Athletic, Axios talking merger?

Minimum salary at the NYT (assuming two years experience) appears to be 100K:

2018 Reporter Top Minimum Salaries | The NewsGuild - CWA

 

For a while, a lot of folks over there hyped up each other's stories like they were Gary Smith features. It was comical but I got it. Maintaining that narrative is good for a start-up.

 

Kinda like the narrative that the NYT might be interested in buying them is good for trying to sell elsewhere.

 

Maybe. But the great thing about The Athletic is that you can personalize coverage that includes your local pro teams, your alma mater, your kid's college and that English soccer team you root for, plus great national coverage, all in one place for a flat subscription. To my knowledge, The Athletic's price is the same no matter how many markets/sports you follow. So while the actual reading habits might be segmented, a sub-package that only included The Athletic would be the same as the game/cooking package in business terms.

 

I would think a natural merger partner for The Athletic would be MGM or Ballys or better yet, Score.

 

I guess. But I think a lot of people are willing to pay for The Athletic subscription because it offers access to coverage of teams in different markets. People can pay that one price rather than pay for a few different newspaper websites (and the coverage in most cases is better than the local newspaper coverage). Each person can personalize it the way they want to.

I’d be interested to know how many people would pay $60/year just to get one market. I don’t think I would. And if you made it a la carte (like, $2/month for me to follow my Chicago teams, another $1/month to follow Scott Dochterman’s Iowa coverage, another $1/month for Ken Rosenthal, etc.), I don’t they would make more money than charging the flat rate.

I see what you’re saying about the costs, but The Athletic can (and has) cut coverage of teams that no one is reading about to make the operation more cost-effective. They don’t need to segment the payment structure to know what people are reading and not reading.

 

You think so? I don't know if The Athletic has subscriber data, but I'd be curious if most of the subs build traffic towers on one team.

The Athletic didn't merely tout broad coverage, but really distinct stuff. And...I haven't seen that. Most of the writers do what they always did. And it's really good stuff sometimes.

 

I would be interested to see that data too. To me and others in my circles, the value of the subscription is the bundling of good content.

If I just wanted my Chicago sports, I'd be deciding between the Trib and The Athletic. I'd probably go with The Athletic, but it's a toss up. Where it becomes a no-brainer is that I also get my Iowa football/basketball coverage and national college football coverage and Ken Rosenthal and Jayson Stark and that's all included in my subscription without the price going up.

 

The Athletic basically set out to be the go-to news outlet for sports fans. If you had a subscription, you could read all sorts of great stuff outside of your teams.

That's great in theory but I wonder if the data suggests people don't really read other stuff. And if that's the case, the strategy might have to pivot.

 

I think the Athletic may ahead product ahead of its time.

I am originally from Denver and have seen what has happened to the Denver Post sports section (If Alden gets control of the Tribune I suspect blood will flow in the sports sections of that chain). The Post is down to about eight reporters for the four pro teams (CU and CSU coverage is handled by sister papers.) One of the effects of those cutbacks is that national coverage has become pretty sparse at the Post. For example, the Athletic had an article the other day by Jayson Stark about the decline in baseball batting averages which I enjoyed. I don't see a lot of material like that in the Post which I believe gives the Athletic a comparative advantage.

As Alden and other publishers continue to cut editorial staff at local papers I believe sports fans will have to turn to national outlets.

 

Where it pays off is if your teams aren’t all in the same market. Instead of subscribing to papers in Tuscaloosa, Nashville and Atlanta, I’m covered with one fee.