Super Bowl 2014 is sports talk radio's summit

[Lerch]

http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports...radio/4976823/

Between spring 2006 and spring 2013, 289 radio stations moved to an all-sports format, a nearly 55% increase in the number of sports stations. According to Nielsen Audio, sports radio's audience has increased by 9.5 million listeners in the past seven years. And more than 50% of sports radio listeners fall into what the researchers categorize as their highest income group — individuals making over $75,000 annually.

In addition to streaming from an individual station's web site, mobile apps such as I Heart Radio allow fans from all over the world to tune into an array of local shows in any market. If a Pittsburgh Steelers fan stationed on a military base in Germany wants to listen to Stan Savran discuss Ben Roethlisberger's contract, he can do that from his laptop or iPhone in a matter of clicks. "A while ago we made the decision that we're really not in the radio business, we're in the audio business," Traug Keller, ESPN senior VP of business divisions said. "First it was the PC, then it was the satellite and then it was the mobile device. All these things have exponentially added to the opportunities for listening and how it's listened. Sports lends itself to that." And that's just the start. Keller notes that ESPN registered over 208 million downloads of its audio podcasts in 2013. For as impressive as the Nielsen growth numbers have been, most of those audience figures are only taking traditional terrestrial listeners into account. The company plans to invest a big initiative into creating a full measurement to capture figures of listeners who are accessing the content through streaming, HD, apps and other out of market methods.