ESPN Goes Hollywood

ESPN/ABC Sports President George Bodenheimer yesterday said that ESPN will debut its locally-dedicated Web site for L.A. on December 21, with sites for N.Y. and "other cities to follow," according to Ben Klayman of Reuters.

Bodenheimer, speaking at the Reuters Global Media Summit in N.Y., said that he "envisions bringing online 20 or more local sites." He later acknowledged that the "number could grow to every city with major pro and college sports teams, although no plans have been set" beyond L.A. and N.Y.

The L.A. launch will lead into ESPN's Christmas Day NBA doubleheader, which kicks off with Cavaliers-Lakers.

Bodenheimer: "We'll follow that with New York. We don't have a date yet, but it will be before the baseball season."

He noted that Pittsburgh "would be another natural fit" for a local site because ESPN already "owns a radio station there."

ESPN this year has launched sites dedicated to Chicago, Dallas and Boston, and Bodenheimer said that "advertisers have reacted well to the local websites," with ad sales "ahead of ESPN's internal expectations."

Bodenheimer's remarks come as "both Comcast and Fox Sports are aggressively building online local sports sites of their own, since web-based local advertising remains a relatively growing segment."

Daily Variety's Stuart Levine notes the L.A. site originally was scheduled to launch in the first quarter of '10. The move indicates that L.A. newspapers "will see strong competition when it comes to readers looking for insight into the local sports scene."

Want more news about the financial side of sports? Subscribe to the weekly SportsBusiness Journal and get regular updates that summarize and prioritize the news from the SportsBusiness Daily.