Friday afternoon the word started trickling out that local group, Grand Slam Sports’ bid to buy the “other” sports talk radio station in town, KFNS (590 AM), became official. Not only that, Grand Slam Sports also announced they had purchased the local sports blog JoeSportsFanSTL.com. Their bid to buy the other other sports talk station you haven’t heard of KSLG (1380 AM) is still in the works.
Grand Slam Sports, which consists of a group of local investors, bought KFNS from Big League Broadcasting for $1.4 million.
Greene also announced Friday that Grand Slam Sports acquired JoeSportsFanSTL.com and will partner with site founders Josh Bacott and Matt Sebek to provide St. Louis sports content on a daily basis. The content from JoeSportsFanSTL.com will appear daily on KFNS.
The announcement was all but official about buying KFNS especially since the Atlanta-based group Big League Broadcasting has been trying to unload that property for some time now. Also, it was great to hear the guys from JoeSportsFanSTL.com getting some well-deserved jack to be officially apart of KFNS, but this development wasn’t shocking since Grand Slam Sports’ face-man Dave Greene has had a long-standing relationship with JoeSportsFan’s Josh Bacott and Matt Sebek.
What is surprising is the amount of money the Grand Slam Sports team is throwing around these days.
$1.4 million for KFNS…throw in a few grand for JoeSportsFanSTL.com…KSLG is in the crapper, sure, but even the price for the “stick” (the rights and hardware to broadcast) alone will be quite a bit, currently rumored to be in the $350k neighborhood. Throw in the STL Sports Magazine, and you’re looking at a lot of money invested in radio and magazines. Two of the crappiest areas to have money in. Anyone know if Greene has any interest in buying this steam engine factory I have for sale?
Kidding aside, his ventures must be doing well enough to fund his 1+ Million purchases last week, we just couldn’t ge comfortable being in that boat, even with one-third of the sports radio dog fight out of commission. 101 ESPN has clamped down on the sport radio market and their grip might tighten if they get the rights to co-broadcast Cardinal games next season. Greene has said all along though, that its money that is the measure, not ratings. Ratings may not matter today, but don’t they predict tomorrow? Greene’s efforts to get bloggers and the InsideSTL partnership aboard show he’s at least aware of the fact that radio and print alone don’t make much of an empire, a sinking radio ship (that can’t be heard come nightfall) needs more than just a couple of internet life vests.
…unless they wanna buy us. Then forget that crap. Go AM radio!