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The Athletic Searches Far and Wide for New Subscribers as It Seeks a Sale
The sports-media startup has laid off staff, scrapped a documentary unit and canceled some podcasts while seeking new avenues of growth.
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Since its debut in 2016, The Athletic has been heralded as a model for how sports journalism can survive on subscription revenue alone. Its founders now realize that only goes so far.
“When everything is paywalled, you’re limiting the audience you can reach every single day,” co-founder Alex Mather said in an interview last week. “For us to reach 5 million or 10 million subscribers, we’re going to have to reach more sports fans, give them a taste of our product, find ways to bring them into our universe and engage them and hopefully get them to become a paid subscriber.”