ESPN's Chicago Launch: A Regional Sports Web War?

With 192 million online visitors up for grabs, ESPN, Fox, and Comcast are bringing their TV sports battle to the Internet

By Tom Lowry

For the first time in more than a decade, ESPN is making a push into the regional sports business. But this time ESPN is going online, instead of offering a service on TV.

The launch a month ago of ESPN Chicago, a Web site for sports fanatics in the Windy City, has the potential to set off a digital war in regional sports as the existing stalwarts with local sports networks, Fox (NWS) and Comcast (CMCSA), prepare to fend off ESPN. Fox is launching new Web sites while Comcast is upping investment in its local sports sites, including expanded coverage. "I feel confident," says Jon Litner, president of the Comcast Sports Group. "That's because we've always been about local and we work where we live."

ESPN executives say they have no plans at this time to roll out more local Web sites. But it really seems like a no-brainer for the sports media giant because it can pull off that strategy with minimal new investment.

Fans can't seem to get enough sports online. Of 192 million unique visitors to the Internet in March, sports sites attracted about 80 million of them, according to Web tracker comScore (SCOR). The leading sites were Yahoo! Sports (YHOO), with 26 million visitors, followed by ESPN with 21 million.

ESPN Could Launch in L.A., Too

In Chicago, ESPN is using editorial content from its local AM radio station, WMVP—aka ESPN 1000—as well as from the ABC affiliate there, WLS-TV. (ESPN and ABC are both owned by Walt Disney (DIS).) Anchors from ESPN's operations in Los Angeles and Bristol, Conn., do Chicago-centric video that is streamed as a Chicago SportsCenter and a local Baseball Tonight program on the site. ESPN.com writers are tapped to do Chicago-focused stories for the site and ESPN's existing Chicago multiplatform advertising sales team is selling ads for the site. The advertisers are a mix of national and local businesses, ranging from StubHub and MillerCoors to Chicagojobs.com and Binnys Beverage Depot.

ESPN's legacy Web offering in Chicago—the WMVP Web site, with much leaner offerings—is now part of the larger ESPN Chicago site. ESPN also owns radio stations in New York, Dallas, Pittsburgh, and Los Angeles, where it might be able to replicate the Chicago model. In addition, the company has more than 300 affiliate stations.

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