How Local Sports Network
Used Forecastr To Change
Revenue Models on the Run

Dustin D. McMahon is a veteran founder who is truly comfortable in the pocket. His startup Local Sports Network is bringing people closer together through sports - specifically high school sports. LSN provides live streaming services, social networking tools, and fan apparel to high school fans and their local communities.

This isn't Dustin’s first startup, and it didn’t take him long to find his stride. LSN has already been welcomed by top accelerators including Techstars, DivInc, and Comcast NBCUniversal SportsTech. The company has been awarded contracts from several large school districts including Houston ISD, the 7th largest in the nation.

When you talk to Dustin, it’s easy to see why so many people are betting on his team. LSN embraces a customer-first culture with a strong emphasis on systems, accountability, and ownership.

But in business, as in football, change is a constant. The founding team had to overcome several challenges to earn their accolades. Perhaps the biggest was an early pivot which required Dustin and his co-founder to entirely overhaul their revenue model. That’s where Forecastr comes into the story.

Pivoting to a New Revenue Model

LSN started out with a subscription-based revenue model. However, as the team started to gather feedback from users and mentors, they soon realized that an advertising model would position them for a better outcome in the long run. The only problem was that no one on the team had experience managing an ads-based revenue model. As Dustin put it, “Our entire revenue model changed and fundamentally the two are very different. I didn’t have any best practices for how to model this other type of business scenario.”

Dustin decided to give it a try, and by the end of Forecastr’s 30-day onboarding process, LSN had a defensible model that could guide critical decisions and help investors see Dustin’s vision for the new ads-based strategy.

Forecastr’s analysts were able to guide LSN’s assumptions using industry averages and benchmarks, while Dustin provided the business-specific insight to make the model fit LSN’s financial reality. Dustin explained, “What is the average cost per click? What is the average cost per impression? Working with Forecastr was very helpful because they were able to say, ‘This is what we typically see as a starting point for this type of model.’ They provided a template for the model we were pursuing as a company that, otherwise, we would have had to figure out the hard way.”

“Interestingly enough, one of the things you’re expected to be as a startup founder is an expert on revenue models. And we’re not. But we’re taught to find people who know a lot more than us in specific parts of the business and work with those people. I think working with Forecastr on the financial modeling side has been an opportunity for us to experience that.”