Seattle radio host Jason Rantz said Tuesday that Seattle Sounders fans tried to get him fired from his duties as the team’s pre and post-game host.
The KTTH host touched on the topic while discussing the organization’s newly minted deal with the Washington-based Providence health system. The medical provider recently agreed on a deal to sponsor the team’s jerseys.
The Sounders play in the Major Soccer League (MLS). Several years ago, the team played on Seattle’s Bonneville station KIRO Radio 97.3 FM, which also owns KTTH. According to Inside Radio, iHeartMedia’s KJR became the team’s flagship station a few years ago.
“I know there’s not a single person listening to me right now who cares about soccer,” said Rantz. “And frankly, even when I do cultural stories around soccer and I write them up at KTTH.com, no one really clicks on it, when I tweet it no one gives me a like even though I have almost 110,000 followers because the topic of soccer itself is such a huge turnoff.”
Rantz said he only continues to write about soccer because he enjoys annoying and trolling some of the club’s fans.
“There is a small group of lunatics and boy did they hate me when I worked for the Sounders on their pre-and post-game show,” Rantz said. “They loathed me. They wanted to get me fired every single time I turned on the microphone and said anything Sounders related, and it brought me such great joy.”
Rantz stated that the final year the Sounders were at the Bonneville station, he contemplated not continuing with the job due to the extra workload.
“It was a lot of extra work on top of what I was doing,” he added. “But I decided to stay on because of the haters.”
