Compass Media Networks is taking the Oakland Raiders national. Specifically, The Raiders have named Compass the official and exclusive broadcaster of the Raiders Radio Network in English. Compass will be responsible for all aspects of the broadcasts — pre-season, regular season, and post-season games on terrestrial radio, with simulcasts heard online and via satellite on Sirius/XM. Dial Global is the exclusive ad sales agent for Compass.
CBS Radio will serve as exclusive radio outlet in Oakland-San Francisco-San Jose market with play-by-play coverage on Live 105 (KITS) FM. KFRC-AM 1550 will simulcast coverage and offer Bay Area listeners expanded pre-game and post-game coverage.
“We are honored to work with the Oakland Raiders and pleased to announce that CBS Radio will be our exclusive home for these broadcasts in the Bay Area,” said Peter Kosann, Compass Media Networks CEO. “Our goal is to significantly increase the number of stations carrying Raiders football. This announcement is just the beginning.”
Indeed, to the novice, this may just look like Compass is producing some games and moving the affiliations from KSFO to Live 105/KFRC and CBS Radio. But it’s really going national. Last year, Compass worked with the Raiders, syndicating some of their games on Sunday afternoons. The relationship was built, and when Compass learned the Raiders’ deal with Citadel in SF was expiring, they bid on the rights. KSFO had the right to match the deal – they didn’t – and Compass took over the rights. The next step was to find a station to air it on locally – it was KSFO or CBS Radio. KSFO ultimately lost and after they were informed by The Raiders they would not get the games, it was leaked to the press on 3/30.
In other news, Compass has renewed all eight teams that they work with and have augmented that with the Raiders deal. So the combination of the Raiders four pre-season games, the 16 regular season games, as well as any playoff games the Raiders are involved in, with the other eight teams, gives Compass probably twice as many NFL games as they had in 2009. It’s a multi-year agreement, so all of a sudden they have in place multi-year agreements for NFL Games, Big 10 Basketball tournaments, regular season NCAA Basketball games and regular season college football games.
The Raiders are a unique franchise in that they are one of a handful of teams that really do have a national brand that resonates in all markets. They play primarily at 4PM ET, which there are half as many kickoff games as 1PM, so there is a hunger for 4PM games. Compass automatically has cleared LA and SF.
The other teams are the Falcons, Bills, Cowboys, Lions, Chiefs, Eagles, Bucs and Redskins.
RBR-TVBR observation: Compass is getting a major platform here. Plus Westwood One’s rights are up on the NFL, and Compass CEO Peter Kosann will be angling for that too.
