How the KC Sports Network is building a regional media empire

The network puts out 10 different shows and is monetized through a mixture of local and national advertisers.

The last few years have been pretty good for the Kansas City Chiefs, what with its multiple Super Bowl championships and a close association with the biggest pop star in the world, but BJ Kissel remembers what it was like to be a fan of the team long before it started regularly winning games. Back in the early 2010s, he began blogging for SB Nation, and he used his success there to eventually land a job as the Kansas City Chiefs’ in-house reporter. In that role, he did everything from writing web articles to serving as a sidelines correspondent for live game broadcasts.

In 2021, he struck off on his own and co-founded the KC Sports Network, a group of podcasts and YouTube channels that cover Kansas City sports. Today, the network puts out 10 different shows and is monetized through a mixture of local and national advertisers.

In a recent interview, BJ explained why he left his job at the Chiefs, how he convinced local businesses to sponsor his shows, and where he sees new opportunities for growth.

You can watch, listen to, or read the interview down below:

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Summary

BJ Kissel, co-founder of KC Sports Network, discussed his non-traditional path into sports journalism, starting with fan posts on SB Nation's Arrowhead Pride. He detailed his transition to Bleacher Report, where he wrote national features, and his role as an internal reporter for the Kansas City Chiefs. Kissel highlighted the launch of KC Sports Network in May 2021, which initially focused on Chiefs content but expanded to cover other Kansas City sports and college teams. The network now produces multiple podcasts and videos that are funded by local business partnerships and national ads through Blue Wire. Kissel emphasized the importance of authenticity and community engagement in their content strategy.

Highlights from the interview

Breaking into Sports Journalism

Simon asked BJ about his non-traditional path into sports journalism. BJ explained that his first job was in high school sports fundraising, but his passion for the Kansas City Chiefs led to him commenting on an SB Nation blog, Arrowhead Pride. He then transitioned from commenting to writing fan posts and eventually became a featured contributor:

The feedback I was getting on those first fan posts I wrote gave me the confidence to continue doing it. And I wouldn't have had this media career had it not been for those people back at that community that were giving me confidence by saying things like, Hey, this is good, you should keep putting effort into this, and I did, and I'll always be indebted to those people. 

Transition to Bleacher Report

BJ received advice that he should start attending games and interviewing players if he wanted to move up in the sports journalism world. So he attended the Senior Bowl, where he met Matt Miller and other Bleacher Report staff. This led to him writing national features for Bleacher Report, and then later he got a job at a live TV production company in Kansas City. From there, he ended up joining the Kansas City Chiefs as an internal reporter, a job that required writing and video production:

I had moved back to Kansas City. I was writing on the side at Bleacher Report, and then I got a job with a live TV production company based in Kansas City, and I was the production coordinator. I basically did the logistics for all these live sports broadcasts. And it really taught me the TV side of the business, working with the directors and producers for everything from high school football in Kansas City to the Jacksonville Jaguars preseason games. So I got to see productions at all different levels. Then the Chiefs internal reporter job opened, and one of the guys that was a producer there actually DMed me on Twitter and said, Hey, this reporter job is about to open. You should apply for this. We all read your stuff. We've been reading you for years, and we think you'd be a good fit. 

Working for the Kansas City Chiefs

Working for the Kansas City Chiefs was a dream job, but it was also a high-pressure environment, with constant travel required in his job. He performed as a sideline correspondent for an NFL Network broadcast, which involved a steep learning curve. During his tenure at the Chiefs, the role shifted its focus from written stories to video content: 

I was not hired by the PR department. I was hired by the digital media department. My job when I was hired was more writing for the website and to be kind of the conduit between the fans and the organization and telling the stories, like, how do these coaches get to the position they're in? How do these players get to the position they're in? And thankfully, I was able to get some great access and write some phenomenal stories. 

My job, at the end of my time with the Chiefs was completely different than when I got hired. It moved away from writing, and it got to like, we don't care about writing. Let's create video, because that's where people are going, social, video, sponsored assets. Figure out a way to turn everything you're doing into video so it could be monetized in that way from a business perspective. And so yeah, it was a crazy ride. I got to see the industry change when I was blogging as an outsider, and then obviously as a team insider I got to see how they handled media. I feel like by the time I was done I had a pretty good perspective on media from a lot of different angles.

Founding the KC Sports Network

BJ explained the genesis of KC Sports Network, which started with a Substack newsletter and expanded into podcasts and YouTube. The network generated early financial support from local businesses, and this allowed the network to grow beyond just the Kansas City Chiefs into covering other regional sports teams.

