Very few sports radio stations survive without the luxury of carrying local team play-by-play. The opportunity to have the hometown call on your sports radio brand is the ultimate branding play. You can use the team’s rights as leverage for advertisers, knowing that when fans are in search of the game, you are the destination. It’s not impossible to be a successful sports radio brand without a franchise, but it does create a far more difficult path to success.
Tuesday, the Buffalo Bills and Sabres announced they are moving the production and distribution of their radio broadcasts in house. The move reshapes the branding position for local sports radio outlet WGR 550. For the first time in well over a decade, WGR will not be the flagship home of the two professional teams in town.
While WGR could remain the Buffalo-based affiliate for future broadcasts, the move signals a pivotal moment for sports radio nationwide. An NFL franchise brings enormous value to a local station. Its departure could be devastating to the long-term health of an individual brand.
The Buffalo Bills and Sabres are not the first franchises to bring their production and distribution services in house. Many franchises across the four major sports have done the same, leaving stations scrambling to rebrand, retool, and rethink how they continue to build their identities in an evolving content future.
It’s not an easy task, and it’s not one many brands are fully prepared for.
For the last 14 years, Buffalo Bills fans have made WGR 550 the destination for Bills Gameday. The station has always fully embraced the team, building daily programming into the weekday lineup throughout the calendar year. Those rights rewarded WGR 550 with cume, staff stability, and revenue because the Bills and WGR became synonymous with one another.
The NFL evolved. Listeners evolved. Because of this, stations are now more reliant than ever on having rights for identity and, in some cases, survival.
Every NFL media rights agreement is different. Sometimes the rights fee covers the costs of production, talent, and staff. Often times, the franchise receives the rights fee but is still responsible for talent compensation. Whatever the makeup of WGR’s arrangement was with the Buffalo Bills and Sabres, this decision moves all costs in house, leaving only distribution rights fees and revenue to gain.
It’s no secret that NFL teams have begun building their own content hubs. Why allow local sports radio and national sports television to produce the only content that covers your product? From a business perspective, it makes sense. Create the content, control the message, and add more inventory to market to sponsors for larger advertising buys.
By inserting themselves into the content race, teams have begun to rethink why they need anyone else at all. If you can produce your own content, manage the costs in house, and keep all the revenue, why not do what the Bills and Sabres are doing?
The ripple effect now centers on what happens with WGR. In many buildings, the ability to retain staff has been tied directly to having games to produce. Without games, the decision shifts to station management. Do you retain and reinvest in the brand, or do you cut that cost entirely?
Without the Sabres and Bills, advertising pitches also change. The opportunity for revenue tied to being the Bills’ home radio station no longer exists. Sure, you can rebrand yourself as where Bills and Sabres fans come for local talk, but are you truly that destination without the games?
There’s also the challenge of access. With any rights agreement, sports radio brands gain exclusivity others simply don’t. From tickets to events, being the flagship station comes with perks you can leverage leading to added revenue. Without that access, those perks often dry up, and the challenge of securing advertising partners and unique promotional opportunities increases.
Buffalo’s WGR is the lone sports station in the market. Holding the rights to the Sabres and Bills defined the station for more than a decade. Now, for the first time in an evolving content space, that definition may slowly fade. There’s no question losing the opportunity to serve as the flagship is a big blow to the brand. How WGR adjusts to this new reality will define its standing in the market for years to come.
The Bills’ news release was 100 percent correct. The delivery of media content has changed dramatically. People gravitate to phones over television, podcasts over radio, and on-demand over live. The only remaining true destination for live content is sports play-by-play. The Buffalo Bills believe they can absorb the costs and capture all the audience and revenue by owning their product outright from start to finish.
This move doesn’t just redefine the relationship between the Buffalo Bills, the Sabres, and WGR. It forces the entire sports radio industry to confront an uncomfortable reality.
For years, play-by-play has been the last true form of appointment listening, the one piece of content that trained audiences to find you at a specific time on a specific frequency. When that disappears, what remains isn’t just a programming hole, but an identity gap. Few have defined the odds, with many more facing the challenge every year.
Make no mistake about thigs. Stations can survive without rights. But surviving and mattering are two very different things, especially in markets where fandom is woven into daily life like Buffalo, NY..
The question now isn’t whether teams are justified in taking control of their own content. They clearly are. The real question is whether sports radio is prepared for a future where that ownership and access is no longer guaranteed.
The brands that endure will be the ones that stop treating rights as a safety net and start building value beyond the game itself. it can be done as the avenues of consuming content increase.
When play-by-play is no longer yours to lean on, the only things left are the strength of the voice, the trust of the audience, and the reason listeners choose you when the game isn’t on.
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John Mamola is Barrett Media’s sports editor and daily sports columnist. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. He is a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Medi’s Top 20 series and has been honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL) by iHeartMedia. Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
