Commanders will have new radio partner as Team 980 will no longer air games

The Washington Commanders will no longer have their games broadcast on Team 980 or any other Audacy-owned stations. Kevin Sheehan announced Wednesday morning Team 980 will no longer be the flagship radio station of the Commanders.

The organization and the company “disagreed on the value of the broadcasts [and] it is also very important for us as a sports talk station, even as a long-time flagship station for the team, it was important for us to continue to be able to provide honest, objective information and analysis about the [Commanders] on our talk shows,” Sheehan said.

Instead Team 980 will alter its game day coverage of the Commanders. There will be at least four hours of pregame coverage, a new in-game talk show focusing on analysis and fan-reaction and in-game betting angles” Sheehan said in addition to postgame coverage.

“It was important for us to be able to continue to provide what we provide on our talk shows which is honest, objective analysis about the team,” Sheehan said.

The Commanders released a statement later in the day. In the statement, Washington said they have a new radio broadcast partner on a “significantly larger” deal. The team picked the yet to be named partner after a bidding process that involved Audacy. 

“Based on the evaluation process, we selected a new partner who will bring a significantly larger deal, as well as new creativity and broader reach and scale, to programming,” the Commanders’ statement said. “We shared with Audacy last week that we would not be moving forward as partners. We’re very excited about our new radio broadcast partner, who we will be announcing soon, and anticipate this being the largest radio deal in the team’s history.”

While the initial announcement from Sheehan made it seem as though Team 980 made the choice to drop the Commanders’ broadcast. However, the Commanders rebuttal insists that they had a bidding process that ultimately ended their partnership with Audacy. 

Nevertheless, fans will have to tune into a new station to hear the game. Others can tune into Team 980 and get a different scale of coverage.