The Athletic sold to the New York Times for $550 Million

[Rell Lauren]

So much for The Athletic being independent sports journalism.

 

[Collateral]

fukk the New York Times

 

[FAH1223]

Fukk

 

[Rekkapryde]

The dollar always wins...

like clockwork

 

[Ed MOTHEREFFING G]

You know the song

 

[Rottweiler]

Surprised it hasn't been sold earlier

 

[ORDER_66]

 

[Brozay]

they poached ALOT of talent, I suspect many of those people who migrated over will now be fukked. no way the NYT doesnt make massive overhead cuts

 

[aceboon]

they poached ALOT of talent, I suspect many of those people who migrated over will now be fukked. no way the NYT doesnt make massive overhead cuts

And they already laid off a bunch of employees last year when the pandemic first hit.

 

[Thavoiceofthevoiceless]

This is hilarious when you consider the comments that their founders gave same said NYT back in 2017 about wanting to destroy newspapers

 

[Rekkapryde]

This is hilarious when you consider the comments that their founders gave same said NYT back in 2017 about destroying newspapers

New leadership

 

[Morethan1]

I hope they keep it as it's on branch and not integrate it into the newspapers.


I love that site

 

[Rell Lauren]

This is hilarious when you consider the comments that their founders gave same said NYT back in 2017 about wanting to destroy newspapers

Can only run on subscriptions for so long. Their VC backers wanted a ROI and they were operating in the red.

This Substack piece from May 2021 gave the motive behind the sale:
The Athletic: $140M In Funding, Still Not Profitable

 

[beenz]

Here come the ads. That is the ONLY reason I subscribed to them. No clutter off ads. If they bombard the app with ads, I'm cancelling.

 

[beenz]

I just read that they had 1.2M subs and only brought in $80M in revenue. That's under $7 per subscription

Edit, my math is

That's $70 per subscription.