How Sportico was created and launched during a pandemic

Seth Everett of the “Sports with Friends” podcast interviewed Sportico CEO Dick Glover about the creation of the sports business news website, which launched this week by Penske Media.

“The ideas was hatched six or seven months ago,” said Glover. “It was just finding the right people to do it.”

The site is run editorially by Scott Soshnick, formerly with Bloomberg News. Soshnick has never been in the physical office, while Glover was there for just the first two weeks.

“The situation made it in some ways better to launch. Not easier, but better,” said Glover. The original plan for Sportico was to launch the website around Labor Day, but because of the pandemic, the timeline was ramped up because the focus of sports news is currently around deals, negotiations, and the business aspects.

“The problem was that in this day and age, to build a digital publishing company, even if it is multi-platform, is truly a daunting task,” said Glover, until he talked with Jay Penske of Penske Media.

“The secret sauce is content,” said Glover. “…And once you have the content, you have to have the structure to deliver it to the customer.”

“We’re building the ground floor and foundation of what we hope will be a very large business. And that ground floor and foundation is simple — it’s great daily content,” said Glover.

To listen, go here.

Chris Roush

Chris Roush was the dean of the School of Communications at Quinnipiac University in Hamden, Connecticut. He was previously Walter E. Hussman Sr. Distinguished Professor in business journalism at UNC-Chapel Hill. He is a former business journalist for Bloomberg News, Businessweek, The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, The Tampa Tribune and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune. He is the author of the leading business reporting textbook "Show me the Money: Writing Business and Economics Stories for Mass Communication" and "Thinking Things Over," a biography of former Wall Street Journal editor Vermont Royster.