The Black Sportz Network Launches with Radio Offerings
| RADIO ONLINE | Friday, August 21, 2020 | 12:15pm CT |
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 The Black Sportz Network |
The Black Sportz Network launches to provide broadcast radio and TV offerings for African American and urban audiences. It's the first sports network owned by a Black woman, founder and CEO DC Livers, who is the longest working Black female reporeter covering the NBA. The network plans to provide content that relies heavily on audio and radio options in addition to digital, SVOD, VOD and social media offerings.
"With so many athletes fed up with the way the mainstream media is censoring their daily protests related to Black Lives Matter, The Black Sports Network is being celebrated by players, agents and advertisers as an idea that is long overdue," said Livers.
"The support that I've gotten since it was announced that I was starting the first Black-owned and woman led sports network has been humbly," added Livers. "I've attended sports conferences like Hashtag Sports and others and I've been amazed that they often try to keep me on the outside despite the reality that I'm the longest working Black woman covering the NBA. These guys know me. They see my struggle as a Black woman in sports and they understand."
Despite past personal experience with the mainstream sports industry discriminating against her, Livers said she's willing to extend an olive branch.
"I almost feel sorry for the sports industry that thinks things will ever go back to normal. It's never going to happen. After years of counseling players on how to handle racial moments their sponsors do, it's time for us to reclaim our content. No player needs a sponsor. The sponsors need the players. I want The Black Sportz Network to have a good working relationship with the sports industry and advertisers, but we were successful in getting brands to pull ads from Facebook. We really don't need sponsors but I'm hoping we'll be able to find partners and sponsors that care about the players and not the money they can bring in for them because sports is the most watched genre on every network. Without a good relationship with the Black community, there's not a sports industry company out there that can survive," she said.
