The Athletic keeps growing .......

I’ve been getting a ton of ads for $2.49/mo (50 percent off). I clicked on the link in the site’s footer for “get 20 percent off” and then went away from the page. I’ll get the ads served on other sites. If you’re looking for a discount, here you go.

 

Are you paying monthly or was it just one lump sum of $60?

There’s so much inertia with subscriptions — ok, maybe not our print product anymore, but for the most part. If you’re subscribed to something, odds are you’ll renew. I don’t use the At-Bat app all that much, but the 10 times a year I listen to an out-of-market broadcast I know it’s there.

 

I did the lump sum.

 

So many people do this lol

 

It's the new closed system, like ESPN, with its TV, radio, podcast and dot.com operations all promoting each other. Four out of five times I see an Athletic story linked or touted on Twitter, it's by someone from the Athletic. I get the branding, but it feels more like advertising than genuine, "this is great" referral.

 

It’s not so much the act of telling us all how awesome it is, it’s the content they choose to promote and act like it’s the 95 Theses. Like dude, your piece on a locker room farting contest bringing the team together is not as good as you think it is. And they’ll tweet it like “One room. Two men. A fart contest, and how it brought together Team Gas and turned around the season” with like a bunch of emojis and shit. God you would think James Joyce ran social for these nitwits

 

This. There are seven or eight full-time writers in my market. Only two of them have ever written something I would consider great, and certainly not every story they wrote hit that mark. The others, I hope they got on the cheap, and I certainly won’t pay a premium to read their staff.

But they all sure do like to tweet about how great all of each other’s stories are.

 

That's 'cause it IS advertising.

 

Twitter doesn't bring much traffic though.

 

Of course. And this is especially the case with subscription content, like The Athletic. But the idea is that if you get enough big names with large followings saying how great the content is, maybe it will help sell subscriptions.