The Athletic keeps growing .......

As part of their EPL/podcast pushes, they just announced that they added the Totally Football Show and other podcasts under the same umbrella. As a big fan of James Richardson from his time with the Guardian Football Weekly, that’s a good get.

 

One castoff lands with the Lakers:

 

That's fantastic. Good for him.

 

what the hell is Sportico?

 

It's a startup from Penske Media Corp. (yes, that Penske's son).

PMC: Penske Media Corporation | PMC.com |

 

They're aligned with Variety. Seem to be off to a promising start.

 

Interesting name for a media brand. Don’t quite think it has the ring that The Athletic has but it’s good to see some competition enter the ring.

 

They own Variety, don't they? And Deadline?

 

Have not seen this posted, and it's behind a paywall so might not be easily accessed.

Inside sports media startup The Athletic, where writers describe mounting pressure as subscription growth slows, ad revenue dries up, and live sports come to a halt

A few nuggets:

The founders' tech background is felt at the company headquarters in San Francisco, where its marketing, product, finance, and engineering staff are based. Three staffers on the business side described The Athletic's management as "yes men" who always agreed with Mather and Hansmann.

"The way the company is structured is very much like a boy's club where what Alex says, goes," said a former marketing employee. "If you questioned that, you'd get fired."

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The Athletic reporters have quotas ranging from 10 to 20 stories per month, depending on the sport and if it's in season or offseason, as well as subscription goals. Before the virus hit, former employees said there was growing pressure to crank out subscriptions.

Staffers have loads of data to figure out what stories drive subscriptions. A Slack bot pulls in stories that accumulate five subscriptions within 24 hours. Stories that hit 100 subscriptions are known as home runs and pieces that generate 500 subscriptions are dubbed grand slams.

 

Anything on whether reporters feel pressure to write fluff and avoid investigation that might irritate a fan base and harm subscriptions?