New York Times buys sports startup The Athletic for $550M cash to expand its paying subscribers

The New York Times Company is buying sports site The Athletic for $550 million in an all-cash deal. The acquisition will enable The Times to diversify its media business into online sports and increase its readers’ subscriptions as the newspaper print ads business fades. The Athletic is an online sports news outlet with 1.2 million subscriptions.

The Athletic was founded in 2016 by Adam Hansmann and Alex Mather. The San Francisco, California-based sports startup is an online media sports website that specializes in online news publishing for the sports industry. The company features a web-based platform that utilizes news and updates about athletes and season updates for sports such as basketball and football. Unlike the other news outlets, The Athletic gives diehard sports fans high-quality content without the ads.

The Athletic co-founders Adam Hansmann and Alex Mather (Source: The Athletic)

In a news release, The Times said the deal will bring The Times “closer to its goal of having 10 million subscriptions by 2025, while also offering its audience more in-depth coverage of the more than 200 professional teams in North America, Britain, and Europe that are closely followed by The Athletic’s journalists.” The media giant currently has more than eight million total subscriptions.

The Athletic was founded in 2016 by Adam Hansmann and Alex Mather. The San Francisco, California-based sports startup is an online media sports website that specializes in online news publishing for the sports industry. The company features a web-based platform that utilizes news and updates about athletes and season updates for sports such as basketball and football.

The acquisition makes it one of the Times’ largest-ever acquisitions. In 1993, The Times acquired the Boston Globe for $1.1 billion and $410 million for About.com in 2005. The two were later sold for less.

While many local and national news outlets have either shut down or lost their readership as users move online, The Times has thrived in the past several years. During the Trump Presidency, millions of subscribers flocked to New York Times to get unbiased and factual news. The Times is on track to reach its previously stated goal of 10 million subscribers by 2025.

Based in New York City, The New York Times was founded in 1851. Since its inception 171 years ago, the Times has since won 132 Pulitzer Prizes. The newspaper is currently ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. As of the most recent quarter, the Times had nearly 8.4 million. It has been diversifying its coverage with lifestyle advice, games and recipes, helping it counter a pullback from the politics-driven news traffic boom of 2020.

In a statement, New York Times Co. CEO Meredith Kopit Levien called The Athletic “a great complement to The Times.”

“We are now in pursuit of a goal meaningfully larger than 10 million subscriptions and believe The Athletic will enable us to expand our addressable market of potential subscribers,” she said. Ms. Levien told analysts Thursday evening there was a “relatively modest” overlap in subscribers of the two companies.