In news first reported by Joe Pompliano earlier today, ALLCITY will be adding its fifth market in Dallas. ALLCITY is currently in Denver, Phoenix, Chicago and Philadelphia. Barrett Media spoke with company CEO and Co-Founder Brandon Spano who confirmed the launch will happen next week. Pompliano’s report also said Marc Stein, the former ESPN NBA reporter, will be one of the talent involved with the new market. Spano said the full talent roster will be announced next week when they launch. He did say Stein would be a part of Dallas programming and will also contribute to other ALLCITY Networks.
In addition to the new market, the report included details of a new funding round the company completed of $12 million, with TEGNA being the largest Series B investor. Pompliano reported the TEGNA investment, “includes a commercial agreement to place ALLCITY content on TEGNA-owned TV stations nationwide.”
“That’s a big part of it because in this agreement that we have with TEGNA there are promotional opportunities including spots on the local television station and our talent will be featured. And there’s opportunities for our products and shows to be distributed on their linear and FAST television feeds.”
Spano said even more distribution is on its way and will be announced prior to the start of the NFL season. He also said that the five markets they are in will be joined by two more within the next year.
“Counting Dallas, we will have launched three markets in a 12-month span,” he said. “And the next markets will be TEGNA markets under our commercial agreement.”
TEGNA Chief Digital Officer Adam Ostrow posted on LinkedIn, “At TEGNA we’ve seen firsthand the audience demand for fan-centric local sports coverage through our ownership of Locked On Podcast Network and the explosive growth it has had since we acquired the business in 2021. We’re now doubling down in local sports as lead investor in ALLCITY Network’s latest round. ALLCITY operates digital local sports channels in four markets and goes deep, with audio, video, text, in-person events, memberships, merch and more dedicated to each city’s local teams. They have huge levels of engagement in these markets, and we’ll be working with them to bring this approach to more places and leverage the distribution/content/monetization opportunities across TEGNA and Locked On to do even more.”
When asked about looking at new markets and how those decisions are made, Spanos said, “At the end of the day, it really does come down to talent. And then what does the media landscape look like there?”
As for the Dallas market, Spano said what his team saw was, “one major [sports radio] station that is really impactful. And, you know, probably one of the strong stations still nationwide at a local level. You’ve got one sports talk station that became a music station. You have another sports talk station with some 1099’s. You have some teams there like the Stars that are completely under covered. And then you look at the talent pool there because of how big the traditional media structure used to be. You just have all these names out there of really talented people that have massive followings and they’re free agents. And so, it creates kind of a perfect storm.”
