There have been a lot of outlets seemingly shifting their focus away from local sports coverage in the last while. A few of the many examples there include Vox Media parting ways with many of its SB Nation team sites earlier this year amidst wider layoffs and The Athletic laying off nearly 20 writers and getting rid of some specific team beats last month, saying they were shifting their focus to more national and regional coverage. This week’s decisions to end the New York Times‘ own sports desk (replacing it with coverage from The Athletic) and remove game stories and standings from The Los Angeles Times‘ print product also have some correlation to the ongoing challenges for local sports coverage, although there are further factors at play with both of those moves.
So, around all of that, it’s interesting to see what had been exclusively a national publication adding specific local beats. That’s what Pro Football Network is doing. PFN announced Wednesday that they plan to have four people doing individual team coverage this year, adding that to their existing mix of national coverage of NFL news and information (which they also expanded Wednesday with the hire of Adam Caplan as a national NFL insider).
The PFN nationally-focused strategy isn’t changing when it comes to the NFL Draft, betting, and fantasy. But the launch of local team coverage in four markets is a big shift for how they’re approaching the news and information side. The people they’ve tapped to lead local team coverage will be Jess Nevarez with the Dallas Cowboys, Jay Morrison with the Cincinnati Bengals, Arif Hasan with the Minnesota Vikings, and Adam Beasley (also PFN’s deputy NFL director) with the Miami Dolphins.
And this is part of a larger plan where PFN hopes to have the whole league covered in three to five years with a mix of local and divisional reporters. PFN CEO Matt Cannata, chief content officer David Bearman, and Beasley all spoke to AA on this by email ahead of Wednesday’s announcements, with Beasley saying the traffic data they analyzed pointed to the importance of team coverage.
“The data points we analyzed around NFL team coverage have reinforced our intuition—that news and commentary are king in this space and that it starts at the team level. But, it has to be done a certain way, especially with Google giving more and more weight to experience, expertise, authoritativeness, and trust. That means we need to add trusted voices who have experience in the markets we are targeting, which, in turn, will grow our organic and direct traffic.”
Cannata said this was the right time to add local coverage, but it needed to be authoritative coverage.
“We’ve tried the national and broad coverage since we launched in 2019, and we’ve had mixed results. What it comes down to, though, is the logic of what an NFL fan wants,” he said. “What incentive is there for fans to come to Pro Football Network to consume team-specific content from an analyst who doesn’t follow the team nearly as closely as a beat reporter does? Rather, they’re going to go to the people they trust the most, and those are the people who are following the team every day throughout the year.”
Some attempts to enter local markets have done so with public commentary around plans to compete with established outlets. That was particularly true with The Athletic co-founder Alex Mather’s 2017 remarks (which he later apologized for) of their plan being to “wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing” and “suck them dry of their best talent at every moment.” But Cannata said this move from PFN isn’t about targeting existing outlets, and he thinks there’s room for lots of coverage of these teams.
“We’re not looking to compete against the media outlets in any market. During our data analysis, we saw that there was extensive demand across markets and that fans consume content from multiple reporters and outlets that cover their favorite team.”
Cannata said their move wasn’t inspired by The Athletic’s shift, and actually was in the works before that. But he said it was intesting to see The Athletic taking an opposite strategy of shifting towards more regional and national coverage around the time PFN was discussing bringing in this plan.
“It’s ironic—we announced to our staff that we would be making local coverage more of a priority, and then a few hours later, The Athletic announced that they are shifting toward more national and broader coverage,” he said. “I don’t want to say that we are right and everyone else is wrong because what works well for one company may not work for another. What I do know is what works well for Pro Football Network and what doesn’t work so well. And for us, that has been the inability to break through when it comes to content that is only focused on a single team.”
Cannata said local beats helmed by veteran writers seem like the right way to do that, and the new local coverage will fit in with the league-wide coverage they already have.
“We believe that by adding trusted voices in local markets, we’ll be able to break through that wall that we’ve come up against so often in the past four and a half years. And we’ll supplement that with broad NFL coverage that will cover trends, top stories, and content that covers all or multiple teams at once, such as rankings-type content.”
