The New York Times Company has reached an agreement to buy The Athletic, the online sports news outlet with 1.2 million subscriptions, in an all-cash deal valued at $550 million, The Times said on Thursday.
Started in Chicago in 2016 by two media entrepreneurs, Alex Mather and Adam Hansmann, The Athletic was made for die-hard fans who were not finding the in-depth coverage they craved at a time when newspapers were in decline, Sports Illustrated was sold and ESPN began laying off journalists.
The Athletic hired prominent sports journalists from across the country, bringing coverage of games and the latest sports developments to readers who had grown accustomed to getting their news online. It had a reporter covering nearly every major professional sports team in North America, as well as several top European soccer clubs, while also serving up magazine-length feature articles and podcasts.
The site now has about 600 employees — roughly 400 of them in its newsroom, making it the second-largest employer of sports reporters in the country, behind the Disney-owned ESPN. Like a number of digital media companies that have found success in recent years, The Athletic relies on subscribers, rather than advertisers, as its main source of revenue.
