Sportscasts, LLC: Chicago’s National Sports Podcast Network

Sportscasts, LLC is a network of 32 podcasts, covering Major League Baseball, the NBA, NFL, NHL and college basketball. Spinning out of a Cubs podcast, Sportscasts now covers 17 different markets with their programming, with their largest podcast, the Cubscast (Chicago Cubs) having an audience of roughly 30,000 listeners. Andrew Figgins, Sportscast Co-Founder, recently took time to answer a few questions about his business.

Chicago Tech News: While podcasts have been around a while, you tend not to see podcast networks. What inspired you to go wide in the sports area?

Andrew Figgins: We knew with Cubscast we had something good. Good for the three of us co-founders/co-hosts because it is an outlet for our Cubs “dementia” three times a week, and good for people on the go and outside of Chicago that want a place to connect with fellow fans. With the expansion outside of Chicago we’re hoping to create similar communities that benefit fans of a specific team, the team itself by way of the extra coverage, and the podcast hosts that are looking for an outlet as well.

CTN: What kind of audience does your typical podcast draw?

AF: Numbers-wise, it varies widely since some shows have had 2 or more years to build an audience and others launched in the last few months. For a show that’s had some time, the monthly average is about 10,000 listeners and 75,000 or so episode downloads per month. In it’s 5th year this baseball season, Cubscast is doing roughly triple those numbers.

CTN: You offer podcasts in 3 different pro sports and one college sport. Is one sport demonstrably more popular with the online audience?

AF: Baseball is most popular. It’s a long season and there’s a game virtually every day for 8 months if you include Spring Training and playoffs. Following a baseball team for a season is like caring for a newborn. You see the team learn to function and interact, you see them crawl on their way to walking. It’s a big investment to pay close attention, and fans love knowing that they aren’t the only ones out there making an investment in something that only officially pays off for 1 out of 30 teams.

Whether a team is at the top or bottom of the standings, people that find and listen to our podcasts typically are ready to immediately share their insights on the team(s) that they’ve been following for a lifetime or a few months, and they’re always looking for an edge or insights they can share with their friends or fantasy opponents.

CTN: You have 2 Chicago team podcasts listed in your top 4, one Detriot and one New York City. How does the geography of a team play into the audience size of a podcast?

AF: Not as much as we thought it would, to be honest. The most vibrant online communities exist for teams like the Oakland A’s, and that is what is great about the online space. We never expected listeners of our Detroit Pistons or New York Rangers podcasts would outnumber listeners for teams like the Yankees and Red Sox, but they consistently do. It’s a testament to those fans and our hosts for Pistonscast and NYRangerscast, respectively.

Over time the teams with huge fan bases (aka any team with a “nation”) should overtake the smaller market/smaller sport shows in terms of numbers, but we’ll continue to put our resources where the fans and listeners are.

CTN: How do you go about recruiting podcasters for such a wide range of teams and locations?

AF: We have strong connections at great Division I broadcasting programs at Syracuse, USC, and others. Most of our talent comes through those channels, from recommendations by our current podcasters, and by die-hard fans that listen to a rival team podcast and discover that we don’t yet have coverage for their team of choice.

The main qualification isn’t professional broadcasting experience — if it was 2 of the 3 Cubscast hosts (including myself) wouldn’t have been able to start our show. It’s more about having an infectious love (or borderline hate) of a team and the willingness to take on the challenge of creating something new and helping to build an audience from scratch.

CTN: What have you found is the best way to market your podcasts?

AF: On a small budget we’ve found the best thing we can do is develop a consistent release schedule for new episodes and stick to it. It’s not easy to pull off, but it gives a listener something he or she can feel good about recommending to friends. We also get a lot of traction from pulling in listener content like e-mails and voicemails every week, as well as contests that drive a good amount of traffic.

CTN: What’s your revenue model?

AF: Advertising, primarily via the podcast audio and also via banner ads on the podcast websites. We’re a great value for anybody looking to reach sports fans for a particular team, sport or city.

CTN: What’s your largest cost associated with the business?

AF: Building and maintaining 30 web properties is expensive and time consuming, but we’ve gotten our web hosting/traffic costs down to a manageable level, thankfully.

CTN: Did you receive any outside funding for starting up Sportscasts, LLC?

AF: Nope. Our wives remind us of this sometimes, usually with sarcasm.