Report: Why Entercom Partnered With Game Streaming Platform Twitch

Entercom Communications Corp. experimented last year with video streaming on its website and social media, and the feedback was extremely positive, reports The Philly Business Journal. Chief Digital Officer J.D. Crowley said the radio station operator and audio streamer quickly decided that was an area of potential growth.

That led to Thursday’s distribution partnership agreement with video streaming service Twitch, which will broadcast live and on-demand content from Entercom’s sports stations in 29 different cities.

In addition to video streaming, Twitch offers chat boxes, dynamic polls and video commentary. Entercom’s sports stations already conduct polls on their Twitter pages but Crowley envisions hosts being able to pull commentary from both platforms.

Amazon-owned Twitch will initially distribute video simulcasts from six Entercom sports stations: Boston’s WEEI, New York’s WFAN 101.9 FM/660 AM, Dallas’ 105.3 The Fan, Chicago’s 670 The Score, Atlanta’s 92.9 The Game and Detroit’s 97.1 The Ticket. Philadelphia’s Sportsradio 94 WIP-FM will not be part of the original content package, but Crowley said there are plans to add the Twitch feature in the 23 other markets that have sports stations. Due to Covid-19 and other factors, he said there is not an exact timetable for a complete rollout.

Financial terms of the partnership were not announced, though Crowley did say both sides would split advertising revenue generated from the video streams. Crowley said Twitch will help expand Entercom’s advertising base through its own pool of advertisers and perhaps expand relationships with existing customers by offering another avenue for placement.

Like Entercom’s own audio streaming platform, Radio.com, the content on Twitch will not include play-by-play of the 58 college and professional teams with which it has broadcast rights agreements. Crowley did say the company could experiment with alternative programming during games that could include content built around sports betting, which has become a big advertising component for WIP and will only grow across the country as more states legalize online and in-person wagering on sporting events.

Entercom has the largest number of pro sports team broadcast partnerships among U.S. radio operators, so it has lost a good deal of revenue from the suspension of the NBA and NHL seasons and the delayed start of the MLB season. During its first-quarter earnings call with investors in May, Entercom CEO David Field said some of that can be offset by the reduction of play-by-play broadcast rights fee obligations, which are prorated based on a number of games canceled under virtually all of its agreements.

Twitch says it has about 17.5 million daily active users, the majority of them skewing younger. Crowley said the partnership will allow Entercom to offer more to existing listeners and add new ones.