Entercom CEO David Field reported $309 million in net revenues for the first quarter of 2019, up from $300 million in 2018. National, digital, and network revenues outperformed local, with digital now making up 10% of Entercom’s total revenue.
The best-performing Entercom markets were New York City, Houston, Atlanta, Washington, DC, Denver, and Sacramento. Field said the performance gap between the legacy CBS stations and legacy Entercom stations is closing. In past quarters, the legacy CBS stations were underperforming.
Entercom’s strongest categories in the quarter were consumer services, TV and cable, insurance, and gambling.
Field also announced a new partnership with traffic app WAZE which will now have Radio.com integrated into the app. He also gave a nice plug to the team at Cadence13 for what they were doing in the podcasting space. Entercom has a 45% stake in Cadence13 and Field made it a point to mention the company has an option to buy the balance of the company. He said podcast downloads at Cadence13 were up 70%.
On the topic of sports gambling advertising, Field said over time that category could produce over $2 billion in ad revenue and Entercom’s take in that space could be as high as $100 million.
Entercom is pacing up in the low single digits for the second quarter.
