Several new start-ups have emerged in recent years, “hoping to build a business on local sports fandom,” according to Ben Strauss of the WASHINGTON POST. The efforts of these publications recall the “early days of another local sports start-up:” The Athletic, which launched in 2016 and putting beat writers on every pro and major college team in the country, then “knitting together that local coverage to create a national outlet.” But Strauss noted that “least part of the opening for these other companies” is that the Athletic has "pared back its local beats." In Oklahoma, Sellout Crowd launched this year in a market the Athletic pulled back in. It poached the state’s two best-known newspaper sports columnists from the Oklahoman, Berry Tramel and Jenni Carlson, and is covering the Thunder and the state’s two biggest colleges. Sellout Crowd founder Mike Koehler said that he is “looking to expand across markets in the Big 12 and SEC.” Meanwhile, Brandon Spano, a former radio host and media executive in Denver, relaunched a sports site in 2019 as DNVR and in the past two years has “raised more than $10 million in investments and has launched companion sites in Phoenix, Chicago and Philadelphia,” part of what he is calling the All City network. Then there is Substack. Writers such as former Washington beat reporter for the Athletic Christian Caple have launched newsletters, offering “essentially the same coverage” of their specific beats. Caple charges $65 per year for a subscription and said that he is already making “significantly” more than he did as an Athletic staff writer (WASHINGTON POST, 12/14).
