Pelicans announce ESPN New Orleans 100.3 FM as new flagship radio station | Pelicans

After yesterday’s official team announcement adding Todd Graffagnini as the Pelicans new radio play-by-play announcer, the franchise has made another groundbreaking change to its future on the radio waves.

Starting with this upcoming season, ESPN New Orleans 100.3 FM will become the “Official Flagship Station of the Pelicans” after a multi-year deal was signed between the two parties, according to a release from the team. Previously, the team’s radio broadcast had been on WRNO 99.5 FM.

“We could not be more excited to begin this new era of Pelicans basketball with our flagship radio partner and its devoted listening audience,” said Pelicans president Dennis Lauscha in a team release. “ESPN New Orleans offers a tremendous daily sports lineup with a significant focus on the Pelicans, along with all of the local professional, collegiate and high school teams. This is an outstanding and natural alliance for our city and region.”

The radio station will now broadcast all of the Pelicans’ Summer League, preseason, regular season and postseason games and will also contain other Pelicans-centric radio programming. The team’s broadcast network affiliates will include eight different markets in three states: Louisiana (New Orleans, Northshore, Baton Rouge, Lafayette, Alexandria), Mississippi (Columbia, Hattiesburg) and Florida (Pensacola).

Additionally, Lauscha said Wednesday afternoon during an on-air announcement with 100.3 that the team expects to reach 10,000 season ticket packages sold for the upcoming season by the end of the day after selling 2,000 in a matter of hours after the franchise won the NBA draft lottery back on May 14 for the rights to select Williamson in last Thursday’s draft.

He added the team has set a goal of selling 14,000 season ticket packages before the start of the season in October for the Smoothie King Center, which holds more than 16,000 seats.