The Athletic
How The Athletic lured the best sports journalists away from newspapers by paying them two to three times more through subscriber-driven economics.
In two thousand and ten, sports journalism was dying. Newspapers cut newsrooms. Beat reporters took pay cuts. The Athletic asked differently. What if journalists earned more money? What if writers got paid based on subscriber numbers? The best reporters left newspapers to join The Athletic, earning two to three times their newspaper salaries. The Athletic hired the best sports reporters from every city. Readers followed their favorite writers behind paywalls. They paid fifteen dollars monthly for writers they loved. By twenty twenty, The Athletic had five hundred thousand subscribers. Subscribers paid for writers, not publications. The economics revealed who truly mattered in sports. The New York Times acquired The Athletic for five hundred fifty million dollars.
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