go crazy granular, but broad strokes. You know how do you think? What are you excited about in terms of what that potential could be in terms of impact to NWA? And it doesn't have to be economically, it could be just otherwise. You know things to do, increasing diversity and how we interact with each other across our different communities, whatever that might be.

Mervin Jebaraj: 34:14

Yeah, I think it's, you know, probably the biggest contribution to North of Shark, and so would having another great amenity here, especially one that is a growing sport. It is not a major sport in the US yet. If we're honest yeah, yeah, but you know after 2026,.

Wes Harris: 34:33

We will be.

Mervin Jebaraj: 34:34

So, but it has its own form of community and I think at some of that. Even with the MLS clubs I've been to some Kansas City and stuff. Look at their fan section. Yep, the culture.

Wes Harris: 34:50

The culture.

Mervin Jebaraj: 34:51

Yeah, it's different, right. I mean, that is different than going to an NFL game or a baseball game, which is a lot more relaxed and things of that nature. So I think, having this kind of amenity where you can go, you're there for the game. The game is part of the entertainment, but it's not necessarily the most important. I mean, you are watching the game but like you're there for the hanging out with your friends for an hour before, an hour after and during the game as well, and there's a period of intense activity that you watch the field Screaming yeah, Take a break for 15 minutes and come back and scream and yell again.

Mervin Jebaraj: 35:29

Go about you know something doing something else after that. So, yeah, yeah, I think that's, you know, a great. It would be a great cultural asset to have here, Absolutely, and a way for people to meet new people, make new friends. You know, talking to people around Rolterstark, so that move here I often talk about, oh well, I don't know anybody here, how do I meet new friends? This is another one of those opportunities people have to make new friends.

Wes Harris: 35:55

It is. It is in the community that's built around soccer and what that sport does. All sports do it. It's just differently, but soccer in particular.

Mervin Jebaraj: 36:05

The thing is intense. I've watched a lot of different. You have yeah, and I don't know. Maybe it's because it's compressed, it could be. Yeah, it's high, highs. It is very.

Wes Harris: 36:18

Yeah, we don't play in the middle, we play at the highs and the opposite end on the spectrum, and I think that that's something that Promotional Relegation does and that's what adds to each individual game and the importance of it. I've talked about that on previous episodes as well, but well, this has been a fantastic conversation. Mervyn and you know thank you for the work that you and your center do, and all of your colleagues and the impact that you guys are having on Northwest Arkansas and Arkansas is an entire state and your thought leadership. So thank you so much for that work and for joining us here today. So really appreciate you joining us. Yeah, thanks for having me on and just a reminder to our listeners, thank you, guys, and you can find us on all platforms, at Pitch to Bro or USL Arkansas and go check out the website for more info until.