ALLCITY Network has a slew of sports sites across the country, including locally with PHLY. They are currently conducting a round of layoffs, which come just days before Christmas.
Kevin Kinkead of Crossing Broad reports that Renee Washington and JP Zapata have been laid off from PHLY. ALLCITY launched PHLY in September of 2023, with Washington one of the faces of the network's Phillies and Union coverage.
Elsewhere, Suzie Hunter — who is from Delco — had been a big part of the DNVR site, but says she left AllCity this past summer:
I didn't post about this when it happened but FYI I quit that job in July. I'm not a part of what's happening today but I am feeling absolutely awful for everyone affected.
AllCity also has sites in Chicago, Phoenix and Dallas. A few other employees from around the country announced their departure Wednesday:
Personal News pic.twitter.com/bVwhYkr6YT
I’m heartbroken, but not defeated…… pic.twitter.com/Bxfis5bXBM
Just got laid off a week before Christmas lol
If you are looking for soccer words, event and merch management, food service management - please shoot any opportunity my way.
AllCity CEO Brandon Spano released the following statement on X:
"As many have seen on this app today, we were forced to make some really tough decisions. I have taken a tremendous amount of pride in protecting our employees and never leading us through a layoff cycle, so today has been extremely difficult.
Each of these impacted employees have been offered severance, health care coverage, and other benefits as part of the restructuring. And you may even see some stick around in a part-time capacity.
The truth is, as we continue to mature, we must make strategic changes in order to scale efficiently and unfortunately that means that there were important creators who were let go today and each one of them was very important to us.
As much as we would like to cover all sports in the exact same manner, the reality is that certain sports command a different scale of audience and advertiser interest at the local level and we must move our resources to better align with that.
It doesn’t mean that we’re no longer covering all teams in a city, but it does mean that we are reimagining what that looks like while being more conscious of our commitment to it. This means a smarter mix of daily shows, short-form content, and tentpole coverage.
Ultimately, we believe these changes create long-term sustainability for our employees as we continue to scale and add networks across the country."
PHLY still has some excellent contributors, including Jim Salisbury, Jon Marks, Zach Berman, Bo Wulf, Les Bowen, Rich Hofman, Jamie Lynch and Derek Bodner. There have been some comparisons between PHLY and On Pattison because we launched about a year apart. Truthfully, I could give a shit about the comparisons between the two sites. I hope they both have success. As someone who has experienced being laid off in this industry, I would never root for another company to fail because I know it's the employees that pay the price. For as high profile as some of these jobs in media are, you have very little year-to-year security with many companies. The individual performance of writers, podcasters and on-air hosts often isn't what determines whether they remain employed or not.
I will say, though, that doing layoffs right before Christmas and the New Year is particularly evil. It's like something out of Succession. That wasn't addressed in the statement from Spano, probably because there's no justification even the greatest PR firm could come up with.