Bearman said the four teams they have set up so far were chosen from a larger list of potential ones, with the people they were able to get a key factor there.
“During our research, we identified 10 to 12 teams we would be comfortable covering this season with a full-time reporter,” he said. “The Cowboys were at the top of our list, followed by several others. Arif Hasan was already on staff and had previously covered the Vikings for The Athletic, so that was a natural fit. Adam Beasley is our Deputy NFL Director, but previously covered the Dolphins for The Miami Herald. And while he won’t be covering the team daily due to his company-wide responsibilities, he will lead the coverage and work with a mix of contractors to ensure we have daily content around the Dolphins.”
“Jay Morrison (Cincinnati) has been a mainstay in the Queen City for over a decade, and we wasted little time pursuing him when we found out he was available. Jess Nevarez (Dallas) is an up-and-comer in the Dallas market that Cowboys fans will absolutely love and will be a star in the industry.”
Cannata said that larger list of 10 to 12 candidate teams was drawn up from a mix of analyzing PFN’s internal data, getting other data and talking to other sources, and using their own experience and foresight.
“It’s a combination of data analysis, experience, foresight, and, ultimately, measuring and reviewing progress as we launch these verticals. We spent several months analyzing first- and third-party data around local markets and also talked to others in the industry who were able to give us some good insight. This included traffic sources to websites that covered these teams, social presence, potential market reach, fan engagement, and more.”
“Through that, we identified the teams that made sense to dedicate a full-time beat reporter and then began to identify candidates for each of the markets. Along the way, different opportunities presented themselves, and we took advantage of them where it made sense.”
While some publications have also tried local slants on other topics like betting, Cannata said PFN isn’t shifting from their national strategy there.
“As it relates to our other verticals, such as fantasy football, betting, and the draft—those are more topic-based, where the audience is looking for information from a broader standpoint. Our philosophy in coverage in those areas won’t change from what we have been doing for the past four years.”
As for a timeline for expanding local coverage beyond these four teams, Bearman said that’s going to be based on how well this does, but that evaluation won’t just be of raw click totals.
“This season will determine a lot here. If we have success with our current teams, we will move quickly to expand into other markets. As far as which ones, that will depend on many of the metrics Matt talked about in terms of audience size and engagement, as well as team interest. We aren’t necessarily looking for X amount of page views or X amount of followers on social media. Rather, we want to see upward momentum as we move throughout the season, playoffs, and offseason.”
On Wednesday, PFN also announced that they’d brought in Caplan for that national insider role. Bearman said that came out of working with him around this year’s draft, and his connections and track record will help elevate PFN further.
“Adam worked with us during part of the draft process, and we had good synergy together. Bringing him in for this season and through the draft was a no-brainer decision. With connections around the league, Adam brings instant credibility to our news lane as a 20-year veteran insider. And while the insider role is a national one, it still gets at the heart of local issues.”
Cannata said PFN has been on a solid upward trajectory since its launch, and he’s optimistic these latest moves and others will lead to more success still.
“Since launching in 2019, we’ve seen incredible growth, especially on our website platform. We’re currently averaging millions of users per month, and our year-over-year growth continues to climb. This includes seeing 2x growth in various user metrics this past draft cycle compared to last year.”
“Additionally, with the recent investment from Absolute Sports, we’ve been able to unlock synergies at an unprecedented pace. This includes building new tools, such as the Fantasy Trade Calculator, Parlay Calculator, and Betting Odds Calculator. That will continue, with several more fantasy, betting, and NFL tools set to launch before the season. We’ve also been working to improve our Mock Draft Simulator and will be releasing new features on the website platform in the months to come.”
And Beasley said while the field of NFL media is crowded, he sees several key ways PFN can stand out, including with these latest moves.
“By giving fans what they are asking for—the most relevant and engaging content possible. By growing while others are downsizing. By providing high-level coverage of a number of key franchises with no paywall. And by building credibility in a space that could use more of it.”
