08-20-2019, 01:33 PM
(This post was last modified: 08-20-2019, 01:56 PM by CardinalSagehen.)
(08-20-2019, 12:27 PM)OutsiderFan Wrote: As of today The Athletic has 400 writers. I don't know how much each is paid, but let's for a placeholder say each costs $100k annually.
It was reported in Bloomberg today that the site has hit 600k subs and they pay an average of $64.year. I'm not sure how true this is, as most people including me are on intro deals for like $3/mo or something like that. Anyway... using those numbers, the site is grossing about $38.4 million at the current time. If 400 writers get paid $100k = $40 million writer expenses, plus G&A. They project to have 1M subs by year end. That seems aggressive, but let's say they do. Now they are at $64M in revenue. If they don't hire more than 100 more writers, they'll be profitable by year's end.
I don't understand how people are skeptical The Athletic can survive. It has people paying for its service in great numbers and it has room to grow. Is the thinking that you can't survive without selling ads? Is the thinking the site must add video content? I don't get the skepticism.
I think the skepticism may be based on the high-level reality that the journalism industry as a whole has been suffering horrendously. See the following article, for example:
https://www.bloomberg.com/amp/news/artic...-recession
Many fantastic writers for The Athletic were recently let go from places like ESPN, which cut all of its PAC-12 and Stanford blogging. (I realize their model was different.)
The Athletic (and you) may be right that the winning model to address deep, narrow, local sports interest is a low-cost stand-alone subscription. Let’s hope so.
I enjoyed the Costello piece, too, and have always liked David Lombardi’s work.