We started with about five podcasts. They were all focused on the Chiefs. We had a couple former players that I had good relationships with that had since retired, that were interested in getting in the media, with Jeff Allen and Mike DeVito being two of the guys. And we had a beat writer, Matt Derrick, who had originally started with us. And after a month or two, we had a few local businesses that saw what we were doing and wanted to be a part of it, and they jumped in and said, hey, what can we do to help? And looking back, it's the handful of things that just kind of fell into place that allowed us to expand and then add Royals content, cover the two professional soccer teams that are in Kansas City, and then expand to the college side of our network. It all just kind of happened within a few months of launching the Chiefs side of things. It's crazy how it all fit and came together. About six months after we launched, it all just kind of started snowballing, and we’ve been building the plane in the air ever since.

Monetization and Advertising

BJ explained that the network is funded through a mixture of local business partnerships and national ads sold through Blue Wire, a sports podcast network. He discussed the importance of finding the right partners and the challenges of cold calling. He also discussed the balance between creating valuable content and maintaining a good user experience for listeners.

I got an email from Kevin Jones at Blue Wire. Kevin and I knew each other a little bit when he was covering the NFL and doing the stuff that he was doing before he started Blue Wire. But Blue Wire reached out and said, Hey, we want to help podcasters grow, and here's how we operate. We can put national ads in front of your audience. And it was, for us, a revenue stream that I did not see coming. Was not planning on it. Knew nothing like that was out there, and it was basically just bonus revenue. We really didn't have to do anything differently, and we still don't. And working with them, it was just this dynamic where as you grow, we'll be able to create more money for you. Blue Wire really changed the trajectory of what KC Sports Network has become. So if you listen to any of our audio podcasts and you hear a national ad, that is Blue Wire, and then the ones that you hear locally are the local partners that we have, and then we work with Blue Wire and our local partners on exclusivity deals to make sure that everybody's getting the value that they pay for in partnering with us. 

Content Strategy and Audience Engagement

BJ discussed the importance of maintaining authenticity and the challenges of growing on platforms like YouTube. He highlighted the role of the podcast-listening audience as the core supporters and the value of the Discord community:

If you subscribe to our newsletter, you're part of our Discord community. Those are the diehard people who are listening to everything that we put out there, whereas with YouTube, you can see all the analytics and that most of them are coming from a browse feature. They're Chiefs fans that are finding you based on an algorithm and based on a title and a thumbnail. There are a lot of great YouTubers out there who have done a phenomenal job growing on that platform. Sometimes the brand that we're creating and the content that we want to do doesn't necessarily fit to what would be best practice to grow on YouTube. We're going to remain true to the type of content we like to do, and not necessarily lean into some of the more, I'll say, pop culture narratives, like the Taylor Swift and Travis Kelsey stuff. It's not who we are to cover those kinds of things, but you can get a lot of success and engagement out of that. And YouTube is a big part of what we do, and video content is a big part of what we do. If we didn't have YouTube, and we weren't doing the video part of it, we would probably still be shooting the video just from the social perspective of putting teasers out and then linking back to audio. But YouTube will always be a part of it, but it doesn't drive our decision making as much as the audio side does.

Future Ambitions and Challenges

BJ shared his vision for the future of KC Sports Network, emphasizing the importance of time and work-life balance. He discussed the potential for expansion but emphasized the focus on the Kansas City market: 

I promised myself when we started this that I would keep the main thing, the main thing, which is doing what we love to do. Time is the most important thing to me, even if it means making less money than I made in other places, and I don't care, because I get to take my kids to school, I pick my kids up from school. I coach softball, I coach baseball. I get to do those kinds of things and our hosts and the people that work with us would tell you the same thing. So I told myself, I'm not going to take this idea if it works here, and just believe that because it worked here that we can go do it in every other community. Because I think the reason that we've been successful is that we have the best content and that we are authentic in our voice and who we are, and we know the platforms and the brands within this community, I don't know who those people are in another community. We can be really, really good in the Kansas City market and do just fine for ourselves, our full time employees. And there are always ways we can scale and grow. As we have more people that are listening to us, you generate more revenue. And what's the next thing? What's the next thing that we can add? It’s buffing up some of the production quality. It's improving some of the non-Chiefs stuff that we're doing, giving more resources to those channels that might not have the same revenue generating potential, but that doesn't mean the network won't benefit from everything just getting a little bit better. And so for us, just trying to be good in Kansas City, that's good enough for us.