They call themselves “The Drink’n Man’s Podcast,” but they are really Adam Smith, Erin Riley and Lee Rayl, the men behind the live, video-streamed podcast “SonarFeed.”
It’s a worldwide online show dedicated to talk about Major League Soccer and the Sounders FC that’s broadcast from Renton’s Berliner Pub every Monday or Tuesday night, since 2012.
To the guys, it’s just having a good time with friends, but they’ve generated a modest following of some 300 to 400 “likes” between Twitter and Facebook, 40 to 50 live viewers online and hundreds of downloads per week for their show. They also get visitors at the Berliner Pub, who come to watch the broadcast.
“The idea was that there are professional podcasts, so to speak, that talk about things,” said Riley. “We’re not the professionals; we like to have a good time.”
They know enough because they watch the games, but they give a fan’s perspective, Riley says, so the conversation also veers to life in general, movies and other things that spark their interest.
Invited guests on their show have included Sounders players Roger Levesque, Taylor Graham and Lamar Neagle. They’ve also had Coach Alan Hinton and KJR’s Mark Gastineau. Recently, they had Don Ruiz, sports writer for the Tacoma News Tribune as their featured guest talking about the end of the Sounders season.
“One of our little jokes is that we’ve seen the game because we’re fans, so we don’t need to re-hash every 90 minutes of the game because we saw it,” said Smith. “And so we come in and we all have our favorite players and that’s where we get to say what we want and we’re not tied in with anyone. We’re our own affiliation.”
This labor of love has spun off into a charity event once a year to raise funds for, in the past, the Boys and Girls Club of Renton and most recently for the Neagle Foundation, Lamar Neagle’s nonprofit for youth athletics and academics. The Sounder has participated in SonarFeed’s previous two charity events.
“From the beginning as far as the fundraiser goes, we knew we wanted to do something for charity, even if it was little and give back,” said Smith.
For their first charity event in 2012, the SonarFeed FIFA Tourney, they played a game called “Are You Better than a Real Footballer,” in which they set up a video game competition to see who could be the best soccer player. They set up TVs around the Berliner’s beer hall and projected the final games on the big screens. This year, players will compete playing FIFA 15 for Xbox 360. It is an all-ages event and previous years have brought out some of the kids from the Sounders’ Academy program.
The fundraiser brought in $700 the first year and $2,200 the second. They hope to bring in more than $5,000 this year for the Neagle Foundation.
“The guys that are involved are very – we all want to give back,” said Riley. “We’re all guys who like to have a good time. We all like to do stuff and we decided one day to get together on the weekend and play games and raise money for charity.”
The third annual SonarFeed FIFA Tourney is 11 a.m., Jan. 4, at The Berliner, 221 Main Ave. S., Renton. For more information about the tournament search “SonarFeed” on Facebook and Twitter, or email info@sonarcast.com.
