Syndication: Asbury Park Press
By Demetri Ravanos on

Los Angeles isn’t a sports city. At least, that’s what the stereotype says, right? LA fans show up late and leave early. They only go to the game to be seen. You’ve heard all the classic tropes.

But the city’s sports fans must be doing something right, because on May 18, Los Angeles will get its third sports radio station. 97.1 The Fan will carry live, local programming from 6 AM until 6 PM every day. 

Audacy, the station’s owner, is an expert in the sports radio field. The company owns some of the most successful and best-known sports radio brands in America, including Philadelphia’s WIP, Detroit’s 97.1 The Ticket, and the legendary WFAN in New York. I have to believe its leaders saw the right conditions in Los Angeles for a new sports radio station to be successful.

Is Los Angeles a good sports city? It better be if it’s going to support three sports stations. More importantly, is it a good sports radio city? There is a difference. I’ve worked in this world long enough to develop a little theory. A good sports radio city needs a team that unites the population in misery. 

I live in Raleigh, North Carolina. It’s a great sports city. We have three power-conference college teams within a 30-mile radius, and the Carolina Hurricanes might be the best team in the NHL. Plus, people come here from all over. Even if the Panthers are bad, there is still plenty of NFL interest here.

We don’t have anything that unites us in misery, though. UNC fans and NC State fans hate each other, Duke fans hate UNC fans, and everyone hates Duke fans. They all root for each other’s misery. If the Canes get bounced early from the Stanley Cup Playoffs, we’ll be bummed, but move on in a day or two. 

“Fandom is a rollercoaster. Your team can make the Super Bowl one year and miss the playoffs the next,” says Carrington Harrison of the Audacy-owned 96.5 the Fan in Kansas City. “A great sports radio market has a team or teams that are bedded into the culture and dynamic of the city. A city in which the collective mood is affected by the accomplishments or failures of the local team. Those are the markets that call in fired up after a big win or ready to fire the coach after a clock management blunder.”

Sports fandom doesn’t look the same everywhere, obviously. John Kincade, who now works for Beasley Broadcasting’s 97.5 The Fanatic, is a Philadelphia native. But before he was on the air in his hometown, he was working in Atlanta. Those are two very different sports markets.

“Doing sports radio in Atlanta for over two decades, you learned that the term ‘melting pot’ needed to apply to your content,” he says. “My partner Buck Belue and I were the first to feature prominent college football talk on a daily basis…It has since become a staple in that market. It required a focus on the two local college programs in Georgia and Georgia Tech, but also featured content of the other prominent SEC and ACC contending programs. You talked more ‘national’ focused topics, as the majority of residents in the listening audience came from elsewhere. 

“In Philadelphia, it is much more provincial coverage. We can talk Eagles every day of the year at some part of the show, and the audience won’t revolt. The focus is always on the local teams, and national stories rarely take center stage.”

If there is any parallel to Los Angeles as a sports radio market, it may be Houston. The city has three sports talk stations. One is not consistently dominant over the others. If you’re a sports fan, that might be heaven. If you’re a host or producer, it’s a lot of work.

Cole Thompson is a native Houstonian. He has been working for iHeartMedia’s SportsTalk 790 for a while now. At the end of last year, he became part of the radio station’s new morning show. He says that kind of variety and inconsistency means everyone on the air is doing a lot of homework.

“The Houston Astros are lifeless for the first time in over a decade, and the Texans are finally built to win a Super Bowl, so you’re caught in a Hatfields and McCoys situation of which trigger is going to send the phone lines ringing more,” Thompson says. “Seeing the Astros struggle and fans lose their minds because they all want to vent about how everyone needs to be catapulted into the Sun, but the negative part is that if the team has lost its ability to make at least things close, the audience doesn’t want their commute to be filled with an hour of negativity as you await the start of training camp. So you gotta look at why your metrics were down, and the counterparts were up. What worked for you or what hurt that made those two flip to the other station across the loop? It’s a big deal since there is a chance to win the hour daily.”

If one extreme is the Texans ready to compete for the Super Bowl, then the opposite is the Tennessee Titans. Ultimately, whether or not a city is a good sports radio market depends on what fans can tolerate. I asked Dawn Davenport, who hosts the afternoon show on Cumulus Media’s 104.5 The Zone, how much negativity Nashville and Titans fans can tolerate. 

Southerners have a well-earned reputation for being overly polite and wanting to ignore what we call “ugliness.” So, do Davenport and her co-hosts have to watch what they say?

“We can absolutely be critical of this team without accusations of hating the team,” she says. “There’s still a smaller portion of this fan base that doesn’t like it, but I feel that has been a transition in this market. The fan base is so much more knowledgeable and in tune with management decisions and in-depth information on this team that when the criticism is fair and honest, they’re great with it. When it’s a hot take, negative comments just to get attention, this fan base calls it out as they should.”

Derek Fisher and the rest of the 97.1 The Fan staff are new to the LA sports radio scene. Both of the stations they are taking on have at least one show that has absolutely set the tone for what sports talk radio is in Los Angeles – Petros and Money at 570 LA Sports and Mason and Ireland at ESPN LA 710.

When Kincade returned to Philadelphia, he was going head-to-head with his mentor and friend Angelo Cataldi, one of the most influential and creative sports radio voices anywhere. The “anything goes” nature of Cataldi’s show on WIP set the tone for what sports talk is in Philadelphia. It’s why the City of Brotherly Love became one of the most distinct sports radio markets in America.

“This is all just my opinion, but the fact is that in today’s world of radio, they wouldn’t allow much of what made [Cataldi’s] show grab ears and create buzz ever make it to the air,” Kincade says. “Programmers are more afraid to rattle cages, play it far too safe, and there is a pandering to teams because they bully stations over access. Society has also lost a sense of humor, and the sensitivity of conversations and content is scrutinized to a level that limits creativity.”

That means that the door is wide open in terms of competition. 97.1 The Fan won’t just be competing for the hearts and minds of sports fans with the other established radio stations. It will also be going head-to-head with every YouTuber and podcaster that focuses on any of LA’s eight major pro teams, in addition to USC and UCLA.

Sports fans have a lot of options when it comes to finding the man or woman they want to hear from after big wins and losses. The days of Cataldi or Mike & the Mad Dog being as important to fans as the most popular player or coach of their team are over.

Plenty of people have gone to work in LA with the goal of being famous and failed miserably. Harrison says success in sports radio isn’t about fame. It’s about impact. 

“Does your open and/or peak hour affect the local sports conversation for the day? Your big take for the day,” he says. “What do you want the city to know about how you feel about this thing that just happened? When a great column is written, the entire city is talking about it. There’s a buzz, an energy. Sports talk is the same way.” 

You didn’t need this column to tell you that ultimately, it’s fans that will determine whether or not a sports radio station is successful. There is a big difference between liking sports and liking sports radio. Very few cities have enough people in the latter category to support three sports radio stations. 

I am rooting for Audacy and the entire 97.1 the Fan crew. It’s been so long since the country has seen a new, fully-staffed sports talk station launch in a major market. Sports talk is expensive, but in the right places, I fully believe it’s radio’s best bet in 2026.

Now, is Los Angeles one of those right places? I hope so.

About Demetri Ravanos

Demetri Ravanos is a writer and broadcaster living in Raleigh, NC. He is also the host of This Team is Killing Us, a podcast about the Carolina Panthers.

View all posts by Demetri Ravanos