In April, iHeartMedia and Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment announced they were partnering to launch the Women’s Sports Audio Network (WSAN). The brand was described as the first-ever audio platform dedicated exclusively to women’s sports podcasts, daily sports reports, spotlights and audio vignettes, social content, promotion and industry event presence. The content will be available across iHeartMedia’s broadcast, digital and podcast platforms and everywhere podcasts are heard. One of the first shows to be announced was Good Game with Sarah Spain, a weekday show covering stories around women’s sports.
On the show, Spain will cover breaking news and conduct interviews, and she will also be regularly joined by a roster of guests to discuss the forthcoming games and to engage in debate. Spain was a guest of the Sports Media with Richard Deitsch podcast this week to talk about the launch and more.
Deitsch talked about the access Spain should have to all of the big names in women’s sports. “You should really almost have anybody you potentially could want, correct?”
“From your lips Richard,” Spain said. “I agree. I hope so. I plan to. Also, it’s a pretty nice thing when Sue Bird is the Chief Strategy Officer for Deep Blue Sports + Entertainment, because I told her day 1 when she called me first about this opportunity. I said, ‘I better get your rolodex. I’m going to go through it and I’m going to get everybody you know and have met and you’re going to tell them this is the first ever daily women’s sports podcast, that we need to launch it and make it great, and they are going to help out.'”
Spain talked about her current schedule, where she is solely focused on espnW, which is allowing her to get out in the space and meet more people herself.
“In my many, many years at ESPN, and I’m still working for espnW, I was kind of straddling both women’s and men’s sports content and I made a lot of connections,” Spain said. “And it’s been fascinating in the last year and a half without having the daily radio, TV, podcast, writing, all the jobs that I had at ESPN and now I’m just focused on W, how much more time I’ve spent in spaces. Because having s daily show for 13 straight years makes it a little hard to go to conferences and moderate panels and travel.
“So, the last year and a half I’ve really said yes to all of those…It’s such a delight to be in spaces full of women athletes and fans of women’s sports, men and women. It is such a different vibe. I feel like I spent so many years swimming upstream and in some spaces it was easier.
“At Around the Horn it was great having Tony Reali and Josh Bard, one of our producers, constantly wanting to hear more suggestions of ways to get more women’s sports on the show. And then to be honest, on radio, it was tough sometimes, to get them out of the ‘playing the hits’ mentality and I did seven straight years of national, my own show, fighting to do more women’s sports stuff and really pushing back against some producers at times.”
Spain says now she feels like rather than swimming against everyone she is now swimming with everyone. “It’s nice, man,” Spain told Deitsch. “I’m built to swim upstream, and I’ll do it and I’ll keep doing it in the space when it’s necessary. But it’s been really nice to connect with all these women who are like ‘I want to come on,’ ‘I can’t wait to come on,’ ‘I can’t wait for this show.’ It’s really cool.”
