Perth Voice Interactive

A NEW name in sports writing has caused huge upset in British and North American media markets in recent years, and Australia could be in their sights.

The Athletic was founded in 2016 as a subscription-only sports news site, and within two years had gutted American legacy media newsrooms through a robust recruitment campaign targeting their best sports writers.

The company was the brainchild of Americans Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, who quit their jobs at fitness company Strava to establish The Athletic.

Mather described the initial objective of The Athletic as “to be the local sports page for every city in the country”.

In a matter of months, The Athletic had outgrown its Chicago birthplace, and opened a branch in Toronto, Canada.

By 2019, the company had expanded to 47 North American cities, and opened a branch in the UK.

It became clear that The Athletic had found a niche in the market and had far outgrown its founders’ initial vision.

Multiple large venture-capital firms threw their lot in with the start-up, and by March 2018 The Athletic had raised approximately A$40 million in investments.

But for all the confidence investors placed in The Athletic, the company is still yet to turn a profit. It lost A$10 million in the quarter to February this year, though pundits say that’s a significant improvement over previous years.

The ultra-cheap subscriptions offered by The Athletic to attract first-time subscribers was a costly strategy, and its strictly advertisement-free model ruled out a major source of income utilised by most modern news outlets.

The global sporting drought caused by the first year of the Covid-19 Pandemic would also prove to be a major stumbling-block for The Athletic, and by 2021 a low subscription growth rate effectively forced Mather and Hansmann to sell the company.

After months of negotiations, The New York Times bought The Athletic for $790 million, far lower than the $860 million to $1.2 billion price the founders were aiming for.

However, this is still considered a remarkable sum for a company that had only existed for five years.

The deal was closed in the first quarter of 2022, and The Athletic was made a subsidiary of The New York Times, with Mather and Hansmann retaining directive control of their company.

Though The Athletic’s sale to The New York Times may have technically made it part of the ‘legacy media’, the drastic changes made to the media establishment had already been made.

But the nature of these changes has been a matter of intense debate in recent years.

Understandably, hackles have been raised among traditional sports news outlets, not only from the loss of their staff, but a comment made by Mather in 2017: “We will wait every local paper out and let them continuously bleed until we are the last ones standing. We will suck them dry of their best talent at every moment. We will make business extremely difficult for them.”

These comments were quickly retracted by Mather, who apologised for his brashness.

But the damage was done, and to many existing media companies, The Athletic had tarred itself as something of a villain, which was out not to change but to conquer sports media.

However, in addition to over one million paying subscribers, there are those in sports journalism who see the founding of The Athletic as a good thing, and a huge boon for the industry.

So far, the story of the news media in the 21st century has been one of profit decline, readership decline, and overall, a massive disruption to the way news is collected and disseminated.

This is often pinned down to an abject failure of legacy media to adapt to the Digital Age, and to this day, traditional publications are fighting an uphill battle against colossal social media platforms to win back readership.

The side-effect of this failure has been continued layoffs in the media industry, amplified recently by the Covid-19 Pandemic.

According to the Pew Research Centre, since 2008 newspapers have shed over 40,000 jobs in the US alone; a 26 per cent drop which shows no sign of abating.

The story is much the same the world over – between 2006 and 2021, the Australian media industry shrunk by 60,000 jobs, with approximately half those being lost during the Covid-19 Pandemic.

It is hoped by some that a fresh face in the global media industry can help break this downward spiral.

Devotion

And, that The Athletic’s devotion to digital news will ‘future-proof’ it, as opposed to some older publications, who awkwardly straddle both print and digital news and are tentative to complete the transition.

A deputy sports editor at a UK newspaper, who didn’t want to be named, has spoken highly of The Athletic, praising its role in replacing the nigh-extinct community newspapers as the career springboards for young journalists.

“They’ve hired lots of young journalists out of university or starting out their careers, and given opportunities to young people that just simply didn’t exist three or four years ago.”

The source didn’t see The Athletic as a threat to sports media, but a creator of a “fluid state” which has forced legacy media organisations to evolve to keep up with new players like The Athletic.

