The next web war will be local

I must be getting old because I remember the first time we had a local web war. Citysearch, AOL City Guides, Real Cities, Real Media and NewCenturyNetwork were all fighting over the local ad market. Citysearch is the only company still in local but they dramatically pulled back focusing mostly on the major metros.

Today according to Sports Business Journal Comcast launched an initiative to compete with ESPN in local sports. They are making large investments hiring journalists in the key cities where ESPN local has a presence. The key for Comcast will be to build their digital brand to effectively compete with ESPN's cross-channel capabilities.

It makes a lot of sense to do this expansion in sports first creating a core offering then expand out leveraging their local news and business coverage. It will be interesting to see how Comcast mobilizes their spotlight sales team to monetize these new sites.

The other company to watch in the local space is NBCLocal, they are continueing to add new markets, grow audience and provide compelling local coverage not available in TV or print.