Lessons from 10 years of The Athletic

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The Athletic turned 10 this week. What it promised versus what it delivered says less about The Athletic and more about whether subscriptions can save sports journalism.

A decade in, the answer is complicated.

The Athletic proved fans will pay for good sports writing. That’s not nothing. But everything else the company promised — sustainable local coverage, an alternative to corporate media, a viable model that could scale without sacrificing quality — turned out to be wrong. Or at least, it required compromises that made the final product look suspiciously similar to what it was supposed to replace.

The core bet was right. In 2016, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann believed fans would pay $60 a year for deeper coverage than newspapers provided. They launched in Chicago with three writers covering the Bears, Blackhawks, Bulls, and Cubs. It worked. Toronto worked. Cleveland worked.

By 2019, The Athletic had 80% year-over-year retention. Not only did that prove that people would try subscription sports coverage, it also proved they’d keep paying for it. Retention validates the model in a way subscriber acquisition never can. Anyone can convince someone to try something once. Getting them to renew means you delivered value worth paying for.

The Athletic also correctly identified underserved markets. Hockey coverage became a strength early because NHL teams outside major markets got minimal attention from traditional media. WNBA coverage worked for the same reason. The Athletic went all-in on baseball in 2018, hiring beat writers specifically for teams newspapers were abandoning. These weren’t the biggest subscriber drivers, but they proved the model worked when you served passionate fans nobody else was serving.

The writing was good. The Athletic hired talented people and let them do actual journalism instead of chasing traffic with slideshows and aggregation. Beat writers produced long-form features. Investigative reporters broke stories. Columnists wrote pieces that didn’t need to be designed for social media virality. The product justified the price.

But then something changed.

In August 2017, The Athletic hired Ken Rosenthal. This decision mattered more than any other single move the company made, and it happened because Fox Sports made one of the most misguided decisions in modern media history.

Jamie Horowitz, Fox Sports’ president, eliminated the company’s entire written content operation in 2017 as part of a pivot to video-based content. Ken Rosenthal, Bruce Feldman, Stewart Mandel, and others suddenly needed somewhere to put their work.

The Athletic, subscription-based and desperate for national credibility, became that somewhere.

This is where The Athletic’s mission changed, even if nobody said it explicitly at the time. The original pitch was hyperlocal coverage. Every team gets a dedicated beat writer. Serve the fans that newspapers are abandoning. But a Cubs beat writer convinces 5,000 Chicago fans to subscribe. Rosenthal convinces 50,000 baseball fans nationally. Feldman and Mandel anchor college football coverage that works in every market.

Local coverage became secondary to landing big names who could drive subscriptions across geographies. That’s not a criticism of the decision — it was probably the right business move. But it fundamentally altered what The Athletic was building. The company stopped being a collection of local sites and became a national publication with some local coverage.

Fox Sports’ implosion handed The Athletic the credibility and talent it needed to scale beyond local markets. Without Rosenthal, Feldman, and Mandel, The Athletic would likely remain a niche product serving hardcore fans in individual cities. With them, it becomes something that can justify a $550 million acquisition price.

That credibility came with a price tag, one that The Athletic couldn’t sustain on subscription revenue alone. The business model required burning venture capital to hire writers faster than revenue could support. Between 2016 and 2020, The Athletic raised $140 million across seven funding rounds. By 2021, the company had 1.2 million subscribers and $80 million in annual revenue. It was still unprofitable.

That’s the part that never worked. The subscription model proved that fans would pay for quality sports writing. What it didn’t prove was that you could operate a 600-person newsroom profitably on subscription revenue alone. The Athletic needed $140 million in VC funding to scale, which meant it had to deliver returns to investors and would eventually be acquired or go public.

The New York Times paid $550 million in January 2022. The initial promise was that The Athletic would operate independently. That lasted until June 2023, when The Athletic laid off nearly 20 writers and eliminated team-specific beat reporters in favor of coverage where its audience data indicated it made sense.

One month later, The New York Times shut down its own sports department.

The Athletic at 10 looks nothing like what Mather and Hansmann promised in 2016. The local-first model is gone. The promise that every team gets a dedicated beat writer is gone. The independent operation is gone. What remains is a profitable subscription product at the New York Times that primarily serves football and soccer fans, with some baseball and basketball coverage for teams that move the needle.

That’s not necessarily bad. The Athletic still employs talented writers. It still produces good work. Subscribers are getting value. It’s just not what subscribers were sold when they initially signed up 10 years ago.

The Athletic needed VC money to scale. VC money required returns. Returns required growth. Growth required prioritizing content that drove subscriptions over content that served readers. The company that promised to replace corporate media with a sustainable subscription model ended up becoming corporate media with a subscription model.

The lesson from the last 10 years is that subscription can work, but only if you’re willing to make the same compromises every other media company makes. Prioritize what’s profitable over what’s valuable, cut what doesn’t scale, and serve the audience that drives the most revenue.

The Athletic proved subscription sports journalism works, just not the way anyone hoped it would.

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