News

All City Adds to Philadelphia Staff (Plus Some Thoughts on the Current Product)

By Kevin Kinkead

Published: Nov 6th, 2023 · 1:47 PM EST

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Looks like All City is not done hiring in Philadelphia. They recently announced a couple of additions:

We’re excited to announce the addition of @kayla_santiago1 to our digital media team! pic.twitter.com/OxftjVZKpe

— PHLY Sports (@PHLY_Sports) November 6, 2023

We’re excited to announce the addition of @thesportyjordy to the team as a social content creator‼️ pic.twitter.com/EgycYZjUo9

— PHLY Sports (@PHLY_Sports) November 1, 2023

I get more DMs and emails and text messages about All City than any other topic these days. Stuff like “what do you think of PHLY so far?” People ask for a review of the site and an assessment of what they’ve produced over the first few months. I’m not sure how totally fair or comprehensive that blog post would be, since they’re still brand new to this market. They’ve been going for what, two months? Maybe we can circle back in the Spring when there’s a larger sample size and they settle into a routine.

One thing I will say is that the Anthony Gargano lawsuit, combined with the lack of a Phillies writer, seemed to stunt the launch. They debuted just before the MLB playoffs with no baseball beat, and while Jamie Lynch and Renee Washington handled the podcast, Charlie O’Connor took on the task of the doing the baseball writing (with marginal contribution from a freelancer and the DNVR Rockies guy). That’s commendable on Charlie’s part, but I can’t imagine they went into launch wanting to have their hockey guy double up on the Phillies.

Then obviously Cuz was the person who built the staff, the main talent and biggest catch, and he was embroiled in a legal battle right off the jump. He can’t do anything locally until April at the earliest, and I think that dampens some of the momentum they would have otherwise been able to generate. How much energy can you capture and channel when you have to handle a lawsuit right off the jump?

Beyond that, the staff size is relatively large in contrast to the amount of content being produced, so you wonder how much revenue they need to generate in order to replace the initial venture capital with sustainable money. There’s a good amount of overhead here, and they really seem to be focused on those daily YouTube shows much more than any kind of written content, despite hiring a number of people who come from writing backgrounds and have done much more of that over the course of their careers. Regardless of the approach, it does feel like the overall output should be higher. That’s one thing I think they can remedy right away. More volume! Sometimes less is more, but in this case, more is more, especially when you’re the new kid on the block and trying to carve out a foothold in a crowded Philadelphia sports content marketplace.