Athletic, Axios talking merger?

[Sports Barf]

Yes and none of you picked up on the sarcasm. Hence why I told Mr. Ragu to stop taking things so literally.

You can say whatever you want about me. I would never claim to know how open-heart surgery works because I saw it in Doogie Howser.

Your racism is cute though.

 

[TheSportsPredictor]

I pay a dollar a month for The Athletic. Hope they get more from others.

As far as discretionary income, The Athletic would have to be at the bottom of the list. I'll pay the dollar a month, I've paid nearly $3/month, but it's just sports articles. Something I can easily live without If I'm choosing between streaming services, legit news like the NYT or Washington Post, music that I can listen to anytime or anywhere, the sports site is falling way behind those if I have to cut costs.

 

[Pilot]

This would be a big refocusing of sports for NYT. That's interesting to me. They certainly haven't ever tried to have coverage of every game or every team, never tried to be ESPN.com or SI.com with wall to wall coverage of the sports news of the day. They'll never cover where the No. 1 recruit decides to go, but maybe how the modern recruiting system works.


In my eyes, they consistently have some of the most insightful, interesting and well-reported sports stories in the business.

The Athletic does great work, but really different work. That'd be a very interesting shift, in my eyes.

 

[rubenmateo]

For what NYT is, a subscription model for years now, their focus is spot on. No point trying to be wall to wall in a business where all the sites who are chasing views, and journalists trying to build their Twitter follower counts, are doing the same thing. Even if you can do it better, it's exhausting and the average reader is less likely to notice the difference in quality than those in the business. The payoff isn't worth it. Find stories on topics that nobody else is doing because people will be more interested in subscribing to learn something they can't somewhere else versus just reading a better version or take of what else is out there. To me, the Athletic, though subscription based, is a cross between the two different models because of all the team beat reporters.

 

[daemon]

They are looking at at least four things: 1) Can we add value in some way that will bring it to profitability. 2) At that price, how long will it take until (or if) we ever see a return on that investment? 3) What do we expect that return on investment to be, and how does it compare to all the other things we can do with a half a billion dollars+ today? 4) What are the barriers to entry, because for a half a billion dollars + could we just start from scratch for less (your question)?

The only reason any acquisition gets done is that the barriers to entry seem too great. I'd personally suspect that would be the case with this. Being first has to be a huge advantage.

I'd love to know what way the Times and Post think the wind is blowing in the content business. We're about to enter a period of massive consolidation. You're starting to see it on the video side (MGM/Amazon), and it's going to happen on the print side. The "cord-cutting," a la carte era was a needed step, but people aren't going to stomach $100+ in subscription fees for their daily reading. Wonder if the NYT sees a future where print consolidates the way TV always does. Ten years from now, all content is owned by the Times, Post, Wall Street Journal and maybe one of the websites.

 

[MeanGreenATO]

I used to come here looking for interesting journalism conversation, but then I realized this site is just a bunch of crotchety old white dudes who think people still read newspapers and poo-poo anything new just because it's new. I check in occassionally to give myself some laughs. You're one of my favorites because you always write long-winded posts explaining basic business principles they teach in high school as if you're Warren Buffet. Keep doing your thing, my man.

Felter's role of playing Athletic stan/board villain is pretty entertaining, to be honest.

I might have missed it, but one of the things in that Axios post that might have been overlooked: They made a ton of cuts to editorial staff in 2020 and allegedly hired double that number back. However, none of those hires seem to have been writers. That is not ideal.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Felter's role of playing Athletic stan/board villain is pretty entertaining, to be honest.

I might have missed it, but one of the things in that Axios post that might have been overlooked: They made a ton of cuts to editorial staff in 2020 and alleged hired double that number back. However, none of those hires seem to have been writers. That is not ideal.

Tech bros turn into the villains they were supposed to rescue us all from, chapter the infinite.

 

[BYH 2: Electric Boogaloo]

Honest question - why would anyone pay anything for the Athletic instead of just hiring away their talent? The Athletic is its writers. If the New York Times wanted to, it could spend $50 million on hiring and put the Athletic out of business.

This is a doubly interesting point given the Times doesn't even staff all the local teams anymore. Would be something even by 2021 standards if they jumped from that to providing an online home for every team in the land.

 

[Severian]

Felter's role of playing Athletic stan/board villain

Literally who?

 

[TigerVols]

If I was Tim "Apple" Cook I would kick the tires of The Athletic. Apple is looking to add sports to its entertainment offerings and buying the Athletic and using its name and talent as the core of a sports channel for Apple TV could make some sense.

 

[sgreenwell]

If I was Tim "Apple" Cook I would kick the tires of The Athletic. Apple is looking to add sports to its entertainment offerings and buying the Athletic and using its name and talent as the core of a sports channel for Apple TV could make some sense.

Why purchase the Athletic for that purpose, though? If they're interested in getting into broadcast space, there are enough free agents like Kenny Mayne and Trey Wingo floating out there that they could just bid for them. I doubt Apple has much interest in an online content business, since AFAIK they haven't tried to do an Apple News or anything like that, which would seem like a first step.

Also, as Ragu has pointed out, given the VC money that's been dumped into the Athletic, if it's for sale right now it's probably not at an especially affordable price - the VC people want to get out, with a return on their investment, or a slight loss. The only combination of "deep pockets" and "need the talent" that makes sense to me as a buyer would be ESPN, ironically, which would be like when Dundler Mifflin acquired the Michael Scott Paper Company. I think ESPN would rather see the Athletic fail though, and then just re-sign columnists they lost.

 

[The Big Ragu]

Not saying Apple couldn't (or wouldn't) do something like that, because who knows what is going on in Cupportino? They need to figure out the future of that business, because the hardware that has made them a gazillion dollars is how do you say, a mature business. Which is why they have fashioned themselves as a services company, but for them, that has more meant having an app store that offers other people's stuff, or trying to consolidate other people's news or podcasts or video.

Their past acquisitions have usually followed a pattern. Smaller companies, more technically oriented. Not the big billion dollar deals. They see it as more of an an "acquihire" strategy, where they are buying the software engineers or a technology that they are interested in. For example, they bought a company that gave them the fingerprint authentication technology on the iPhone. Or they'll buy a company that has something that can add features to their maps or health apps. Apple does do original content, for example in TV and movies and podcasts, but they haven't gone whole cloth into that, and I suspect it's because it is a sinkhole. Netflix is finding that out. They are peaking in terms of new subscribers and can't earn any money because their content costs have been so great. Let's say Apple does buy the Athletic. They are still facing the same puzzle that the Athletic is facing on its own. If they price the product at what it needs to be to turn a profit, can they somehow get the costs down to where there enough demand at what the price needs to be? I guess in Apple's case because of its distribution capabilities with the Apple products, maybe they could grow the number of subscribers to bring profitability through scale. But man does that seem like a gamble.