Hello, readers.

We have some big news to impart to you today on this, the 27th day of February. We have acquired New York-based sports website EliteSportsNY.com. They are the Big Apple’s largest independent sports website, much like we are Philly’s.

Some may call this sort of thing “mergers and acquisition.” We call it Empire Building.

Here’s the full press release (which you can read after the jump).

Elite Sports NY was started by Robby Sabo in 2015 and has credentialed writers covering all of New York’s major teams– Yankees, Mets, Knicks, Giants, Jets, and so on. While their tone varies slightly from what you find on Crossing Broad, their site and team very much resembles what we have here– a small group of talented, passionate sports fans and writers, covering the local teams with a zeal that mainstream media can never achieve. Their Slack channel is just as raucous and furious as ours. And the amount of content they churn out on a daily basis is incredible.

Robby’s work to scale the site in just a short period of time is amazing. In fact, Elite Sports NY’s readership is larger than ours– in America’s biggest city. NBD.

You won’t notice any changes to Crossing Broad, and only few to Elite Sports NY. I don’t expect most CB readers to frequent or perhaps ever read ESNY. But this will enable us to cross-promote stories, have NY-based guests on podcasts and videos, and occasionally leverage content between both sites.

Over the last 18 months, we’ve had several opportunities ourselves to be acquired. But with the exception of one of them, none felt right for us. Our recent move into working with sportsbook partners has changed our business for the better and made us desirable to a number of partners. We have a large audience of passionate sports fans in a major market, who wouldn’t want that?

But this site is unique, built over 10 years with literal blood, sweat and tears (white collar version of paper cuts, 2 a.m. hoodie sweats while writing a blog post, and rejoicing when Ruben Amaro landed Cliff Lee… but still!), and the notion of turning it over to a company that solely wanted to turn it into a highly-targeted phone book wasn’t going to happen.

Our recent shift in business model – away from ad networks and products, to working with sportsbooks – has not only improved the business, but it’s also improved the content. We have more, and varied, coverage of Philly sports than we’ve ever had before. And ironically, while I acknowledge that some readers aren’t interested in the volume of betting content we produce, it’s that very content which supports, and grows, the rest of it.

So, we’ve decided to double down on that model.

Last year we partnered with Jason Ziernicki and his team at Warwick Gaming, who are incredible digital marketers and run sites such as PASportsbooks.com and BetNewJersey.com. In fact, we haven’t just partnered– we share an office with them. Jason sits five feet away.

Together, we’ve decided to move forward with our own plan to scale the model we’ve perfected on CB and apply it to other sites, Elite Sports NY being the first.

I’ll be doing an AMA in the comments throughout the day.

CB Sports LLC, owner of popular Philly-based website CrossingBroad.com, and Warwick Gaming LLC, owner of PASportsbooks.com and BetNewJersey.com, announce the acquisition of EliteSportsNY.com, a popular New York sports digital media property.

CB Sports and Warwick Gaming have formed a jointly-owned holding company, CBWG Media Group LLC, to acquire EliteSportsNY.com and its associated digital media assets, including social media accounts, email lists, and network of podcasts.

The acquisition will advance the growth strategy of CB Sports and Warwick Gaming into the highly-coveted New York-New Jersey sports market.

“I am thrilled to expand our footprint outside of Philly,” said Crossing Broad founder and editor Kyle Scott. “For years, we’ve entertained the idea of growing CB outside our local market, but starting a new site from scratch in a sports-crazed market like New York would have proven to be a very difficult task. With Elite Sports NY, we acquire a premium digital media property with a substantial audience. Our plan is to keep everything that makes Elite Sports NY a must-visit destination for New York sports fans, and layer on our CB method for growing the audience and monetizing content.”

“At Warwick Gaming, our core competency is rapidly growing online businesses through a targeted digital marketing approach,” said Warwick Gaming founder Jason Ziernicki. “Elite Sports NY instantly becomes the largest site in our portfolio, and is exceedingly well-positioned to capitalize on the rapid rollout of legal sports betting in the United States.”

EliteSportsNY.com averages over 375,000 monthly readers with over 20,000 followers across various social media platforms. It has credentialed writers with New York’s largest professional sports teams, including the Yankees, Giants, Jets, Knicks, and others.

Elite Sports NY was founded by Robby Sabo in 2015 and has quickly become New York’s largest independent sports media property.

“I’m thrilled to have CBWG Media take control of Elite Sports NY,” Sabo said. “Ensuring a quality company and quality leaders took control after myself was my top priority, and both Kyle Scott and Jason Ziernicki fit the bill. ESNY has provided many individuals a platform to showcase their talent and I look forward to what CBWG has in store for the site moving forward. I could not be prouder of everybody on the ESNY team.”

“The job Robby has done in growing his site so quickly is nothing short of remarkable,” Scott said. “From someone who knows what it’s like to grow an audience in a highly-competitive sports market, I’m blown away by what Robby has done to build an outlet with arguably the best NY sports coverage on the planet.”

CBWG Media will immediately take over operation of Elite Sports NY and promote writer Danny Small into a more comprehensive role overseeing the day-to-day operation of the site.

Sabo will remain with the site for a period of time to ease the transition.

“It’s important for us to expand upon what Robby has built, not change it,” Ziernicki said. “Elite Sports NY readers and followers should notice little change in the type of coverage they see— in fact, they should see expanded coverage of their favorite teams.”

With the acquisition, the combined efforts of CB Sports and Warwick Gaming will have an audience of over 650,000 monthly unique visitors, largely concentrated in the Northeast.