Playground →
Lou Malnati's Pizza sits at the top of The Athletic Chicago's neighbor set — a restaurant brand, not a sports outlet — with a similarity score of 0.89, the highest in the top 10. That cross-kind lead is the defining structural fact here.
The shape is broad: scores run from 0.89 down to 0.76 across the top 10, with no sharp drop-off between neighbors. The mix spans five distinct subcategories. Governor JB Pritzker (0.85) and Chicago Blackhawks (0.83) follow closely — a politician and a sports team — with Patrick Kane (0.82) and 3 Floyds Brewing (0.79) rounding out the top five. That grouping — a restaurant, a politician, a hockey franchise, an athlete, and a brewery — is less a sports-media cluster than a Chicago civic footprint. The audience shape tracks local identity more than any single content category.
Further down, Sarah Spain (0.79) is the one sports journalist in the top 10, and The Athletic Soccer (0.77) is the only sibling publication to appear. Daily Herald (0.76) is the sole other News Publisher in the set — meaning The Athletic Chicago's own subcategory accounts for just one of the top 10 neighbors. The remaining slots go to Mariano's (0.79), a grocery chain, and Jordan Klepper (0.76), a comedian — reinforcing how broadly the audience composition spreads across kinds.
The top 10 collectively describe an audience defined more by Chicago geography and civic engagement than by sports-media consumption alone.