A unique aspect of The Athletic’s market penetration strategy was the aggressive headhunting of journalists.

The lucrative salaries enticed not just big-name national sports writers, but also local journalists who had a staunch following within their communities for their dedicated coverage of specific clubs or players.

“They also went into all the local media,” the sports editor told the Herald.

“And so they hired the person in Manchester, who was best renowned for covering Manchester United, and the person who was best renowned for cricket, or best renowned for covering Manchester City. 

Bidding war

”The people who are best renowned at a local level rather than national level. But they also hired a few from national newspapers as well.”

But in the employee bidding war that raged between The Athletic and its competitors, wafer-thin profit margins and seemingly uncertain futures proved no match for innovation and a mountain of venture capital funding.

Legacy media outlets haemorrhaged staff severely, and as a result, months of labour shortages ensued.

Alongside hiring practices, the nature of sports writing itself has also been altered in markets where The Athletic has a presence.

The source talks of how long-form articles have become more popular, with readers wanting “the story behind the story”, especially drawn-out sagas or major incidents in the sporting world.

I think there’s been a greater emphasis towards what we would describe as long reads – where people are writing in depth 4000-5000 word pieces on particular subjects in sport more frequently than they used to.”

However, the source maintained that the number of articles published by outlets had stayed the same.

Research has shown readers are beginning to prefer broad, in-depth articles supplemented by shorter, more specific pieces, as opposed to a flurry of five-to-six paragraph articles – each focussing on a single subject.

And perhaps this is no fluke or happy accident, but a sign that consumer attitudes are changing in favour of The Athletic’s model of writing.

Podcasts

A 2021 study by Edison Research found that approximately 37 per cent of Australians listen to podcasts each month, with an average of six 40-minute episodes consumed per week.

Of these Australians, 93 per cent claimed they paid attention to “all, or the majority” of each episode.

Whilst the topic of these podcasts may vary between things like news, gossip or comedy, there is clearly a niche reopening for longer forms of media – regardless of whether The Athletic is driving it or not.

Australia remains the largest English-speaking nation without any branch of The Athletic covering our sporting market.

But in January 2021, the name ‘The Athletic’ was registered with the Australian Securities and Investments Commission – perhaps a sign that the world’s most sport-mad country has not been forgotten by The Athletic.

Sunshine Coast University sports journalism expert Peter English, is sceptical of the prospect of The Athletic expanding to Australia.

He concedes the company could eke out a foothold similar to ESPN Australia – an American sports network that maintains a cable television service and news bureau in Australia.

“Some similar sports sites have been established already with varying success over the past 15 years or so, such as ESPN Australia, Cricinfo, The Roar, etc,” Dr English said.

“You might even include CODE Sports, which seems to be doing a similar job as The Athletic, even though it’s owned by News Corporation.

“It could have a similar impact to the US and the UK, if they take big name reporters,” said Dr English, though he thinks The Athletic could be scaled down and have its content syndicated through The New York Times sport section if it fails to turn a profit.

Dr English’s doubts are rooted in the painstakingly slow profit growth produced by The Athletic’s subscriber-based system, although earlier this year the company surprised (and outraged some) subscribers who logged on one morning to their first ad.

But our UK source says The Athletic’s future is bright, and it’s legacy media that will change, in order to provide a level of journalism not seen in free news services.

“If you’ve got news that’s free, you’ve got to create something that people will pay for. And for us, it’s good analysis. It’s intelligent thinking, it’s exclusive news stories, brilliant interviews.”

They say that even within their own organisation, the future of media looks to be heading to where some may argue The Athletic already is.

Curator

“I see my role as being a curator of content for a website or an app, rather than what I do a lot of the time at the moment, which is designing pages and print pages and kind of working out.”

Whilst both The Athletic website and critically acclaimed app are available in Australia, The New York Times, as the now-owner of The Athletic, declined to comment when asked about plans for an Australian expansion.

But should major international sports like cricket and rugby union – so far relatively untapped by The Athletic – ever entice the company to expand beyond Atlantic coastlines, Australian media could see huge upheaval.

by CALLUM LIDDELOW